AI:5 - Hollywood Days 3&4

February 15, 2006 · Filed Under popmedia

Well, that was a nice, reasonably tight hour of AI.

Excepting Brokenote Mountain. We shall never speak of that again. It didn’t happen. It. Never. Happened.

The group auditions are always interesting, if only because the angst-o-meter gets maxed out when prima donnas have to not only cooperate in order to advance, but to also do it in a pretty much unreasonably compressed time frame.

The only real problem with condensing the group auditions and the next round of cuts into a single hour, particularly with the “room reveals” being jammed into the last 5-10 minutes) was that it made it keeping track of who all made it & didn’t make it a little tough. I don’t think there were any major surprises in the room that got sent home, but since I haven’t been able to find a list of the 44 who made it (or of the ~15 who didn’t) I can’t say for sure.

I was able to catch, however, that the “biggies” on my list thus far — Paris Bennett, Kellie Pickler, Katherine McPhee, Lisa Tucker, Ace Young, Taylor Hicks, & Mandisa — did indeed make it through. I’m not sure about Brooke Barretsmith, Ayla Brown, or Rebecca O’Donahue.

The Brittenum twins. Ay-yi-yi! What drama queens! Frankly, I don’t think they should’ve let them back in. Or, at the very least, Derrell should’ve been “allowed” to stay quit while Terrell was let back in. In any event, it doesn’t really matter, since both have already been “uninvited” from continuing in the competition.

The overall drama of this episode didn’t really surprise me, as it’s about par for the course at this stage of the competition. And I don’t have a problem with the crucible that’s constructed primarily from the extreme time crunch. It actually seems like a pretty good way to thin the herd of those who can’t hack the extreme pressures that will only increase as the competition goes on. I mean, if you can’t learn the words to a song, and a few dance steps, overnight, then you’re probably not the next AI. It doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have talent, just that you might not be smart or mature enough (yet) to cope.

Finally, it didn’t really surprise me that 3 of the 4 rooms got through. Why? Because, if things are going to work like they did last season — and why wouldn’t they, with the success & praise that last season’s format tweaks got? — then tonight’s show needed to be set up properly. And going from 44 to 24 is far more interesting & worthy of a full hour-long show than is going from 30 to 24.

The best part is that next week we start the public-voting, semifinals phase of the competition, with the girls singing on Tuesday, the boys on Wednesday, with 2 of each getting eliminated on Thursday. Then, after a mere four weeks, we’ll have our Top 12 finalists!

Yay!