I'm still enjoying this show, even as I recognize that it is very bad with increasing tonal whiplash and nonsense plotting.
Yeah reading the background on this it seems like Abel was the crux of the reason this went wrong. All the reports say he pushed his weight and influence to overhaul the original showrunner's more feminist empowering concept for the show before Levinson was brought in. It almost feels like he wanted the show to match the aesthetic of his own distorted myopic perception of what he thinks his brand is.
Watched the last two episodes. I know this was probably written before Jennette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died was published, but man if feels like they straight up cribbed Jennette's life story with the mom abusive mom dying of cancer while on the brink of stardom leading to an existential crisis stuff. Except in her case her mom dying eventually led her down a path to realize the life her mom groomed her for isn't what she wanted, so she sold her mansion, willingly left the spotlight, and quit acting/singing to focus on writing. Don't think we are going to get an outcome that positive here.
That whole living room concert was the most unintentionally ridiculous scene I’ve seen on TV in a long while.
wait serious question: if the brush is new does that mean she bought a new one to keep the “inspiration” around or that she made up all the trauma & fooled everyone?
Lmao the writing on this show is just baffling. What felt like 5 minutes of the least subtle exposition ever to describe what happened to Tedros after Chaim did his dirty work, and then pretty much nothing to explain Jocelyn's motivations of why she decided to bring Tedros back after all that.
I decided to watch this whole show today because I'm a huge Weeknd fan and I honestly didn't think the first four episodes were that bad, the music and aesthetic was phenomenal and the acting wasn't that bad. I even found all of the music industry stuff pretty interesting and well done; the sex scenes were a different story, I was embarrassed watching those lol However, the last episode was atrocious. That weird talent show that took up literally half the episode felt like the definition of filler, and I'm almost positive that the 6 week timeskip is what was going to be the final episode, it felt like we got a ton of clunky exposition right after that filling in what we would have actually seen if they filmed it. And that ending was just not good at all; are they implying that Jocelyn faked everything (including her abuse) all along and was a master manipulator, or that she fell back into his hands? Either way makes no sense and feels very misogynistic, I would have way preferred they just keep it with Tedros getting ruined and her reclaiming her independence Overall I think this show was a solid C-, worth watching for me but I'll never revisit it. Soundtrack is full of bangers though so worth it for that
My reading was that her abuse was real and she was being sincere throughout but also was using Tedros as a way to explore her pain to make her art and wasn't as helpless as she seemed. The brush thing was to show that it was more of a role play to her than a genuine submission and she never let him have that much actual power. I think she was genuinely pissed off snd upset when she found out he had planned it all along because she felt like they had a genuine connection and wanted to get rid of him for good. I think she brought him back because she missed him and genuinely wanted to be with him but also had to let him know that she was the one in charge, not him. I'm not sure if that's what was actually intended but it's what I took from it when watching and what makes the most sense to me given what we saw throughout.