Photo: MAX
We were promised something very exciting for this, the nearly last episode of The Idol. In an interview published this morning, Da’Vine Joy Randolph gave us a heads-up. (She plays Destiny, one of Jocelyn’s managers, and is one of the handful of actors who are coming out of this hot mess looking great.) Here’s what she told us about where the show was going in tonight’s episode: “What you’ve seen up until now, it’s about to completely turn on its head.”
Did she mean… get dropped on its head?
Here’s my only sense-making theory of what is going on at this point. “She’s not a human being. She’s a star. And stars belong to the world,” Izaak says at one point about our main lady, Jocelyn. And: “You’re not the only people capable of hiding who you really are,” Xander (Troye Sivan, also coming off great) says in the previews for next week’s season finale (can you believe it). That’s right: all this is some sort of Under the Skin thing. Jocelyn is going to dissolve into a big black puddle and assimilate all the men. Whether it happens literally or not, this is starting to look like just another horror movie about how women are scary and golly gee, you just can’t understand them.
The mansion is now jam-packed with hangers-on, including mega-producer Mike Dean, who shows up smoking a giant bong in his car, and then immediately travels the house, vibing with the acoustics of every room. They spend all their time laying down weird tracks that are maybe better than but not as catchy as “World Class Sinner“?
Destiny takes it on herself to go undercover in the house. (“I think we should kill this motherfucker,” she tells her partner in management.) So she goes in and starts bonding with the girlies, notably our fave Chloe (Suzanna Son), to whom she gives the best vocal lesson of all time. And this exchange:
Destiny: You know what they call people like you?
Chloe: Crocodiles?
Destiny: Pure hearts.
Me: ???
Tedros decides to take mega-twink Xander hostage and interrogate him with a shock collar. In Xander’s telling, apparently he’s already been a hostage: Jocelyn’s. “She fucking controls everything around her and now she’s doing it to you,” Xander says. “Shock him again,” says Jocelyn.
Is this the big reveal? It doesn’t feel big, or revelatory. And then Jocelyn is telling codependent stories to Destiny about how Tedros is always the victim, like when a bunch of women said he was their pimp and he went to jail. Is she for real? Pretending? Who knows.
Lots of things happen, all of which seem fairly random, particularly in a show unmoored in time and space. “You’ve gotta go public” Tedros tells her. So she records a tear-stained video talking about how her mom beat her. Then they all do coke and get naked.
Dyanne shows up — and Jocelyn learns from Chloe that Tedros told Dyanne to bring Jocelyn to the club. Sorry about that sentence! But that information seems important. Was it what compelled Jocelyn to text her ex? No idea.
Because suddenly, Joss asks her ex Rob to come over. Now Destiny’s doing coke; some super-spy she is. Tedros hot-boxes Rob and does shots until he ralphs and then starts trying to fight Rob. Soon enough, Jocelyn’s in the bedroom with Rob and his equally low body fat, with the door locked. “I promise. I’m in a really good place,” Jocelyn says to Rob right before she rips his clothes off. They have great sex while Tedros maybe-cries by the Prince photograph. He just loves music! He is an agent in the world to make great musicians of native talent. He has an incredible eye for brilliance. Frankly, I would say he’s misunderstood, mostly.
But it looks like he’s also got a new friend in Xander, who takes pics of Rob with a near-naked girl on his lap. “He’s cooked,” Xander says. With whom? Who knows what’s happening or why. Guess we’ll find out, like it or not. (I don’t.)
It kinda looks like they all go on tour together??? This would be really cute, honestly. Jocelyn’s world tour with Tedros’s Troubled Teens? I would be charmed. I would actually beg for a second season of that.
The show that started with the maids putting piles of coke back in the bag and pulling dildos off the shower walls? Yes, that’s camp, who are you kidding?
Y’all, I can’t even find the ratings for episode three online.
More like… chances she kills everyone else in the end?
