Steven Tyler once said in an interview that he got into music for “The Three M’s: Music, Money, and MMM, P*SSY!” Needless to say, when I learned that the most popular reality show on television would be pointing a camera at this insane 62-year old man for four hours a week, the little blogging goblin that lives in my spleen and feasts on ridiculous tv moments had only one reaction: “MMM, P*SSY!” He meant, like, viral internet p*ssy, but you get the idea.
Being the connoisseur of awkward tv moments that I am professionally obligated to be, I tuned into American Idol Season 10 last night with high trainwreck expectations, only to find, to my shock and horror, that the Idol premiere featuring the debuts of Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez was…completely fine. What? FINE?? To be worth watching, television (and really, all culture) needs to either be engaging and creative, or unwatchable to the point of hilarity. American Idol is neither. Idol continues to be so streamlined, so well-produced, and so it’s the tenth damn season of it (that sentence is an adjective, I looked it up on adjectives.gov), that no emotional backstory or impressive performance or crushing disappointment inspires any genuine reaction from me other than “I am definitely watching the show American Idol.”
Even the ridiculous failure auditions are overproduced and predictable rather than jarring and spontaneous; they’re like an intricately dressed “messy room” set from an 80s teen comedy — technically messy, but you can’t help but picture the team of professionals that perfectly arranged those crushed-up Pepsi cans. The “fail” auditions are still hilarious, don’t get me wrong, but they fit into the show’s rhythm so specifically, and are set up so predictably, they never feel like actual failures, they’re just another part of the show. The Asian Michael Jackson imitator who sang “Party in the USA” reeked of Idol viral-publicity so blatantly, he might as well have been William Hung in a William Hung suit. (Was he William Hung? He was probably William Hung.)
To wrap things up, a quick lightning round of things that bothered me:
- The first hour of the New Jersey auditions featured a Jersey Shore montage, which included a Pauly D lookalike, an auditioner explaining the typical Jersey girl, a section on “Jersey lingo,” and it even used an filter exactly like the one from the MTV Jersey Shore credits. So basically, American Idol, once the juggernaut that made the rest of television cower in hopeless fear, is now ripping off a three-year-old MTV show. MTV is actually setting the trend?? What is this, the first couple minutes after that Buggles video aired?
- Jennifer Lopez came off as legitimately compassionate and human, though this was likely just extra-noticeable after 10 years of Entertainment Tonight pieces about J-Lo flying in her eyelash lady to sets every morning on five private Hummer-jets powered by flawlessly coiffed dolphin scalps.
- It’s hard to get excited for the people that baaarely get through to Hollywood, cause you know they’re just gonna get instantly eliminated before we even see them again. It’s like watching UNC-Greensboro celebrating after winning the 64-vs-65 March Madness play-in game; you’re happy for them, but they’re just gonna lose in 48 hours anyway. This isn’t a new Idol trend, but it happened like 3 or 4 times in the first episode. Although – Taylor Hicks barely made it through the first round, and look at him now! CRUSHING those July 4th America specials on the Capital Steps every year.
Overall, my post yesterday about Idol Season 10 already sucking was premature. It doesn’t suck. It’s even worse: it’s completely, unremarkably fine.
