It figures.
Not even a week after singing the show’s praises for showcasing more good auditions than bad ones, the show delivers a time-wasting turd of an episode with the San Francisco auditions. Of course, I can take comfort that if I were literally singing the show’s praises, I’d only have to do a mediocre-to-passable job to be put through to Hollywood.
Then again, not everything about last night’s episode was terrible. I was VERY pleased when I found out that the San Francisco auditions would only be one hour long because no reality show ever needs to be two hours. And after seeing the “talent” on hand, I can see why the producers mercifully decided to chop this episode down from two hours to one instead of, say, the Kansas City episode last week.
However, if we’re only going to get an hour of “Idol,” why in the world would you dedicate so much of it to boring, pointless, overlong (I’m talking about you Tatian ??) video packages. I swear the show spent the same amount of time showing ??? beat a Rubik’s Cube as they did showing three quick, successful (though unspectacular) auditions of Raquel Houghton, John Twiford and Allison Iraheta. (Don’t worry, I didn’t know their names either, I had to look it up.)
It’s probably not a good sign that the first (and only) singer who has any sort of top 12 potential appeared 48 minutes (yes, I glanced, that’s how bored I was) into the hour-long show in the person of Adam Lambert (pictured, left). His take on “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the strongest vocal performance of the evening by far, but Simon deemed the former “Wicked” cast member too theatrical. Personally, I’d like to see anyone try to sing that song and NOT be theatrical. I think Adam and his early-season 7 David Cook cut could go far in this competition.
After that I really liked — no one. The hype-machine winner this evening was Kai Kalama, who’s been sweetly taking care of his mom. Still, try to imagine he was just another random person who auditioned and all of a sudden his take on “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” isn’t that impressive. It’s nice, but pretty boring. I’d say he was good enough to go through, but not nearly good enough to justify all the hype.
Speaking of just barely being good enough to go through, let’s talk about Tatiana del Toro and Jesus Valenzuela. Tatiana was the Puerto Rican (yikes, we’re not all like this) actress, model, singer with the psychic and press kit who hijacked the first 10 minutes of the show. Looking at her tragic dress with the unnecessary train and listening to her annoying laugh, I figured there was zero percent chance that she was any good. However, she delivered a shockingly decent version of “I Never Loved A Man the Way I Loved You.” To be honest, I think I was still mostly shocked that she was ANY good.
However, I still say she’s better than Jesus Valenzuela, the most divisive contestant in my apartment last night, splitting the couch in half with me on one side and my girlfriend Erica in the other. I say his uber-whiny voice was simply not good enough for him to be put through, and his most impressive talent is having cute kids to pimp for him. Erica said he was just barely good enough to be put through (especially since they just put del Toro through and has potential to improve, so why not? I said, “This isn’t ‘American Potential’!” Ok, that was seriously lame, but my point stands. When are the judges going to put their foot down, raise the standards and stop letting people get by because they’re just “good enough”? (Or maybe I should be asking, when are the producers going to show us these people?) I thought this show was about finding the next music superstar. And, in my opinion, the likes of Jesus Valenzuela is not it.
Those were pretty much the only lively moments of the night. Unless you subscribe to the producers’ idea of fun and think that showing a guy in a weird coat is a good use of time. If so, you probably also think that showing Akilah Askew Gholston (pictured, right) and her aggressively anatomical approach to singing was a good use of time. The way Akilah seemed to dislocate her jaw while singing kinda freaked me out, but I will give her credit for delivering the line of the night when she complimented Paula by saying she “had a very hit song in the early 80’s.” Ouch.
If you don’t mind, I’m going to go ahead and cut the recap of this terrible episode a bit short. (you didn’t really want to read about it, did you?) I’d like to thank the producers for, at least, only subjecting us to an hour of awfulness instead of two.
So what’d you think of this episode? Is there anything wrong with being theatrical? (I saw a little showmanship goes a long way as long as you don’t overdue it.) Is there any way the city of San Francisco can sue "Idol" for making it look so bad? Don’t you wish Kara had the same tenacity in standing up to borderline contestants as she does to Simon? Finally, is this the worst audition episode ever? (I’d say, “yes”, except that there HAS to be a two-hour episode somewhere that was more miserable.)
Not even a week after singing the show’s praises for showcasing more good auditions than bad ones, the show delivers a time-wasting turd of an episode with the San Francisco auditions. Of course, I can take comfort that if I were literally singing the show’s praises, I’d only have to do a mediocre-to-passable job to be put through to Hollywood.
Then again, not everything about last night’s episode was terrible. I was VERY pleased when I found out that the San Francisco auditions would only be one hour long because no reality show ever needs to be two hours. And after seeing the “talent” on hand, I can see why the producers mercifully decided to chop this episode down from two hours to one instead of, say, the Kansas City episode last week.
However, if we’re only going to get an hour of “Idol,” why in the world would you dedicate so much of it to boring, pointless, overlong (I’m talking about you Tatian ??) video packages. I swear the show spent the same amount of time showing ??? beat a Rubik’s Cube as they did showing three quick, successful (though unspectacular) auditions of Raquel Houghton, John Twiford and Allison Iraheta. (Don’t worry, I didn’t know their names either, I had to look it up.)
It’s probably not a good sign that the first (and only) singer who has any sort of top 12 potential appeared 48 minutes (yes, I glanced, that’s how bored I was) into the hour-long show in the person of Adam Lambert (pictured, left). His take on “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the strongest vocal performance of the evening by far, but Simon deemed the former “Wicked” cast member too theatrical. Personally, I’d like to see anyone try to sing that song and NOT be theatrical. I think Adam and his early-season 7 David Cook cut could go far in this competition.
After that I really liked — no one. The hype-machine winner this evening was Kai Kalama, who’s been sweetly taking care of his mom. Still, try to imagine he was just another random person who auditioned and all of a sudden his take on “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” isn’t that impressive. It’s nice, but pretty boring. I’d say he was good enough to go through, but not nearly good enough to justify all the hype.
Speaking of just barely being good enough to go through, let’s talk about Tatiana del Toro and Jesus Valenzuela. Tatiana was the Puerto Rican (yikes, we’re not all like this) actress, model, singer with the psychic and press kit who hijacked the first 10 minutes of the show. Looking at her tragic dress with the unnecessary train and listening to her annoying laugh, I figured there was zero percent chance that she was any good. However, she delivered a shockingly decent version of “I Never Loved A Man the Way I Loved You.” To be honest, I think I was still mostly shocked that she was ANY good.
However, I still say she’s better than Jesus Valenzuela, the most divisive contestant in my apartment last night, splitting the couch in half with me on one side and my girlfriend Erica in the other. I say his uber-whiny voice was simply not good enough for him to be put through, and his most impressive talent is having cute kids to pimp for him. Erica said he was just barely good enough to be put through (especially since they just put del Toro through and has potential to improve, so why not? I said, “This isn’t ‘American Potential’!” Ok, that was seriously lame, but my point stands. When are the judges going to put their foot down, raise the standards and stop letting people get by because they’re just “good enough”? (Or maybe I should be asking, when are the producers going to show us these people?) I thought this show was about finding the next music superstar. And, in my opinion, the likes of Jesus Valenzuela is not it.
Those were pretty much the only lively moments of the night. Unless you subscribe to the producers’ idea of fun and think that showing a guy in a weird coat is a good use of time. If so, you probably also think that showing Akilah Askew Gholston (pictured, right) and her aggressively anatomical approach to singing was a good use of time. The way Akilah seemed to dislocate her jaw while singing kinda freaked me out, but I will give her credit for delivering the line of the night when she complimented Paula by saying she “had a very hit song in the early 80’s.” Ouch.
If you don’t mind, I’m going to go ahead and cut the recap of this terrible episode a bit short. (you didn’t really want to read about it, did you?) I’d like to thank the producers for, at least, only subjecting us to an hour of awfulness instead of two.
So what’d you think of this episode? Is there anything wrong with being theatrical? (I saw a little showmanship goes a long way as long as you don’t overdue it.) Is there any way the city of San Francisco can sue "Idol" for making it look so bad? Don’t you wish Kara had the same tenacity in standing up to borderline contestants as she does to Simon? Finally, is this the worst audition episode ever? (I’d say, “yes”, except that there HAS to be a two-hour episode somewhere that was more miserable.)
No comments:
Post a Comment