If you’ve never watched someone you care about have a psychotic break after the death of a parent, consider yourself lucky. It’s uniquely awful to see grief tear a mind from its moorings, leaving behind someone neither the dead person nor the living person grieving them would recognize. Despite being one of the biggest pop stars in the world, Jocelyn was apparently not immune; her mother’s death from cancer, we’re told, left her on a rooftop, speaking incoherently to beings no one else could see. So when she ends a terrible day of music-video filming by calling for her mom, then immediately either denying she did so or relaying her honest belief that she hadn’t, it’s both sad and chilling. I have no particular desire to see even imaginary people go through that again.

It’s easy to miss, or ignore, beneath all the erotic-thriller throwback synth-and-sax sleaziness, but Jocelyn’s psychotic break is central to The Idol, the whole reason anything that happens in it can happen at all. This episode (“Double Fantasy”) makes clear how she’s in a position almost tailor-made to produce catastrophic professional setbacks and near-total personal vulnerability — in other words, ideal conditions for a manipulative svengali to sink his professional and personal claws into her.

To that point, this episode has very little time for the “The Idol is a glorification of abusers” viewpoint, because much as he was in the pilot (remember that gross coke loogie he hocks?), Tedros is depicted as a tacky and obvious grifter creep at every opportunity — the exception, of course, being when he’s pouring on the charm-and-dom routine for Jocelyn in the flesh. But behind the scenes, he’s talking about her like a business investment for his club — the exact same way he talks about Dyanne (Jennie Kim), the talented backup dancer he seems to have steered into Jocelyn’s orbit specifically to replace her. Writer-director Sam Levinson literally has Tedros do the “no, I’m alone” bit over the phone to Joss when in fact he’s surrounded by people and getting his hair braided that very moment. For god’s sake, his name is Tedros Tedros! Tedros is a ridiculous dick! It isn’t subtle!

And because of the disastrous music video shoot, it’s as if Jocelyn’s entourage have rolled out the red carpet for the guy. Frustrated that label exec Nikki won’t permit her to release a new version of her planned single, this one created with Tedros’s input, Joss throws herself into the choreography of the video for the original version with a workaholic dedication that borders on abusiveness, to herself more than to others. She insists on take after take, forcing conversation after conversation with director after manager after journalist after other manager just to move things along. After one such pep talk from Destiny — who, like her colleague Chaim, appears to actually like and care about Joss, though they enable much of what ails her — she absolutely nails it…but the camera malfunctions. 

That’s the last straw. She has trouble getting back on stage because her feet are raw and bleeding. So are her thighs, sliced up by a glass she shattered between them while masturbating to her and Tedros’s collaboration. She calls for her mother, then says she didn’t. She cries, regains control, laughs, regains control, cries some more. 

(She does all this half-naked, by the way; maybe she’s trained herself to get past it, but if you’ve ever accidentally found yourself getting really emotional in front of someone while in your underwear, you know this can only compound the intense awfulness of the situation. Either way it makes Joss, and Lily-Rose Depp’s intense performance, seem that much more exposed.)

So Nikki calls the video off for the day. Then she cancels it entirely. She’s already secured Dyanne to a deal before they call it a wrap. Joss knows that her quote-unquote erratic and unreliable behavior might mean the end of her pending tour as well, which would be the end of her career.

So it’s to the end of her career that she toasts when Tedros comes over with an entourage of his own. This includes Leia’s new love interest Izaak (Moses Sumney), a stunning church-trained singer and dancer whom Tedros uses a shock collar to instruct in the ways of being “not human — you’re a fucking star.” It also includes Chloe (Suzanna Son), a skinny-dipping piano virtuosa who watches Tedros and Jocelyn have sex after some intense exhibitionist/voyeur dirty talk. Chloe ends the episode by performing a song about a broken family (this time with her clothes on). From Joss’s reaction, and from Leia’s reaction to that reaction, it seems the star has found the sound she’s been looking for.

Ultimately it’s not rocket science. Joss was riding high until her mother, who’d been by her side the whole time, died young. She had a mental breakdown and recovered, more or less, but isn’t really ready to get back into the machine run by Nikki and the others. Her first real day back on the job is entirely too stressful. Her support system — surrogate parents, even, as Chaim and Destiny see themselves — fails to support her. (Imagine that, entertainment executives not supporting the people who make them rich!) Enter Tedros, who tells her everything she needs to hear, who can help her better than these other assholes ever could, who can help her find her sound, and oh hey by the way it’d probably be best for him just to move into the mansion “for work purposes,” right? It’s textbook. Again, it isn’t subtle.

Nor is the show’s debt to the erotic thrillers of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and also certain more recent simulacra thereof. Nicholas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon and overall vibe is all over this thing, as much as Body Double or Showgirls is. The score swings between neon synths, hot saxophone, and big sweeping romantic strings with a little guitar sting at regular intervals — really effective stuff from Levinson, the Weeknd, and Mike Dean. But just to keep everything from feel like it’s from the same pool, Levinson, the rare TV creator whose magpie approach feels earned rather than derivative, even throws in a nice Kubrick zoom here and there, as if Joss is Barry Lyndon, another rags-to-riches case whose riches don’t amount to that much for him in the end.

After two episodes, it’s really rather striking how much less bombastic, explicit, and nasty this is than Levinson’s own Euphoria. That’s a show that can be hard to see coming from one moment to the next; The Idol, which to be clear I’m enjoying quite a bit, you can see coming from a mile away. But that’s the thrill part of the erotic thriller, right? Like Jocelyn’s vicious circle, you see the warning signs, but you keep watching anyway.

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.