AI:5 - The Chicago Auditions

January 18, 2006 · Filed Under popmedia

Well… that was, shall we say, underwhelming, wasn’t it?

Two hours was taken up in telling us that 34 people made it through from Chicago to Hollywood.

And I can’t say that any of the 34 that we were allowed to see/hear impressed me all that much. I liked the first set of twins (the heavyset guys, not the 16 year-olds who serenaded Paula — btw, did that strike anyone else as odd? I mean, come on, they’d just been born when Paula was at her most popular — do you think they knew/know of her for anything other than AI? Nope, me neither…), and there was maybe one girl shown who could be good enough to matter later in the competition.

Overall, though, there was no one who jumped out at me like Carrie did last season. And, yes, I am asserting that I thought Carrie could/would go far in the competition right from when I saw her during the audition shows last season — she struck me as being that good looking and that good of a singer. Bo, well we didn’t even get to see him until the end of the Hollywood auditions, as the “rocker” focus to that point was on Constantine “Poseuroulis.”
So, while it’s prudent not to invest too much capital in trying to ID the real talent during the auditions (because the producers like to play games with us), it’s still interesting to tuck a few observations away for later use in the always 20-20 hindsight analysis…

I’ll leave you with this — I was most appalled by the 16 y/o Paris Hilton look-alike/wannabe, and not (just) because of who/what she was trying to look & act like. No, I was more appalled by her mother. Quite honestly, the mother looked worse than the daughter — she looked like she was trying to out “hip”/”cool”/”hottie” the daughter, and she failed miserably. All she looked like was a used-up whore, but one who thought she still had “it.” And one who was more than willing to craft her daughter into a “new & improved” version of what she had been and/or wanted to be. Sad, sad, sad…

Man, watching that show last night made me crankier than I realized… (though it certainly didn’t help my mood when the TV started acting up right when we went to start watching the Tivo’ed recording of AI:5. Even worse, the set is 2 days out of the extended warranty, and is most likely going to end up costing a few hundred $$$ in repairs, since it’ll cost $100 just to get someone out to take a look at it — it’s too big for anything but in-home service… :cry:)