American Idol premiered last night, and honestly, it came out whimpering rather than barking.
Simon was in his usual form, wearing shirts that left little to the imagination and showed just how cold it was in every room he walked in.
Randy sat by Simon on day one, which made camera-right feel like a sausage festival and which left Kara completely out in never land on camera left. Was there even a saucy little Briton between them? It might as well have been a cardboard cutout, because that’s about what she contributed all day.
Thankfully producers put the kbosh on the seating arrangement for Day 2, placing Randy in the camera-left side, anchoring of the table and providing balance to the Idol universe. Please get it right, Randy!
It was hard without Paula. Really hard. Harder than I expected it to be. I miss her jiving to the really bad singers, and Day 1 fell completely flat without her to tell them how wonderful they were, to call them sweetie, and to be nice and sweet no matter how awful. It just turned into four professional, ornery judges whisking loser after loser out the door. It was more like real auditions are; no commentary, no explanations, no getting-to-know you, just sing and out the door you go.
Even Seacrest is phoning it in. He didn’t even bother interacting with any contestants except for the ones directly outside the door, leading me to believe he only flew in for the day rather than for the whole 3 day audition process.
Yes, the franchise is on the downhill.
Simon can see, just as everyone, the free fall and saved his announcement that Season 9 would be his last for right before the premiere to try and raise ratings for his last hurrah. If Fox knows what’s good for it, it will pack up the show and close down when Simon leaves. We might be able to limp along for one season without Paula, but you will have to put Idol on an artificial respirator to make it live on without Simon.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to be here for every moment of Season 9. I’m going to be loving and blogging every minute of my last hurrah, but if Simon really is packing his bags this May, I’m packing out with him.
We donkeys have to stick together.