Words for My Enjoyment

American Midol

February 25th, 2005

American Idol hit a new painful low (re: Midol, which can quickly help you get rid of those painful cramps and sharp pains) this week with their “we’re-trying-to-be-even-more-dramatic and-cut-people-at-the-end-of-every episode-with-these-stupid-pausing you-are-now-safe” moments of Hell.

If you don’t watch the show, you’re lucky. But each week after the male and female performers strut their stuff (Mon and Tue nights), they’re sat down on Wednesday to figure out which two men and women are going home. But, really, it’s more like a painful version of musical chairs to confuse the contestants and the viewers at home in an attempt to create drama. But which, really, creates more negative feelings towards the way the show works. For example:

Step 1: Ryan Seacrest addresses the two rows of women.
Step 2: Ryan says, “Everyone in the top row, you’re safe!”
Step 3: Ryan addresses the bottom row of women.
Step 4: Ryan says, “Girl #1, you are….(long pause)…safe!”
Step 5: Ryan addresses Girl #2 and #3.
Step 6: Ryan says, “Girl #2 and #3, boy it’s close. You sang this and you sang that and oh my god it’s a really tough night out here tonight and well, you (Girl #2), you should be happy because, well, Girl #3 is safe! Muahaha! That’s right, I just psyched you out and made you think you should have been happy because Girl #3 was gone, but really I was using the English language to direct you to an emotional place for the cameras, then rip your dreams and your future out from under you!!”

Of course, there are like twenty-seven other steps that involve Ryan having the contestants get up, change seats, sit back down, stand up next to others, talk about voting, and I half expected two to enter a huge cage match and battle for the final spot and some humility.

That didn’t happen.

But what’s even worse than the whole three-ring circus they’ve got going on is the fact that they make the losers sing the song that caused them to lose after being told they’re OUT and after the judges tell them what their mistakes were. Right, and then, why not sing a song!!

It’s like telling someone who just had their leg cut off in a tragic heavy machinery accident to dance for the company who paid them to work on said piece of heavy machinery. Really, it’s sickening.

Blech.

Posted under Music, Television. |