AI:7 - Philadelphia
Once more unto the breech…
The Bataan Death March that is American Idol begins its 7th interation, and once again I’m going to regale you with my insights, opinions, and all-around niftiness.
Let’s get started, shall we?
I was planning on quasi live-blogging the first episode, but it got to be a bit more involved, and frankly disjointed, than I wanted. So, I decided to go with a looser, less comprehensive approach.
Overall Impressions: This was a typical AI audition show, meaning that it had good, bad, and indifferent auditions, with a few folks chosen for the “closer look” story treatment. One thing that I’ve learned over the previous 6 editions is that rarely do they give away too much “up front” information about folks who will make it into the finals. These initial audition shows tend towards the emotionally engaging and/or the extreme train-wreck stories.
The Good: In this grouping I’m going to put the folks that I think have a shot of making it into the Top 12. While other folks showed some decent skills, these three showed a little more. This is not a guarantee, ’cause the producers have been known to hold out on us by not showing us all of the true talents (e.g., Bo Bice) before Hollywood. Angela Martin - If she “de-wedding-izes” her stylistic tics, she’s definitely got enough talent to make it through to the finals, and enough likability to build a fanbase. Kristy Lee Cook - We have this season’s leader for the “Carrie Underwood” role. Kristy is hot, blond, hot, athletic, hot, and has a good voice. And she’s hot. If she doesn’t crack under the pressure, she could be a force to be reckoned with. Finally, I’ll put Chris Watson into this group. He’s handsomely pretty, or if you prefer prettily handsome, in a way that will get him votes. And he can sing to boot. His only downfall might end up being that he could come off as being too far on the arrogant side of confident — if he keeps that in check, then I think he’ll be ok.
The Bad: These are the train wrecks that seem to make AI audition shows so popular amongst the morbidly curious. In the “psycho” subgroup, the winner was Alexis Cohen — I swear that her odd speaking/delivery style made me think a few times that she had to be doing some sort of performance art - IOW, I think she might have already been partaking of “the actressing” mentioned during one of her rantalogs (i.e., ranting monologues).
James Lewis wins the “odd” subgroup award, with his mush-mouth bass (no, not the fish, though that would’ve sounded better) performance. He made a strong showing in the “delusional” subgroup as well, with his belief that his having sung Christian songs was his downfall, which he’ll change for his future auditions. Nonetheless, it’s safe to say that the historical tour guide gave an historically bad audition.
Winning the “delusional” subgroup, then, was Christina Tolisano, aka Princess Leia. Hers was a more or less benign delusion, but her girl-geek mannerisms & overall comportment (not to mention her doting Grandma & Grandpa) led her to victory in this always highly contested subgroup.
Honorable Mentions go to Milo Turk for his overage rendition of No Sex Allowed, for Ben Haar’s willingness to dress up in a harem-girl outfit and get his body waxed to score points with Paula, and for Paul Marturano’s giddily rhyming ode to (comically) stalking Paula Abdul.
A special Honorable Mention goes to Temptress Brown. The 16 y/o middle linebacker is fast, strong, & her momma’s sick. It’s a sweetly sad story. And her singing, unfortunately, didn’t make it any happier. She gave us our first object lesson for not singing a song done by a former Idol standout. The judges let her down very nicely, and Temptress got ultra sad, with tears streaming down her innocent face. It’s one of the more heart-wrenching mini-stories that I can ever remember on AI. The judges were extremely nice in walking her out to her parents. A nice interlude.
The Indifferent: This is the group for those folks who I thought were pleasantly good, and might even be good enough to make it through to the semifinals, but probably not quite good enough to get to the Top 12. They’re also in this group because nothing about them jumped out at me enough to make me want to take any time to write specifics about them. Thus, I’ll just list their names: Joey Caliano (former fat guy), Melanie Nyema (former Taylor Hicks backup singer), Junot Joyner, Beth Stalker (*rawr*!), & Brooke White (former & current über-innocent).
In all, 29 golden tickets were given out in Philly…
Up next: Dallas.
-ghp
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