Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The talk about the American Idol winner thread

I was asked not to write a liveblog style story on the finale this year and instead do a straight news story on who won, but feel free to comment on the unsurprising result or anything else that happened on the finale -- like the way the show threw Antonella and, to a lesser extent, Sanjaya under the bus by giving them the freakshow treatment.

10 comments:

Nicole said...

I started watching at 9:40 and caught Bette Midler and the former Idols singing Beatles tunes from the Sgt Pepper album... and then the show ran over to give us the most unsurprising result ever. From a quick perusal of the TWOP forum, I don't think I missed much, and there was no Prince moment like last year. My question is: with such an obvious winner, why did so many vote? Was there even more spamming?

Anyway, it was nice to see all the Idols all back on the show, but that's about it. Bette Midler singing Wind Between My Wings is just kinda sad. She appeals to the grandparents of the generation voting for this show, so my guess was that this was the bathroom break for those watching live or a chance to check out Lost.

I would hope that the ratings take a hit, but honestly, I have lost all faith in the American viewing audience, so I won't be surprised if this breaks records.
Blech.

J said...

I want this epsiode of Lost to go on forever.

Anonymous said...

I was alternating between AI and Lost. How did the give Antonella the freakshow treatment? Was it just the Best Buddies Golden Idol deal or was there more?

Anonymous said...

Ok, this was the worst Idol ever. A 2-hour finale of nothing. I fastforwarded through most of it. Got to the last 2 minutes taped on my TiVO and said to the spouse, "Did they say who won? I don't think they did." And then my TiVO taping cut out when everyone was standing altogether on the stage.

Then, I read this morning that the finale ran 10 minutes over? Is that when they did the big balloon drop like every seasons and the winner sang? Or was it well before this, and I just missed it because it was jumbled all in with everything else?

Dumbest finale ever. Worst season ever. I really didn't care who won last night. It just didn't matter to me...

Anonymous said...

I thought this finale paled compared to past years. However, I thought two performances stood out: Blake with Doug E Fresh (despite mangled handslap the end). Blake is an AMAZING beatboxer and his thing with DEF last night was incredulous.

The other was Jordin singing with Ruben. Their voices were so perfect with each other that I hope beyond hope that they release that song as an actual single.

Other than that, no surprises, really. Very boring, and the only reason I didn't fast forward through it is that I actually watched it live rather than Tivo'd like I normally do.

Anonymous said...

Incredulous?

Sorry - I meant incredible.

Undercover Black Man said...

I spent most of my time watching the "SNL in the '90s" special. I did catch Bette Midler's song... wow, shockingly weak.

And I agree with Jaynee: Jordin and Ruben sounded real good together.

Alan Sepinwall said...

Now, I was skipping over a lot of the episode because I was doing major rewrites on my story as I got new marching orders from TPTB at the paper, but it seemed to me that this finale was even lower on filler than last year, when we had not only Golden Idol, but Puck 'N Pickler, a performance by the Brokeback Cowboys and several other non-musical time-wasters. This one seemed like basically a bunch of songs and medleys, a few Golden Idol interruptions and Clive's usual painful speech.

Sure, Bette Midler wasn't nearly as good as Prince, but compared to the hideousness of the seasons 1-4 finales, this one seemed perfectly tolerable.

How did the give Antonella the freakshow treatment? Was it just the Best Buddies Golden Idol deal or was there more?

Just that. In general, the nominees for those awards are supposed to be freaks from the audition episodes, not people who made it to Hollywood or, more importantly, who the judges deemed good enough to make it to the top 24. And Sanjaya's performance was definitely treated as a freakshow.

Anonymous said...

I thought there were a few more highlights, particularly Melinda with Bebe and Cece Winans. The Instant Karma tie-in was interesting, if only for the Green Day performance.

And about the Bette Midler thing. She certainly is not in good voice, but it seemed to me as though she was at least singing in key until the whole back end of the song went horribly wrong. I wondered if maybe her monitor went out.

dark tyler said...

Since they couldn't get a Prince this year (and when the previous Idols were singing Beatles songs I certainly thought that they went ahead and did it and they got Paul McCartney but... LOL, in retrospect!) they should have just stuck to the Idols reunion which I rather liked. It was a nice touch having Kelly call Taylor to the stage, Taylor calling Carrie , etc. I don't know that they'll ever have another chance to do that, but they had to try and outdo themselves when they knew they couldn't.

Plus, why couldn't a few more of the finalists get a final solo song (or at least a duet with a well-known artist)?

Disappointing and boring at spots. (But damn, those girls Carrie and Kelly sure have incredible voices.) Happy to see Jordin win it all.

And was that Jerry Springer I saw crying?