All of a sudden, ‘Idol’ is in a hurry
THE most astonishing thing about “American Idol’s” Hollywood round of auditions is how the producers managed to squeeze so much drama into one measly hour of television. After the gnawing tedium of the audition tour weeks, the pathos speeds by in a blur; surely Simon Fuller could have milked an eight-hour miniseries out of this episode. If we can’t count on “Idol” to squeeze out every possible milligram of tension, what is the world coming to?
Hollywood began with a brutal round of slaughter that, even to a hardened viewer, sucked one’s breath away like the impact waves from a nuclear explosion. In the opening moments, the assembled winners from the audition tour took the stage in groups of six to sing for 30 seconds apiece. Having been raised out of the masses gathered at the nation’s great stadiums; having traveled to Los Angeles for the one shot at greatness their lives would ever know, it all came down to 30 seconds on a very cold stage.
And then the verdicts. One by one they fell -- the heroes of Birmingham, of Minneapolis, of Seattle. The sailor, the soldier and the girl who lied to her father -- all their dreams were snatched away in the show’s first minutes.
And the carnage continued into the group performances, which once again sped by entirely too quickly. Could there be anything more fun than watching the guy groups trying to choreograph themselves? And the producers must have done some sort of incredible acts of charity in the off-season to be handed by God on a silver platter the spectacle of Bailey “the born pop singer” trying to maintain a disintegrating rehearsal with the bickering best friends from Jersey -- only to climax in a historic stumble as Bailey waltzed right into the judges’ pet peeve by blanking her lines.
It seemed every potential giant we’d met on the tour was sent home. But the worst was to come.
There is no more tense moment in the “Idol” season, nay in all of the arts, than the time when the 60-some finalists are divided into three rooms, sitting in near hysterical tears, waiting for the judges to appear and pronounce the entire room’s fate. The collective anxiety heightens the tension to unbearable levels, summoning far more genocidal imagery than a singing contest ever should.
At the end, 34 remained standing. In Wednesday’s episode, 10 of these were to be dispatched into the void. And then, the competition begins in earnest.
Show Tracker is a column that follows television series through their highs and lows.