Random thoughts - Idol, the future of television, and more

- Sometimes I hate it when I'm right.



Some thoughts on the finale:

Beyonce is AMAZING. And J-Lo could not have been happy to have to go on after her.

Casey Abrams and James Durbin are legitimately funny.

Jack Black? Seriously? And...those girls didn't have fat bottoms.

Haley can have a nice career in the Adele/Amy Winehouse/Duffy genre. She just needs to get there fast while people are still buying it.

I miss Pia.

Speaking of which, Pia doesn't get a solo song, or even a duet, but we get a song from the Spiderman musical? And nobody was even INJURED during it? BOOOOOOOOO.

Carrie Underwood. Good grief. I'm glad I don't live anywhere near her...that girl is a restraining order just waiting to happen.

I am willing to bet that Scotty McReery's high school choral department doesn't have as hard a time getting guys to join as most high schools.

I gave myself a 45 minute fast forward buffer, thinking that would be plenty. It wasn't. Not even close.

Congrats to Scotty...he is now going to sell a whole lot of records, and I will never have to pay attention to him again.

- If you are an HBO subscriber and are NOT taking advantage of HBO Go, do yourself a favor and go to hbogo.com RIGHT NOW. You have access to the ENTIRE library of HBO shows, at no extra charge. You don't even need an iPhone...I have been watching season one of Sopranos and season 3 of Deadwood on my PC. For free, except for the $10 a month for HBO that I would already be paying.

It's just another step towards the future of television. Pretty soon, it will ALL be web-based. After my post the other day, I was thinking about the logistics, and it may actually be easier than I thought...you could just pay your cable company just like you do now, since most of the cable companies are also internet providers, go to comcast.net or whatever, and then pick your channel (web page) and go watch what you want to. The only other thing to figure out is advertising, but Hulu has a pretty good model for that right now, I think. Just imbed the ads in the video, and even better (from the advertiser's perspective), don't allow fast forwarding during the ads.

- Cougar Town fans...it may be too late now, since the season ended last night, but you should really be following @TheLarmy on Twitter. I'm not sure if it's actually Busy Phillips updating it or not, but it is Laurie in character, and it is consistently hilarious.

- Last week's Parks and Rec season finale ended one of the most perfect sitcom seasons of all time.

- Speaking of perfect seasons...I just started watching Survivor two seasons ago. Has any player ever dominated the way that Boston Rob did this season? It was like he was using Jedi mind tricks or something.

- Guess what today is? 100 DAYS UNTIL KICKOFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep...the countdown starts in earnest now.


GO DAWGS!!

VERY quick thoughts on Idol Top 12

Well, the hits just keep on coming, quite literally in this case...totaled my truck last night by creaming a deer.

So, this is going to be really short...

The REALLY Good: Stefano, Pia, James, Casey

The Good: Jacob, Lauren, Scotty, Haley

The Bad/Boring: Naima, Intermission, Thia, Paul (cold or not, that was awful)

Who SHOULD go home: Probably Paul...that was two pretty rough performances in a row.
Who WILL go home: Naima

Idol Thoughts - Top 13

Man, I have missed you guys! Hopefully some of you stuck around while I tossed my life in to the washer and hit "spin", because I am really excited about American Idol so far this season. It's like I have been saying to anyone who will listen...the secret to a successful Idol season has nothing to do with the judges and everything to do with the contestants. As long as you have talented and compelling contestants, the audience is going to be engaged, and only then will they even care what the judges say. And this season offers a very diverse and talented group, several of which I am really looking forward to hearing every week, as opposed to last season when there was Siobhan and Crystal and really not much else.

Let's get on with it!

Lauren Alaina - "Any Man of Mine": Ugh. She's off to a horrible start for me already, because I HATE HATE HATE this song. Apparently what Shania REALLY wants is a doormat. Was this supposed to be some sort of ironic statement against the objectification of women in most popular music? Either way...it sucks.

Anyway, this is...fine, I guess. She doesn't do anything different from the original, as far as I can tell. You want to know what Simon was saying all those years when he called something "karaoke", this was pretty much it. Don't get me wrong...she has a very good voice. I mean, she would probably WIN the karaoke competition.

She is also completely out of breath by the end of the song. She obviously had fun with it, but that's really all it was. A nice, fun, ultimately forgettable performance.

Casey James - "A Little Help From My Friends": This is exactly what I was missing from Lauren's performance...an interpretation of the song. I LOVED the arrangement, loved the performance. Casey is quirky, no doubt, but he hit EVERY note that he attempted, and hit it with style. I worry that he could become Taylor-Hicks-y at some point, but for now I love him. Plus I think he is a LOT more self-aware than Taylor Hicks has ever been...he seems to get the joke more than Taylor did.

This was really, really good.

Ashthon Jones - "When You Tell Me That You Love Me": Here's the thing about Ashthon for me...she has all of the makings of a diva, but without the diva voice. She looks great, I actually love her attitude most of the time, and her voice is fine...it's just not "big" enough for me. She's hitting the notes, but there isn't enough power and OOMPH.

This was another example of what I'm talking about...she certainly looks the part. VERY Diana Ross, with the hair and the earrings and what-all. But she just doesn't quite pull it off. It gets better in the bridge after she steps out from behind the mic, but she is extremely shouty on the high parts. This was OK, definitely good enough to stick around, but it was good-not-great for me.

(I just used "for me" twice in my critique of one performer, which leads me to the most disturbing development of the Idol season so far. I am agreeing with Randy almost 100% of the time. I KNOW!!! I'm TERRIFIED as to what this might mean. Is there a glitch in the Matrix?)

Paul McDonald - "Come Pick Me Up": I knew I liked this guy...Ryan Adams has a prominent place on my MP3 player, and his style fits perfectly with what we have seen Paul do so far.

This performance was....hmm. I think I would have enjoyed it more live, and I DEFINITELY think I enjoyed it more than most other people, since I am a big fan of this style of music. But it was the very definition of pitchy, and the whispery tone of his voice never did really get strong enough during the chorus and he was overpowered by the band and backup singers. For once, I don't blame the production crew for that. He certainly uses the whole stage when he performs, though.

Like J-Lo, I hope that America gets what the guy is about and keeps him around. That was a very chill performance, and I liked it...but at best he was only "around" the pitch for a good portion of the song, and I don't know that he has the fanbase to stick around for very long.

Oof. J-Lo has never heard of Ryan Adams. Randy, on the other hand, is dropping names like WOAH. And Ryan continues to be awesome, doing the "Paul McDonald" as he gives out the numbers.

Pia Toscano - "All By Myself": For the second week in a row, she definitely picked a "singer's song", one that if you have the voice for it you can really show out.

And...WOW. She really showed out. TREMENDOUS vocal performance. And she looked fannnnnntastic. Almost distractingly gorgeous.

She needs to work on stage presence...not a lot "there" in her presentation of the song, other than the annoying "Aaron Kelly Arm". You know, the move where you raise one arm to just over shoulder level, hold it there for a second, let it drop....and repeat about 30 times in a row.

As for now, her vocal chops and striking beauty are enough to overcome the lack of stage presence...Carrie Underwood was able to ride that particular train all the way to the Idol crown, and then got some help on her performing style and has sold about a bazillion records. Idol itself has changed a lot since then, so it will be interesting to see if Pia can pull off the same accomplishment using the same bag of tricks.

James Durbin - "Maybe I'm Amazed": I have to admit...I don't like this guy. He's way too "try-hard" for me...the forced banter, the constant playing to the crowd, and the devil horns MY GOD the devil horns PLEASE KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE DEVIL HORNS IT IS NOT 1986 AND YOU ARE NOT MOTLEY CRUE.

Ahem...sorry. Having said all of that, I was pleasantly surprised that he picked Paul McCartney as his "Idol", and this was a perfect song choice for him. This was a great opportunity for him to dial it back and show us that he is not all flash and forced-rocker...he can really sing. He has a very nice tone to his voice, and his "scream" was used to great effect here...it came at a natural place in the song, fit the melody, and was perfectly on pitch.

I still don't like a lot of his affectations on stage, but overall this was a series of very smart decisions executed with a lot of talent and skill. Well done.

Haley Reinhart - "Blue": I am constantly forgetting that this person exists. I was surprised that she picked a country artist as her "Idol" (which...I don't think that is really what she did. She picked a song she wanted to sing and then tried to play it off like freaking LeeAnn Rimes is her Musical Idol. Whatever.)

This is a very difficult song to sing, and she definitely struggled the first couple of times she had to transition from the falsetto "yodel" back into her chest voice, but it did get better as she went along. She really didn't do more than just a karaoke version of the song...no spin, no interpretation. She just sang it, and in an relatively acceptable fashion. That's all I got out of it.

Jacob Lusk - "I Believe I Can Fly": Again...R. Kelly is not Jacob Lusk's idol and inspiration. He just wanted to sing this song.

And, MAN....he SANG it. One quibble was that he overshot the pitch quite a bit in the build up to the finish, but once he got there...I struggled to come up with words to describe it. He took it to CHURCH. Musicality at its purest form. The guy is an undeniable talent, and this is now two weeks in a row that I feel like he has dialed his performing style back several notches to great effect. Wonder if that's coming from the mentoring sessions?

Either way...this was fantastic, and probably should have closed the show.

Thia Megia - "Smile": Ah, she takes on that Charlie Chapman classic.

This started off really, really well...beautiful tone, and even more impressive control. Unusual to see that level of restraint in such a young singer.

But then, the tempo changed...and this went horribly, horribly wrong. Pitch problems all over the place, awkward "dancing", fake smile that does nothing to hide the abject terror in her eyes as she realizes that this was really an awful decision. Just tough to watch.

Stefano Lagono - "Lately": Oh, man...this is J-Lo's favorite by TONS. She loves this guy. And Ryan loves him too...he makes Ryan look normal-sized.

The beginning of this was really rough...he has a very nasally quality to his voice when he is in his lower register that is going to be a problem for him. Then the club beat kicks in, and this turns into the dance remix. He definitely SOUNDED better in the second half of the song, but I really didn't like the arrangement. This was probably one of those arrangements that sounded a lot better live.

Karen Rodriguez - "I Could Fall in Love": She bores me to tears, and I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for this recap, so I don't have much to say. Except that she is probably the most pageant-y contestant this show has had in years, and I have yet to see any other side to her than that. I think I'm going to start calling her "Intermission", since her performance is an excellent time to take a bathroom break, grab a snack, check e-mail, etc....

Scotty McCreery - "The River": OK. I don't get the appeal to this guy. At all. Is it a generational thing? Because, MAN...the screams every time this guy says or does something sounds like a Beatles/NKOTB/Bieber level collective explosion. I just....don't get it, I guess.

And if you are going to sing a Garth Brooks song, why pick the absolute WORST Garth Brooks song EVER? I would have rather him done some Chris Gaines than this boring generic faux-motivational crap. "These waters are my sky"? What does that even MEAN?

So he sits there and does the EXACT SAME PERFORMANCE HE ALWAYS DOES. And the judges just slobber all over it, and then Scotty says he tried to show them something "different" tonight.

Am I losing my mind? HOW WAS THAT DIFFERENT? Because it wasn't that stupid Josh Turner song that I had never heard of before Scotty showed up, but now is embedded in my brain?

Scotty and his apparently legion of fans just make me feel...old.

Naima Adedapo - "Umbrella": And now I have to apologize to Naima, because that whole Scotty thing just took me out of that really happy place I was in for most of this show.

She looks really comfortable on stage, and she was able to use her dance background to create what was really a very good performance. The vocal was only OK...I agreed with Randy (again? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME????) that the biggest problem was the end of the phrases. She was just letting them drop as she moved to her next dance move. Which is actually fine, considering the fact that she was attempting to create more of a "concert" feel to it.

Say what you want about it...it was definitely "her", and it was different from anything else we saw tonight.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
- I know I picked some of them apart, but there is no doubt about the fact that every single one of these people can flat sing. TONS of talent. It's going to be very interesting to see which way the voting goes, especially with the new Facebook voting this season.

- Nigel Lythgoe is back in charge of the show, and one of the first things he did was the long overdue firing of the director. Thirteen performances tonight, and the show not only came in on time, but Ryan and the judges had to vamp a little to fill the last few minutes. Great job with that, and also the production values seemed higher...no weird camera shots of the backstage area, the sound seemed to be mixed properly, etc.

***UPDATE******
Just found out that last night's show was actually taped on Tuesday. So...never mind. It's easy to have a well produced show if you get to tape it the day before.

- Really like the new "mentoring" thing they have going on with the Interscope folks. I'm interested to see if any of those producers start to stand out and become crowd favorites the way some of the choreographers have on SYTYCD.

- Looking back this show seemed REALLY frontloaded. After Jacob performed, there was nothing but cannon fodder.

MY TOP THREE:
1 - Pia
2 - Casey
3 - James/Jacob (Tie. Yeah, I know...it was just too hard)

MY BOTTOM THREE:
11 - Lauren (This was pretty surprising. Had to factor in level of difficulty and song selection, which is why Paul beats her out this week)
12 - Scotty (He beat out Thia because at least he managed to stay on pitch, and let's be honest...it was a smart decision to keep doing the same old crap.)
13 - Thia (Sorry, sweetie. That was just not good)

Who SHOULD go home:
Karen. Not in my bottom three, but I think at least two of the people in my bottom three have the potential to be interesting.

Who WILL go home:
Stefano. Just a hunch, really, and probably not right since he's young and cute and will probably get some of the teenybopper vote. IF all of the teenybopper vote doesn't go to Scotty for some unexplained and possibly supernatural reason.

My favorite things I have been watching

Sorry this is late...real life interrupted in a big way over the last week or so.

So...what's been going on in the magical world of television while I have been gone?

- The return of Justified. Haven't watched last night's episode yet, but sweet tomato on a cracker, it is great to have Raylan Givens on my television again. Love the new "bad guys" (which includes two LOST cast members, most notably Jeremy Davies in a very non-Faraday role), and of course the dialogue and acting were as top notch as ever.

- Last week's episode of Raising Hope. I didn't enjoy this week as much (too much Granny, who is the Pierce F'ing Hawthorne of this show), but last week was certainly a triumphant return. Garret Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton are simply amazing, the rest of the cast holds its own (with the exception noted earlier), and Hope is possibly the cutest baby currently on television.


(included the picture just because I think it's hilarious)

- Last week's Chuck episode. This past week was just a'ight for me, Dawg, but last week was...you know what, I don't remember anything about why I liked it, except for this.



Honestly, I think that is enough. I know Bernie agrees with me.

- The return of the Alt-Universe on Fringe. For the past two plus seasons, the writing staff and showrunner Jeff Pinkner have been conducting a master class on how to compose a serialized sci-fi procedural. A big part of their success is how they have handled the Alt-Universe stories. The amount of time spent swapping episodes back and forth between the "Red" and "Blue" worlds went on just long enough to be intriguing without getting tiresome, and now I think they waited the exact right amount of time before sending us back for an episode. I had not even realized how much I missed the "Other Side" until I saw that gigantic Zeppelin cruising past the Empire State Building. And the case of the week was Fringe at its creepy best. Love this show.

- Shawn Ryan does it again with The Chicago Code. As much as I loved the pilot episode, this past week's was even better. The characters are already getting so much deeper, particularly Jason Clarke's fantastic performance as Jarek Wysocki. I seriously can not wait to see where this show is going, as we are already seeing the shades of grey and line-blurring that Shawn Ryan likes to do and does so well. This show has quickly become a must-watch for me.

-GROUP NIGHT, GROUP NIGHT, GROUP NIIIIGGGHHHHTTTT!!!!!! Ah....one of my very favorite things in the whole wide universe....it's Group Night on American Idol!

Here is how Jacob over at Television Without Pity previewed it (with some editing for family-friendly reading):
"Ridiculous people: Shake out meaninglessly into Popular, Unpopular, Other. Turn on each other in the middle of the night, splitting up and forming new groups halfway through rehearsing that will never be as tight, as strong, as complete. Wander the halls, looking eternally for your group, like a hotel ghost; never find them. Crying jags in stairwells and hallways, frantic calls home in the starry smoggy night.

This is your only shot, your only chance, this is the bigtime. This is your Ambling Alp, your Waterloo, the Clare Quilty that stands between you and superstardom. You don't want it bad enough, you want it too badly, you are not a team player, you are not standing out. Turn in early and get a good night's sleep, while your competitors rage on. Stay up all night watching colors roll down the walls.

Choose absurdity. Work the accompanist's and vocal coaches' last f'ing nerve. Fight about minor details while letting major s**t fall through your hands. Start crying halfway through when you realize you can't do this, live and onstage. Ditch a girl, then ask her at breakfast where she went.

Get pissy about the choreography, discuss the choreography at length, make friends over choreography, lose friends for no real reason, they were never your friends, this is summercamp for borderline hysterics. "

Yeah, that pretty much covers it. Group Night could be nine hours long and I would happily watch every single second. And last night lived up to my expectations for the most part, other than the fact that there weren't any groups where one guy/girl decides to go to bed at like 11 while the rest of the group stays up all night, and then they meet up at that deliciously awkward breakfast. Those are always a highlight.

Oh, what were the highlights? So glad you asked!
- The cherubic 15-year old Jacee being heartlessly booted from his group in the middle of the night, only to be scooped into the arms of the carrot-topped anti-bullying hero Brett Lowenstern, culminating in a tear-filled passage into the next round, at which point poor little Jacee is going to be eaten alive by the pressure and endure years and years of intense psychotherapy.

- I hated the stage mothers of the 15-16 year old group "The Minors" (wonder if the producers forced that name on them to keep Steven Tyler away from them?), but that didn't mean I didn't take joy in how much frustration they were causing everybody around them.

- "I have a GREAT idea...let's all of us attractive females pull Steven Tyler on stage with us and sing and dance around him, and let him pull faces and randomly sing into the mic and have a blast. It will be so much fun that there is no WAY they won't let us through!"

"Lauren - you stay, cause we said after your audition that you were probably going to win. The rest of you? Your journey ends here."

Delicious.

- The absolute joy of watching the horrible Tiffany Rios wander around the auditorium full of people that she completely dissed earlier in the day, begging for someone to take her into her group.
Tiffany: Do you want me in your group?
Random awesome dude, totally straight faced: No.
Tiffany: Are you serious right now? ?
Random awesome dude, still totally straight faced: Yes.

This was followed by some poor attractive blond girl making what she is surely ruing today as the worst mistake of her life and joining up with this no-talent delusional horror show, which meant she was of course eliminated after about two lines of their doomed duet.

Oh, Group Night....I miss you already.

- The season premiere of the Rob-Russell showdown on Survivor. As I have said before, last season of Survivor was the first one that I actually watched from start to finish, and I was completely unimpressed. Watching last night, however, I can see why the show has lasted 22 seasons. It's amazing what having actually compelling people who seem to have an idea as to how to play the game can do.

And, yes...the show confirmed my suspicions. I do in fact hate Russell.

What about you guys? What are your favorite things that you are watching?

My favorite things I watched last week

Hopefully, this is going to be a weekly feature on the blog. In a normal week I would plan on getting this up over the weekend, but some family issues kept me from doing much blogging this past weekend.


These lists will be in no particular order, and will certainly not contain everything I watched or enjoyed during the week...just my very favorite things.

- The return of Parks and Recreation. Probably my favorite comedy currently on television, and it returned in top form. Even if there was nothing else good about the episode (and there was TONS), it would have made the list just for this:
(Click to enlarge...trust me, it's worth it)

- The ratings for Fringe. The first Friday show itself was not one of my favorite Fringe episodes...I thought it was good-not-great, even though every scene with John Noble and Christopher Lloyd was brilliant. But the really good news is that they managed to maintain the same ratings on Friday that they were running on Thursday, which was enough to win the night for Fox in the key demographics. Great news, and if they can keep that up they will have overcome the dreaded "Friday Slot of DOOOOOOOOOOM".

- Phil Dunphy eating breakfast on the floor. My favorite part of the scene was that neither he nor Claire even acknowledged it. It was just like, "Well, I'm hungry....and Claire won't let me go downstairs until we figure out how to deal with this. So I'm gonna try and salvage these eggs".

- Everything Busy Phillips did on Cougar Town. Wuh-BAMM!!

- Surprisingly enough, American Idol. I was pleasantly surprised by the judges panel, though I am still mostly reserving judgment until we get to the live shows and they can no longer edit out the awkward/annoying moments. But what I was most excited about was the noticeable reduction in freak-show/mentally challenged auditions. I liked what Jacob on Television Without Pity said: "What if the big change this year is that we are no longer playing to the Lowest Common Denominator?"

- Breaking Bad and Deadwood. Two shows on almost everybody's "Best of the '00s" lists that I had missed. I'm catching up on Breaking Bad by watching the replays on AMC, and I'm into season 2 of Deadwood on iTunes. Both are living up to their lofty reputations, though Deadwood's language is causing me some problems...I'm no prude when it comes to profanity (in that I understand that if you're going to write realistic dialogue, you have to write how people really talk), but the air around Deadwood is so blue it is actually distracting at times. But the writing and acting on both of these shows are tremendous, and I no longer begrudge Bryan Cranston beating out Jon Hamm for his multiple Emmys.

- Jay Rome's announcement. Got me believing again that the Dawgs may pull off this whole Dream Team thing, especially when it was quickly followed by his teammate Malcolm Mitchell following him to the Classic City. With Drew, Crowell, and Jenkins still on the board (and supposedly all strong UGA leans), I may actually get excited about football again.

How about you, fellow TV watchers? What were your favorite things on TV last week?

My thoughts on the American Idol season 10 premiere

I usually don't post anything at all about the audition episodes, but since this was the first edition of the completely revamped show, some very quick initial thoughts:

Ryan Seacrest - Still awesome.

Randy Jackson - Still useless.

Steven Tyler - I think his act is going to be REALLY annoying once we get into the live shows. Remember last season...Ellen was actually very entertaining in the taped shows when they could edit out everything but the funniest parts, but once we went to the live shows there was no way to edit out the awkward parts. I have a feeling the Steven Tyler situation is going to be very similar.

And, dude...he has GOT to stop leering at the sixteen year old contestants. He is old enough to be their GRANDFATHER. That's not "rock star"....that's "pervert".

Jennifer Lopez - She is entirely too nice for this job. At this point, she is supposed to be a JUDGE, not a mentor, and she's not doing people any favors by sending people on to Hollywood who aren't ready.

I will say this, though...I will definitely miss Simon (and Kara, for that matter), but Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez are by FAR the most qualified judges they have ever had, as far as having actual career success to draw on.

As for the contestants...I like that we seem to be focusing less on the mentally challenged freak show, but my concerns about whether we can get a better batch of contestants this season remain. There was not a single contestant that made me say "WOW", but there were several that I am looking forward to hearing more from.

I probably won't post any more recaps until we get to the live performances...so far, I'm still on board, but the caliber of contestants we end up with in the top 20 will be the real factor that will decide whether I'm out or not.