The new judges.
Ok. During the auditions and Hollywood rounds, I was kinda digging them. My biggest worry was (and still is) Steven Tyler and that potty mouth of his. Although he really makes me laugh, this IS a prime-time family show and as such there's no place for that language and being live, there's no time to be beeping him out every single time. He's going to need to watch that. I am worried, a bit, that we ended up with a couple of sober Paulas and Randy's having to be the new Simon. I was very surprised that I actually agreed a bit more with him this year than in the past seasons. Can I say now that although he was a brusque SOB, I really missed Simon?
The Hollywood Twist.
Now that was awesome. I think the fact they made them combine Day 1 people AND Day 2 people into their groups put them all on even footing. Why? Because we saw that the Day 1 people were getting a head start on getting their groups together AND getting some rehearsal in early. This is a very unfair advantage to the Day 2 people. I would not be surprised if this had been happening all along and that's why some of the early favorites in the past seasons were dismissed while some of the lesser talent from Day 1 had a chance to perfect their numbers.
The new stage.
YAY!!! No pit= NO SWAYBOTS in front of the performer!!!! WHOOT!! I so hated the one camera angle that looked up at the performer while all those stinking hands were moving back and forth in front of them. How distracting!
Limited semi-finals.
Only one week of winnowing down the kids into a Top 10 Awesome. This is something they should have been doing all along. The only downside to this is that only 4/5 from each batch will be going through to next week and if an early favorite had a piss-poor night, well... there'll be no more chances unless the judges choose them for a wild-card position. Looking at the numbers for last night's performances, the wild-card is the only hope for some of them. Word is that the 14 who do not make it through this week will be coming back next week to perform. Up for grabs? Only 2 wild-card spots. The question is, will they stick to an even number of boys and girls as in past years OR will they throw another curve and choose 2 wildcards of the same gender? An even harder question is, will they pull like they did one year and add one more spot for a deserving youngster?
Online voting.
Usually I leave my AI voting to just one night, maybe two nights a year. I always throw a few votes on the Finale Night and every so often, I toss a few on the Top 3 Night. Why? Because it's hard handling the phone and watching the figures and talking to my friends about the show and trying to get the rough draft of my entry done. That and I really hate being on the phone. Oh and the busy signals, I really don't like those. AnNOYing! This year, I can vote on American Idol dot com via my Facebook page. The down side? Well in order to make sure that no one automates the voting (like they did with the phone calls... Dial Idol, anyone?), they've installed a captcha which requires a code before the vote is registered. It also limits the number of votes you can submit. However, there's no busy signals to get frustrated with. Another downside? Those of us that follow DI to keep tabs and place our guesses as to whom may go home on results night, well our analysis is gonna get a little twisted up. The percentage of error may be greater. A whole LOT greater. We'll see how this effects the numbers in the next week or so. If anyone finds a site that's tracking the numbers for the FB voting, gimme a holla.
The show has , yet again, promised that this is going to be the Best.Year.EVAR. The audition and Hollywood rounds all seemed to confirm this statement. I couldn't believe how many really really good talent came through. After checking out OSGA's (Off Shore Gaming Association) numbers I'm beginning to wonder if the statement is true or if we've all been conditioned to accept dreck as fabulous. The OSGA site compares the betting odds at 3 different sites. For this blog, I generally use the numbers from Pinnacle Sports, however they tend to block out the odds for American Idol on show days and won't show where the contestants stand until the next morning. Since today is a show day and I totally forgot to check on Monday evening before going to bed, I had to resort to OSGA.
The early favorites, going into last night's show were:
OSGA: Scotty
Bodog: Lauren A
BetUs: Scotty
Pinnacle: Julie
After last night, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if some of those change by Thursday.
Up next: The boys' performances.
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