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AMERICAN IDOL (2011) “Final Cuts Part One” Review

AMERICAN IDOL (2011)

AMERICAN IDOL (2011) “Final Cuts Part One” Season 10 Episode 9 – I titled this post “Final Cuts Part One” for lack of anything better to call it. I can’t call it “Final Cuts Part Two-Thirds,” since that’s obviously the title of tomorrow’s show. I can’t come out and call it “FOX Television giggles like naughty schoolchildren as they rake in the corporate sponsorship dough by painfully and needlessly drawing out the American Idol Top 24 selection process.” Nor can I call it “I’ll Never Watch This Freaking Show Ever Again.” Because it’s sort of my job to watch it.

Sure, go ahead, say it: “At least you get paid, right?” My retort is “At least you can change the channel.”

(Might I suggest to our gentle readers some quality fare, something perhaps like the hilarious Modern Family, which also airs on Wednesday evenings at 8:00 PM on ABC.)

This episode was literally the worst, most painful American Idol episode I’ve ever watched. I can only pray that God, or Allah, or YHWH, Cthulhu, Zeus, Thor, Clovis, Kali, or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster will intercede and strike from the heavens above, somehow affecting the sickeningly high ratings this eye-gouging travesty of a production always garners and forcing at least some sort of change that’s beneficial to We The Viewers. My greatest hope would be for Simon Cowell’s X-Factor to completely blow Idol out of the water, but that would be a Pyrrhic victory at best, as X-Factor is also going to be on FOX.

I have few words to describe today’s two-hour root canal that aren’t on George Carlin’s (R.I.P.) Seven Dirty Words list. You know it’s bad when even Crazy Ashley seems relieved to be off the show. She got her free ticket to Vegas, married her confused-looking boyfriend in the same “chapel” Britney Spears married K-Fed in (hey, everyone needs a dream), and bolted happily off into the sunset, seemingly more lucid than we’ve ever seen her.

And sure, I already bitched about FOX extending the show an extra week last week. But this was the episode in which they really nuked the fridge. For starters, why the two opening sequences at the beginning of each hour? It was like they changed their minds about airing both hours back-to-back at the very last minute and forgot to remove the opening credit sequence when hour #2 began. And what was with the mini-vacation to Vegas anyway? I mean besides the money Cirque du Soleil paid for FOX to advertise its Beatles tribute show. We needed that just to whittle off a small handful of hopefuls? And finally, most glaringly, who the hell made the executive decision to end a two-hour episode after only putting a whopping FIVE contestants into the Top 24?

This was the most painful episode ever, but tomorrow’s could very well be worse. An entire hour of contestants squirming in that chair while the judges attempt to drag out the suspense of Are They/Aren’t They? I’m sick to my stomach already.

Tards, man. And we support it with our viewership, with our ratings. It’s like enabling an alcoholic by shaking your stern finger at his habit and then drawing him a tall, cool pint.

(I could use a tall, cool pint right about now.)

Props to the producers for giving us a good five minutes of J-Lo breaking down into huge, sobbing, burbling tears after being forced at gunpoint to cut some of these hopefuls. Randy and Steven looked so concerned, so compassionate, caring for the poor woman in her moment of need.

Wait, she wasn’t being kicked off the show? It was someone else that had to go back to their hometown, forced to “try, try again,” not her? She was just the bearer of bad news?

Come on. She acted like she’d just accidentally ordered their entire family’s execution. Think these Idol contestants have problems? At least they don’t live in freaking Benghazi, Libya.

Here’s my short list of some of the quality names that went home today: Chris Medina (too good?), Caleb Howley (too rocker-y?), Sophia Shorai (too little screen time?), Carson Higgins (too spazzy?), Molly DeWolf Swensen (too presidential?), Melinda Ademi (too refugee-ish?) … and possibly the most glaring, Lakeisha Lewis, who was quite possibly the victim of of old TV adage, “You’re not exactly what we’re looking for.” Emphasis on looking.

Horrible episode, all around. It’s apropos that J-Lo ended the episode in tears. What were the words she sobbed? Oh, right:

“I don’t want to draw this out.”

Amen, sister.

Follow me on Twitter! You’ll want to be there when I Live-Tweet as I jump off a cliff. That’s @Axechucker, true believers!

In the meantime, here are some photos of this latest episode of American Idol:

Click Any Photo Below To Enlarge
By | February 24, 2011 | 5 Comments
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  • http://twitter.com/xxhottwire Melissa Boone

    So, you really enjoyed the show. Thank you for the review-recap of the show, I plan on missing the whole season and am grateful for the insightful commentary, so I won’t miss any important new stars on the horizon. ;) Keep up the Great work.

    • http://www.daemonstv.com Axe

      Thanks, Boone. I’ll keep you informed with my edge-of-your-seat commentaries and occasionally unfunny quips.

      I can’t even decide if there’s anyone odd enough to actually root for this season. Especially if Casey Abrams has to drop out due to medical reasons. I see no Bowersox in this year’s crop.

  • Jilly1

    You know Axe, you are spot on with what an awful travesty that ep.was. I hated it. I was digging the auditions at the start of this year, and actually enjoying the funky vibe and kindness that Steven Tyler brought to the show. Half the auditions seemed to be starting a new show; “Search for Steven’s bastard children he may have created in the 80′s and 90′s as Aerosmith toured the same cities! You, with the pouty lips and dark hair – DNA swab with that audition, please?” And there seemed to be less of the auditions from the mentally challenged whom the producers string along, telling them “yea, you are GREAT” (snicker snicker), only to get them in front of the judges and humiliate them. That part makes me feel dirty, like I am participating in bullying. Like I am making fun of the retarded kids. Something I would scream at my own teenagers and olders if I caught them doing it.I fast forward those parts. You can tell that many of them are actually autistic or with Aspberger’s. I wish they would drop that part of the auditions all together. If they gave it a true name “Watch now, while we humiliate some slow and possibly retarded people and make them cry on live tv”, it would never get on the air! Ugh. But this year there was less, and I was hopeful. What keeps me watching is the possibility that there could be a good night. I’ve watched since Season 5 or 6, I think, and and there HAVE been magical moments, and there have been times when someone who was sort of mediocre steps on stage with an acoustic instrument or something and just blows me away, connects with the song, the audience and me in a way that leaves me in tears. The payoff for me, when someone who is so-so suddenly blossoms on the stage one night is phenomenal.
    The realist in me knows that some of these kids are REALLY good, and for whatever reason, they would have a hard time making it through the conventional path in the music industry. So I am willing to take a few hours a week and see some kids try to find a dream that can come true. I love to sing, I’ve done my part of drunk karaoke here and there and now the family is enjoying all our sing at home games – Lips, Wii Sing Disney, Grease, Party Songs, etc. In a perfect life where you can pick your talent I would have been born with Judy Garland’s tremulous, beautiful voice and would have been the queen of the stage. Instead, I am watching Idol. Real Life is so harsh, so painful these days. The Middle East is erupting into a boiling nightmare of uncertainty. People all around me are being laid off, and I could be next. Glenn Beck Terrifies me with his chalkboards My ex-hubby has lost his house to foreclosure, and even though we are ex’s, we are still friends, and I feel so sad that the house he spent so much time and effort on, and the place that my older children grew up in when they were spending time with their father is now sitting vacant, empty, lifeless, and really not through my husband’s fault, but due to the fact that his business was in mechanics, fixing large vehicles and construction equipment, and over the past 3 years his business has dropped by 90%. If no one is building new houses and buildings, all the machines they use don’t break down, and the people who made their livings servicing them and fixing them are SOL. Everyone has a story, don’t they? Two years ago, my 5 yr old daughter almost died of Lyme Disease. She got Lyme Meningitis and Encephalitis, and her personality changed, and has never gone back to what it was before (traumatic brain injury from the immense pressure in her brain) Now she likes to watch American Idol, and likes music, whereas before she didn’t like it in quite the same way. Her balance and timing is way off, but things like dnacing awkwardly in front f the TV and trying to sing seems to be helping her to re-train her brain from the things it forgot how to do. I’m holding out hope for the magic now. I don’t need to see J-lo brought to tears by the stress of doing her job. I want to get on with the final 24, and watch them start to blossom, and feel hope again, and feel that with hard work, miracles really can happen. I need the distraction from all the pain in the real world, and I hope they will provide it!

    • http://www.daemonstv.com Axe

      Quite a response, o’ Purple one!

      “Search for Steven’s bastard children he may have created in the 80′s and 90′s as Aerosmith toured the same cities! You, with the pouty lips and dark hair – DNA swab with that audition, please?” may have been the line of the day. You should win something.

      Yeah, life is tough. We’re all feeling it. We want some form of escapism, even if it’s watching some kid live his or her dream out.

      What sucks the most is watching these kids squirm while the judges attempt one of their patented fake-outs. It’s just wince-inducing television. These are kids with real talent, not the walking punchlines that Idol shows us at the beginning of each season. If they’ve made it this far, they’ve got the goods.

      I know you sort of sign up for whatever you get when you go on reality TV, but damn. To me, this is different.

      • purplejilly

        lol I can get a comment ‘noprize’ for that one. yeah I must have been feeling the pain of twitter restriction last night and wrote a chapter comment response… LOL..
        Yes, the whole “sit there and have us fake you out about whether or not you are in the top 24″ is ridiculous. I can see where they might want a minute or two more to say things like J-Lo did to that one girl, where she made comments like ‘you’re young, you need a little more time,more practice, more figuring out of yourself”,i.e. like dont just go home and go on a drunken binge and do sobbing karaoke in bars for the rest of your life, but it’s annoying to us the viewers, and to the contestants themselves, I am sure, to be played around with. Just tell them within 60 seconds if it’s a yes or no, and why, and be done with it! At this point I don’t need flashbacks to their auditions or hollywood week, which was just two weeks ago, I’m not so damn old I have alzheimers and dont remember that part..They could put that sort of stuff up as ‘web extras’ that people could go online and look at. I know they are struggling to find the right ‘format’ for the show, and I actually think with Simon gone and Steven Tyler in his place, it’s been a good change- but they definitely need to get better with the ‘reveals’ of who is in the top 24. Like you said, all of the kids there have talent, and deserve to be treated like a hardworking kid with talent, and not some punchline before the commercial..

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