Last September, Justin Bieber started thinking out loud on Instagram about his trajectory from celebrated boy wonder to, as he put it, “the most ridiculed, judged and hated person in the world!” He knew the reasons why: He’d become a rich, angry, drug-abusing womanizer, a jerk with “no skills in the real world, with millions of dollars and access to whatever I wanted.” But he needed everyone to know he had reached a turning point that had irrevocably transformed him: He’d found a wife.

Though the new 10-episode YouTube docuseries Justin Bieber: Seasons is supposed to illuminate the singer’s latest personal evolution, it’s really just a bunch of glorified vlogs with little to reveal. In what can only be chalked up to a missed opportunity to set the record straight, the series glosses over his formative experiences, his relationships with his parents and guardians, his years as a teen terror, and even his alleged multi-million-dollar connection to the sus megachurch that helped repair his image. Seasons is so unconvincing in its quest for realness that it ends up looking like a bunch of outtakes from the Lonely Island’s 2016 spoof Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. In the moments where the series isn’t a plug for his clothing line or his new marriage-themed album, or an exercise in self-parody, it feels completely manufactured by the Bieber machine to insulate the brand from an encroaching obsolescence that seems all but inevitable.

It’s difficult to not look upon this entire endeavor with deep skepticism. Told largely through in-home and in-studio footage, alongside talking head interviews from members of Bieber’s management and production teams, his many health coaches, and his wife Hailey Baldwin, Seasons wants to make Bieber a sympathetic figure without doing any of the emotional work. The star’s pivot toward being his own man is even more confusing considering how the tone of his last album rollout was almost exactly the same: 2015’s Purpose was all about Bieber growing up, figuring out his priorities, and coming away from it all with renewed focus. He underscored his Christian values and released coded apologies. He was 21 then. He’s 25 now. How many times does he get to pull this? In three years, when he’s 28, will the next album’s documentary feature him doing taxes?

Sponsored by Calvin Klein, and directed and executive produced by Michael D. Ratner—whose previous credits includes Kevin Hart’s Cold as Balls, a show where the comedian interviews people while sinking into an icy tub—Seasons is presented as an in-depth look at the last several years of Bieber’s life and the process of making his new record, Changes. But this tell-all is light on confessions and about as behind-the-scenes as an Instagram story. “There was nothing that was off limits,” Ratner told CNN—right before explaining why Bieber’s relationship to his ex Selena Gomez was, in fact, off limits. From Bieber’s blatantly rehearsed opening spiel on, there isn’t a moment that doesn’t feel like an album supplement. The doc creates an echo chamber wherein the people who benefit most from Bieber’s success only feed his ego further.

The first four episodes have especially little to say about Bieber’s transition into a Totally Real Adult. Episode one focuses on his retreat from music; episode two, his return to it. He seems to be putting a premium on creative control with the new album, framing himself as an auteur: This is the one where we get to know the Real Justin Bieber. In one attempt to cast the singer as a tireless perfectionist, he records the same bar (“50-50, love the way you split it”) over and over while working on recent single “Yummy,” a mindless attempt at sexy baby talk that doubles as its own form of contraceptive. “I can never remake this album. Once it comes out, it’s out,” he says, seriously, wandering the halls outside the studio.