*snort*

I didn't watch the auditions. I didn't watch Hollywood. The first time I tuned in was the reveal of the top 13. Stefano blew me away with his "I Need You Now". It stayed on my DVR for months before I needed the space. After that I just watched whenever I could. He never really impressed me again. I kept waiting to be blown away again BY ANYBODY and it never came. I liked Pia and I liked Scotty but I never got attached to any of them. I watched the final performance show and the finale this week. From what I was able to watch this year, I think Scotty was the right winner. He looked like a total pro every time I saw him.

We say every year that we want the best singers not an even distribution of boys and girls. They have to grow out of that.

I thought of you glowie when I saw Mark last nite and on SNL last Sat!

HOW GOOD IS HE?!?! I am so happy for him.

LAST EDITED ON 05-26-11 AT 12:40 PM (EST)

Hi Glow -

Nice to see you. I admit to not frequenting this board as much this season...not sure why. I have to agree with you that I also didn't get "attached" to any one contestant this season like I usually do. I really really liked Casey, but even him - i got tired of the growl. My wife was attached to Scotty ever since his audition, and she had him pegged prior to me. I give her credit for that.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY wish they would ditch the 6 boys, 6 girls requirement....

The other thing I forgot to add to my list, and this is a BIG ONE for me.....

* PLEASE KEEP Jimmy Iovine as the constant mentor. I think he brought so much to this season with helping the kids pick and arrange the songs.

geekboy

"$#it fire and save matches, &^ck a duck and see what hatches" - S. Tyler

You know, I don't remember if I've posted here at all this season. I was so determined not to watch it. I didn't really want to block out the time to watch 3 hours of AI every week. (I keep waiting but there's never a Ryan Star on this show.) But everybody kept saying, "You have to watch. This is the best group of contestants ever." So I did when I could and it wasn't.

Go Scotty though because he's pretty good already.

I watched all of it -- auditions, Hollywood and every round.

Like:

* This years crop of contestants, with a nice mix in the top 12.
* The balance of auditions, Hollywood and F12 rounds. Would have liked to see more song time than backstory, though.
* One Judges Save, just in case. Keep it.
* Theme weeks, but make sure there's a large song list to choose from.
* Simon and Paula doing the other show.
* Good mix in the Final Results show with good pairings of artists and contestants who did not make the Final 2. I rather enjoyed it.

Did not like:

* Judging. It was almost non-existent, and where there was judging, inconsistent and often biased. The only consistency seemed to be the same words used week after week. I'd suggest giving them some voting or decision-making power for who goes on, but at this point I wouldn't trust their judgement.
* Blatant pimping, along with favoring some contestants with souped-up stage effects and/or elaborate arrangements.
* VOTING. A horrible system that does not reflect who viewers on average like the most. Rather, it's rigged to reward people who have nothing better to do than vote again and again and again and again... Allow only one vote per IP address or phone number. People can still sneak in some extra votes by voting in different ways, but we won't see 1,000 votes cast by a single deliriously motivated teeny-bopper -- or Mom. How many people actually cast those 120+ million votes?

This is the first season of AI in a while that I watched from beginning to end. Though I missed an occasional week here and there, and I skipped the finale as a protest against the finalists, overall I enjoyed this season a lot.

Still, the judges need to do some judging, not be a cheering section. While I like Steven Tyler, the guy is useless as a judge and he needs to be replaced with someone coherent. I'd also dump the mandatory 6/6 split of men and women in the final 12 and go with the 12 best singers-- it should be about talent, not gender. And I'm not a fan of the extensive filler in most episodes-- I refuse to watch AI live where I can't fast-forward through parts which don't interest me.

Here are my three pieces of advice for American Idol:

1. Judges, actually criticize the performances! Point out what the singers could improve on. Maybe Steven's incapable of doing so but Jennifer and Randy, you could do so.

2. Judges, don't play favorites! I hated it when you told Thia to not do so many ballads but didn't tell Pia not to do the same thing! Be fair!

3. I'd actually like a voting system like So You Think You Can Dance: allow the voting to decide the Bottom 3 in the early rounds but then have the singers "sing for their life" and then have the judges decide who would go home. Of course, that would've probably sent Haley home before she could prove she was a good singer but it would have rescued Pia.

Good thread to have, thanks for starting it GB!

Some quick thoughts:

--I want better sound. The sound guy/ people screwed up too often for such a veteran show.

--stop with the crazy camera work. James' song with JP last night had bad camera work half the time. Maybe the guy didn't like metal, but some on! Be professional.

I got what I wanted last year--a top 12/13 with talent and not fodder. We had a much improved top 13 this year and they made the finale more enjoyable with their ability to perform.

Next year: stop with the soul crushing song demands. Several of the contestants mentioned having been saddled with songs. And I agree with the poster that said that we didn't have any "moments" like previous years.

"We had a much improved top 13 this year and they made the finale more enjoyable with their ability to perform."

You know, that's absolutely true, but at the same time, I didn't think any of them had a breakout moment the entire season and that's why I was bored for much of it. I kept waiting for someone to do something that made me say Wow. And there was one performance... but now I can't remember what it was. Every week, they were all consistently good, but no one was GREAT. There were no trainwreck singers in the Top 13, but no one wowed me.

Don't really know how to fix that, mind you, but your post allowed me to put into words what's been bugging me about this season. Thanks!

Without getting into show changes (because I would blow the thing up and start over. The explosions would not be small. Chairs would fly), I want to echo something that's come up a couple of times in the thread: we never got a breakout moment. I spent the entire season waiting for someone to pull the classic 'Here I am, America: now what are you going to do with me?' and nothing materialized. I felt we got close twice -- Haley at F3 and Scotty's rockabilly -- but it was climbing the hill, never cresting. The last time I thought an artist had really announced themselves was with Siobhan and Paint It Black. (And look what happened to her.) This season -- nothing. And I'm surprised to see other people also feeling that way -- but also worried. People can argue about this year's casting quality all they like (and I personally feel it was way down), but what does it say about the show's current standards when they can't give us one second of magic in over a hundred performances?

we never got a breakout moment.

True, but that depends on who's singing, not the show they're signing on, right?

Are you suggesting that maybe they screened out some talent as early as the selections for auditions or even Hollywood that could have provided these moments?

Let's make it a combo platter: poor screening, bad song lists, horrible judging, indifferent mentoring, and just to make sure the list is complete, blazing pianos.

It seemed like they did a lot to try to manufacture a moment, speaking of blazing pianos. I wonder if all the added lets try to make a wow diluted the ability of anyone to have a truly wow moment.

Most of the wows I think of from the past had something different about the performance (besides the vocals) but there was a simplicity to it and it stood out, rather than be just one more what will they set on fire this week.

In trying to do more X-factor look at the amazing staging (from what I've seen of British X-factor clips) and give more people more stuff every week I think it took away from that one simple amazing vocal. Didn't help that when people did a simpler presentation they didn't kill it.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out when we start seeing the music being released. Will any of their voices be enough to make a hit when you don't have the visuals that were added to the show to carry the performance. Sure Cee Lo and Gaga do something visually memorable in their performances, but they also have good enough songs and vocals to sell a lot of records/downloads and get radio play.

Although it does also depend on getting songs with a good hook and all that. I'm not sure anyone could make a big hit out of some of the dreck that gets thrown the way of most Idol contestants.

I agree with Estee - there wasn't a single "WOW" moment. Shockingly, the most memorable moment for me was Jacob in Hollywood singing "God Bless The Child"...and after that I didn't like a thing he did. Also, Casey in Hollywood doing "Georgia...".

I think part of the problem - and I've said this for years - is that they force the contestants into these damn theme weeks. If they could simply week-by-week pick whatever they want, I think the show would be more enjoyable and you would ahve many more WOW moments. How much of a WOW can you get on Carole King week, or yet-another-Motown-Week?

geekboy

"$#it fire and save matches, &^ck a duck and see what hatches" - S. Tyler

nice looking back and lookin forward

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