This is a 90-minute movie that doesn’t have the bonkers ideas, imagery or attitude to justify the five-plus hours it asks us to pay. But you know, that first episode seemed like it was really up to and onto something. We’re taken inside the hothouse of American celebrity to watch as it wilts beneath the California sun. An important joke is that the horror filmmaker Eli Roth is here, jittering in a small, pretty decent part. And dramaturgically speaking — to quote Jeremy Strong, an actor I’d rather be watching on Sunday nights — “The Idol” is curiously inert.

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Persons: WESLEY MORRIS I’m, Jim, it’s, Eli Roth, Tedros Tedros, Lolita ”, Jocelyn, LINDSAY ZOLADZ, I’m, Jeremy Strong, I’d, can’t, Rachel Sennott, Marnie Michaels, plopped, Joy Randolph Organizations: wilts