‘Idol’ trip for the delusional

Three segments into Wednesday night’s episode of “American Idol,” host Ryan Seacrest asked a young woman who had just flunked her audition and blamed the failure on nerves, “So you don’t normally sound like a goat?” The young woman paused for half an instant before answering: “I hope not. Otherwise people have been lying to me.”

If there is one message to take away from the audition episodes of the most powerful show in the history of television, it is this: Do not trust your friends!

The thrill of the audition weeks is piecing together what on Earth these people can possibly be thinking -- the freaks, the uncoordinated, the tone deaf, the wearers of hot-pink mesh body stockings. Can they actually believe that their screeching is passable singing, even in a neighborhood karaoke bar? Are they that deeply deluded about how they are seen? Or is it just a joke to get on TV? One possible explanation that suggested itself repeatedly Wednesday was the malevolent influence of friends in a person’s life -- friends who reassure you, who tell you, “No, really, you have an amazing voice.” Friends whose fear of upsetting you leads you to wear that ridiculous suede vest in public -- or to audition for “American Idol.” Well, if we didn’t have friends in life, perhaps we wouldn’t need Simon Cowell.

But the wantonly misguided serve the major role in these episodes. While the formal goal of the auditions is to find a new Kelly Clarkson in the rough, what really drives the auditions is the search for a new William Hung -- the Chinese American UC Berkeley student whose delightfully tragic audition rendering of “She Bangs” propelled him to viral stardom. Despite annual attempts to create anti-stars out of their audition rejectees, “Idol” has never since scaled those heights. (Imagine how much more famous Hung would have become in the YouTube world.)

One candidate with Hung-like star potential did emerge, however -- a socially inept software engineer from Salt Lake City who took to the audition floor and, after telling the judges his “Idol” candidacy was based on the fact that “I am a leader,” performed perhaps the most unhinged version of “Unchained Melody” ever rendered, prompting Cowell, who had been rather blase in his dismissals up to that point, to stammer: “What ... the ... bloody hell ... was ... that?”

As far as the public seems concerned, that was the sound of pure entertainment. It turned out that 36.9 million people tuned in for Night 2 of the audition tour, giving the guys in the Uncle Sam costumes, the supernerds and the just plain misguided an audience closely rivaling the Oscars. So if it’s fame they are after, they might not be so darn crazy after all.

richard.rushfield@latimes.com

Show Tracker is a new column that follows television series through their highs and lows.