Four or five years ago my kids got my wife and I involved watching American Idol from the very beginning of the season, since it was something they discussed with their friends. In various articles I’ve been pretty clear that my musical tastes range pretty far from the popular realm, but family time trumps all for me. On a now defunct site I started writing a series called ‘Idol Thoughts’, where I would blog weekly about the show, later carrying it on to my own personal blog and GamerDad’s blog where it was popular with many other parents who were watching the show with their kids.
But as we are now six weeks into the season, and indeed into the second week of ‘Hollywood Week’ (yes, I get the irony), I have yet to start writing the weekly articles I had planned. And it isn’t just for a lack of time – there just hasn’t been much of anything worth writing about. Each show has been a formulaic rehash of every other show, with a predictable (even by the show’s tightly controlled standards) cast of stereotypes trotted out in pretty much the same order.
The only variety this year came from the absence of Paula Abdul, meaning that each week had new guest judges, from the way-too-thin Victoria Beckham to an array of ineffectual and forgettable others. There were only two memorable guests: Neil Patrick Harris who was constantly incisive and witty, and Katy Perry who was surprisingly blunt – especially with the ever-useless Kara, one time saying ‘Kara, this isn’t the Lifetime special’.
But after a week in Hollywood, I honestly can only remember a single person – an obnoxious and overbearing woman named Mary, who I only recall because I wonder how she got through in spite of forgetting her words and singing poorly. By this time in prior years we already knew about Sanjaya, Tatiana, as well as Blake Lewis and Archuletta and Soul Patrol and so on … so where are the great characters and where are the great singers this season?
So I have to ask the Gear Diary crowd – does anyone care? Do you watch it still? What do you think?