Monday, February 19, 2007

American Idol: The great unknowns?

This morning's column previews the "American Idol" semi-finals:
Okay, freak show's over. Time to get onto the actual competition portion of "American Idol." But before we do, I have an important question to ask:

Who are these people?

What a strange and very anonymous group these 24 semifinalists make. A half dozen or so never even appeared on camera before last Wednesday's episode, and I feel like I only have a handle on either the personalities or talents of another half dozen.

To read the rest, click here. (NOTE: Continuing my recent shamefully error-prone ways, the story refers to the semis beginning tonight, when of course they don't begin until tomorrow.) I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to do performer-by-performer reviews of the semis or wait until the finals the way I did last season. Depends on how inspired I am by all these randoms, I suppose.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Monday, February 19, 2007

American Idol

(Tonight at 8 on Channel 5) The 12 male semifinalists compete tonight, with the 12 women going tomorrow and the first voting results announced on Thursday."


This implies that AI comes on tonight? Is that right?

Alan Sepinwall said...

No. I'm having me an error-prone week. The story was originally going to run tomorrow, and I neglected to make the change to the info box.

Next I'll be revisiting the "figgy pudding" fiasco from my "Wire" reviews...

dark tyler said...

In the case of Sundance Head, I think that the producers found his audition to be too good (and it was. Over at EW.com he was on the top of the Power List for two or three weeks) and felt the need to paint him in more ambiguous colors.

But again, I believe that no matter what the audience feels right now, if he is a good enough singer to pull a "Hemmorage" or a "Whipping Post" during the semifinals, the early episodes will become irrelevant. Then he does one again at some point during the finals and he's golden.(Chris didn't, and got kicked out; Bo did it during disco week, and it carried him through to the Final.) I truly -naÏŠvely- believe that talent eventually outshines the early "character development". (cue people reminding me of what befell Tamyra.)

Anonymous said...

Sundance Head's remark about the bodyguard was as cringeworthy as anything Michael Scott has ever said.

Alan Sepinwall said...

Dark Tyler, the producers have never been afraid in the past to establish some obvious frontrunners during Hollywood week (Kimberley Locke, Carrie), so I don't see why they would want to sabotage Sundance. I think it's Occam's Razor: he sucked in Hollywood, and the judges sent him through based on his awesome audition.

dark tyler said...

Fair enough. After all, my point was that no matter what we saw during this first month, if a guy is good, then people vote for him. If not, there isn't anybody else to blame.

And yes, oh my god, what he said to the other guy after the judges put him through, was the worst thing I've heard on TV for some time. Bad, bad, bad form.