Face it, the Birmingham and Los Angeles auditions were duller than Becker reruns from a contestant standpoint. Who's really going to get excited about Kellie Pickler 2.0, the young lady with the t-shirt that said "Blue-eyed Blonde Bbombshell" right around the place where male eyes were most likely to arc and the backstory that seemed lifted from Queen for a Day?
It went something like "I just want to buy my grandmother a one story house because my father shot my lying-cheating stepmother and then shot himself."
It also turns out that Jamie Lee had tried out previously without the back-story. Apparently the story is quite true and it is very sad, but if she wasn't good enough without the back story then...
They did dig up an interesting contestant in Chris Sligh. He had non-Idol looks, joked about David Hasselhoff, and could sing just enough to sell the package. He's also a blogger. Had you Googled him just after the Tuesday show, you might have had a chance to read about this being his third attempt at Idol and his ambitions to be a Christian rock star.
One of the great past times of Idol fandom is to try to track down Myspace pages and websites for contestants before the show makes them shut it down. Chris Sligh's now closed blog on his AIexperiences pre-last week detailed how he'd been working on a "persona" and even suggested nicknames for himself to get himself noticed. I got a glimpse of the man behind the curtain and have to say "Sorry; Mr. Al Franken lookalike." Still, contrived or not, it was nice to see someone in the auditions who could be funny without playing the fool.
The Los Angeles auditions were even worse. The only thing I'll remember was Sherman Pore, the sixty-four-year-old man with the petition and the barbershop quartet voice. Funny, how Idol slipped in this "kinder, gentler" interlude after their failed Seattle parody of the Ringer. Otherwise, after about the five millionth crazy tone-deaf person, the differences stopped mattering. If you've seen one middle-aged lady in a yellow bird suit, you've seen them all.
The single most interesting thing about Idol this week had little to do with any of the contestants. If the show had any pulse, it came from the subtext about Paula Abdul. They spent half the Birmingham audition doing extra close-ups of Paula making odd faces, wandering the room, and dropping in loopy comments. In the second half, she abruptly disappears to go home to LA to take care of unspecified family matters.
Article comments
1 - Kaonashi
The best guest judge I've seen on the show was Gene Simmons. He didn't sugarcoat his answers like many of the female guest judges do. He was actually as strict -but not purposefully mean- as Simon in his remarks, and was often spot on.
2 - chancelucky
I'd forgotten that Gene Simmons was actually pretty good in his judge stint. I think the worst I recall were Ashford and Simpson.
For whatever reason, the judges seem to be the key to the show. I have no idea why the chemistry between the curent 3 seems to work, but I don't think any of the other "competition" reality shows have managed to turn their judges into a major part of the mix.