We've said for years now that the U.S. military has it all wrong. Instead of using waterboarding as torture, we have a weapon much more scary, much more frightening, and one which would literally make most terrorists shit their pants. Just force them to sit in a room and listen to Britney Spears music. They'll give up anything they have to be freed from that horror..
But after watching last night's "American Idol", we're thinking the 2011 version of the popular talent contest show is running a close second to Brit Brit as something which could be legally classified as nightmarish torture.
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In the past, we could count on "Idol" to neatly fall into two sections, the auditions and the singing contest. The first section, the auditions in the various cities, was all about Simon Cowell. Let's face it, the only thing that made the auditions entertaining was Cowell's snarkiness and hilarious put-downs of the more hapless and less-talented among the young hopefuls. But now without, Cowell, we're not sure why the auditions are even being broadcast. The new group of judges are, for the most part, without personality or point of view; they just "yes" or "no" the stream of singers, and we move on. Looking back on all those recent episodes of the past few weeks, can you even remember one moment from any of it?
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But now comes the worst part of the new "Idol". Without a real personality to drive the show, we're left with what once, famously, almost completely ruined NBC's broadcast of the Olympic Games in the 1990's: the need to wrench a sappy, heart-rending storyline out of every moment of the show. In the same way that NBC once thought that we'd rather hear about the German swimmer's mother with cancer rather than to watch the German champion actually swim, almost ruined what had previously been a t.v. ratings juggernaut. Luckily, NBC learned its lesson, and thereafter focused on the actual Games.
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Now "Idol" is falling into the same trap. Instead of letting us hear the singers sing, we're forced to watch endless video segments of the singers' families and friends who have been visited by tragedy or misfortune. Is this a singing contest or a soap opera? And then, at the end of last night's episode, because of the show producers' need to milk the hell out of the "dramatic human elements" of the show, we had to watch Jennifer Lopez melt into sobs because it was so hard for her to eliminate one particular contestant. Oh J-Lo, J-Lo, J-Lo. Man up, woman. You're judging a second-rate singing contest, you're not forcing someone off Medicaid who needs a kidney transplant. Your job as an "American Idol" judge is not that important, and certainly not worth all the gut-wrenching, Oscar-worthy tears. And for the record, you're a gazillionaire, so if eliminating a young person's chance to sing really hurts you that deeply, why not assuage your guilt by cutting the guy a check, or offer to pay for his demo CD, or offer to rep him to a record company? But since we're guessing you won't be doing any of these things, it makes cutting the guy not seem so difficult, does it?.
Now to the manufactured drama and J-Lo's need to make the show about herself, add the long, endless stream of commercials, Ryan Seacrest's godawful presence as "host", and one crazy Britney Spears fan's Vegas wedding on last night's show, and you've got a heaping, stinking pile of... well, what passes for primetime television in 2011. No wonder the t.v. industry is in trouble.
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Let's hope when the show starts the actual "singing contest" part of the show next week that we get to actually hear the contestants sing, or we're guessing this new "American Idol" won't need to create a tragic storyline out of a contestant's life, the show will have its own drama when it receives its cancellation pink slip.
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