'The Idol' Wishes It Was 'Showgirls'

The Idol, to paraphrase one Troy Barnes, just sucks. The show’s many detractors definitely think so, but I see this acknowledged amongst its apologists too. One line of faint praise I’ve seen repeated is that The Idol is “for people who love Showgirls.” As someone who would gladly write a multiple-volume dissertation on the 1995 camp masterpiece, I’m here to explain how The Idol fucking wishes it was Showgirls.

Here’s the sum total of similarity between The Idol and Showgirls: both claim to be stories about the exploitation of women in entertainment but are really leering hot messes with ludicrous dialogue that are best viewed as accidental camp and inadvertent commentary on how banal and unimaginative the male gaze can be when unfettered. If I want to be generous, I could throw in how it centers on a blond femme conjured by a shocksploitation auteur.

The Idol is being compared to Showgirls because they both combine the aesthetics of pop and porn. Neither pull this off well and they’re each hilarious misfires in their different ways, but where the former is a joyless chore, the latter is colorful and ridiculous. The Idol presents a sad, deflated world centered on a sad, deflated pop star, presumably to dress the first-draft sexual fantasies up in serious clothing. Meanwhile, Showgirls invites you to enter a neon-at-night 1990s cartoon vision of Las Vegas that, instead of navel-gazing, acts like an ant colony might if you dropped a fire-cracker on them: a frenzied disaster of movement that you can’t look away from. I know media literacy lies bleeding, but there is a big difference between Levinson’s dull vibes-only tone poem and the greasy extravaganza that is Nomi Malone’s rise to fame.

The Idol is afraid you’ll notice how prosaic and unimaginative the writing is, so Sam Levinson uses as many recursive editing tricks as he can to distract you. It reminds me a lot of Westworld in its indulgence of non-chronological gimmicks to make their otherwise very straightforward plot seem deep or complex. On the other hand, one of the few pieces of genuine praise Showgirls can accept is that it’s shot competently so you can drink in every nutbars detail. And that movie doesn’t care that its plot is a threadbare excuse because that’s merely a stage for the manic cartoon antics of its cast.

Perhaps Levinson isn’t in on the gag at the core of his Euphoria success; “What if teens were nude” isn’t an amazing concept, but it works due to the strength of a cast that The Idol doesn’t have. The performances of Lily-Rose Depp and Abel Tesfaye are beyond flat. Their scenes together are so anti-charismatic and lacking chemistry that they repel your attention, but they can only do so much with a bad script and probably worse direction. Their lack of experience as actors really hurt them because while their scenes call to mind the image of someone desperately banging two stones together without a single spark, the supporting cast is full of people more than capable of elevating the material as much as anyone could. Jane Adams and Rachel Sennott should be given medals for how they take truly atrocious dialogue and turn it into something resembling what a human would say. I’m genuinely bummed out when we have to cut away from either of them to spend time on the leads. At least in Showgirls, the bad acting was big and ridiculous. Say what you will about Elizabeth Berkley’s performance as Nomi Malone, but like Cameron Diaz in the 2014 Annie, she left it all on the stage.

There’s an energy to Nomi. When she’s acting like a lunatic caricature, you’re paying attention! You want to see what this siren sprung from the coke-addled mind of Joe Eszterhas will do next and she does a lot of loony shit. Back in snoozeville, Depp’s popstar Jocelyn is flat, sleepy, drab even. The core performance of The Idol is wan and brittle while the core performance of Showgirls is a ball of bad news careening through peoples’ lives. Neither are good movies per se, but Showgirls has the grace to be watchably bad and it works hard to stay that way. The Idol lazily smashes Britney Spears’ breakdown together with NXIVM and calls it a day.

Let’s compare the bad sex! The Idol breathlessly wonders, what if a man sexually dominated a woman? Snore! Showgirls asks a much more worthwhile question: what if sex was like a dolphin having a seizure?

A sexy show that’s simply bad does not a Showgirls make. Again, I know that media literacy is flatlining, but did anyone really think a ponderous, sleepy show where dialogue like “stick your finger in and make that throat wet for me” has anything on the overstuffed parfait of trash with sparklers and a glitter cannon that is Showgirls? Tesfaye mumbling bad fanfiction-grade dirty talk has nothing on the crater-faced owner of a strip club saying to Nomi with what might be earnest affection, “It must be weird not having anyone cum on you.” I’ll take that completely insane line over the middle-school-brained sexual fantasies of The Idol every time.

Let’s put a very fine point on it: Showgirls is a ’90s id fantasia; it’s dark brown lip-liner, it’s perms, it’s Versayyyce, it’s boat shows, it’s French tips, it’s ham-handed Sapphic romance, it’s Gina Gershon, it’s unforgettable. The Idol could never! The Idol is a wet cigarette; it’s dead eyes, it’s braided rattails, it’s your friend’s little sibling declaring “I definitely know what sex is,” it’s soggy vibes, it’s fetid air, it’s naptime.

Know this now and forevermore: you have to put your back into being as hysterically bad as Showgirls. Accept no pretenders to that throne.

Chris Revelle shouts into the media void with his pals on Why Did We Watch This?