HBO’s ‘The Idol’ Ratings Debut Behind ‘Euphoria,’ Even With ‘The White Lotus’

The Idol, HBO’s new controversial, poorly-reviewed series has its first ratings numbers in and they are…fine. Not great, not the worst, but I do wonder what kind of drop-off we’ll see for episode 2, given how poorly episode 1 went.

The Idol drew 913,000 viewers for the premiere, which is 17% lower than when Euphoria season 1 launched. I am curious how many people even knew The Idol was from the same creator of Euphoria in the first place, Sam Levinson. It also did not have a big-name star like Zendaya as a draw. The Weeknd’s acting and Johnny Depp’s daughter on display is…not Zendaya.

However, it’s not a ratings disaster. Those numbers are close to even with the first season of The White Lotus, which had 944,000 viewers. However, The White Lotus had incredible word of mouth. Viewership went up every single episode of The White Lotus season 1. I will bet you any amount of money that will not happen with The Idol, and if anything, people will be tuning out after that premiere.

It felt like there were pieces of a good concept in there with Joss’s team trying to manager her scandals. But then it flipped a switch and became 50 Shades of Grey only with The Weeknd trying and failing to act mysterious and sexy. I’ve heard the comparison that he’s attempting to be Donald Glover but…Donald Glover would have been much better literally in this role. Though I don’t think Glover would have attached himself to a project this bad in the first place.

I wonder if The Idol getting the greenlight from HBO here is a warning shot about quality control under the new WB Discovery regime. HBO does not debut shows this high profile with a 27% critic ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5/10 on IMDB. And this is their new, top-slot Sunday night fixture for the next six weeks! Disastrous, even if the pilot numbers could be worse.

The Idol is a blend of misogyny and bad writing and bad acting. This is a big miss from HBO and I certainly hope that it doesn’t indicate the quality of where season 3 of Euphoria is heading. But thankfully the first two seasons have been much, much better than what we’re seeing here. I’m not sure precisely what went wrong, but giving Levinson and The Weekend carte blanche to make the grossest, worst show they could was not a great plan.

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