‘The Idol’ Episode 4 Recap: Thank You for Coming to My Tedros Talk

When it comes to The Idol, I think Jabba the Hutt put it best: “This bounty hunter is my kind of scum, fearless and inventive.” It’s smart about its sordidness in a way that leaves me thoroughly entertained. As it shifts from one tone to another, from sledgehammer-obvious satire to genuinely unpleasant psychological horror (nobody says torture porn on my watch) to Skinemax-style erotica, there’s one constant: It’s a nasty bit of business (complimentary). 

Tedros Tedros is the nastiest bit of the bunch, naturally. The more we get to know him — the domestic violence charges dug up by Destiny, the clearly very consciously crafted sexual supervillain persona, the abuse tactics straight out of a true-crime documentary, the way his suave tough-guy act collapses like a soufflé the moment he’s confronted with a better-looking and more successful rival for Joss’s affections — the lamer he gets. 

And everyone sees it. Guest starring as himself, superproducer Mike Dean (who arrives on the scene in pointedly ridiculous bong-toting slo-mo) openly laughs when Tedros fingers Jocelyn during a recording session to get the sound he’s looking for. Destiny doesn’t think any of it is funny, including the way he’s also exploiting other talented artists like “sev-er-eighteen” year old Chloe, and she never falls under his sway. Tedros even gets dismissed by Jocelyn’s ex-boyfriend Rob (Karl Glusman) as “the kung fu master” after his absurd fighting moves. The dude’s a big nothing.

But this is a feature of the character, not a bug. Think about every showbiz-adjacent cult leader you’ve ever heard of, from L. Ron Hubbard to Charles Manson to the NXIVM guy. There’s always much less to them than meets the eye, and it’s never prevented them from drawing in talented and intelligent people. Identifying people they can successfully exploit is the one thing these assholes really are good at, and once the hooks are in, they dig deep. The show is over the top, but the way Joss explains Tedros’s past as an abuser and sex criminal as never really being his fault cuts really close to the bone.

Directing off his own script, Sam Levinson plays up the contrast between Tedros’s front and the zilch within throughout the episode (“Stars Belong to the World”), from the melodramatic closeup of him crying when Joss has sex with Rob…

…to a parodic ‘80s slasher/avenger shot of him in the darkness as he stalks his new target, Xander, that made me laugh out loud.

Xander’s situation doesn’t stay funny for long. In a scene straight out of Room 101, Tedros has Xander physically subdued and uses his shock collar to torture him into recanting the ugly truth about his past. Both Jocelyn and her abusive mother — who anonymously outed Xander at age 13 to undermine Joss’s competition on the kids’ show they just starred in — used various methods to shut down Xander’s singing career, facts Joss now sees Tedros can use violence to effectively wipe away. 

Again like many of his ilk, though, Tedros can appear diabolical one minute and moronic the next. His whole grift begins to unravel when his other, secret protégé, Jocelyn’s former backup dancer Dyanne, shows up at his endless house party to tell Joss about her new recording contract and ask permission to take the single “World Class Sinner” away from her. By this point Chloe has inadvertently spilled the beans that Dyanne was told to bring Joss to Tedros’s club by Tedros himself, who’d been sleeping with Dyanne at the time. 

Joss gives Dyanne her blessing — then booty-calls her ex. Here, perhaps, we see the fatal flaw in Tedros’s “say yes to everything” ethos: Under the right conditions, his “family” (I wonder what other diminutive cult-leading z-list L.A. music scenester he got that term from?) can say yes to something he’d prefer they say no to.

I’d also like to call out this ridiculous shot of Leia ogling Izaak, who seems to be the only reason she hasn’t straight up quit and called the cops…

And this lovely shot of Destiny getting to know Chloe poolside, in the process revealing she’s probably a decent person after all. (Actor Da’Vine Joy Randolph gets the gift of being maybe the only person on this show to act like a normal, caring human being, and she knocks the cover off the ball with it.)

The Idol (which I’ll note for the record is airing during the WGA strike, which the studios could end at any time by paying and treating their writers fairly) has its fairly obvious film antecedents, Basic Instinct and Showgirls and The Neon Demon and Body Double and so forth. But while the vituperative reaction to the show may mask it, it’s not alone in TV land either. Nicholas Winding Refn’s Copenhagen Cowboy and Too Old to Die Young, Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion’s Brand New Cherry Flavor, and even some elements of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope and The New Pope, not to mention Levinson’s own Euphoria, point in the direction of this visually lurid, tonally fluid exploration of exploitation and glamour. It’s like biting on sexy tinfoil. I’m all for it.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.