After last week’s temporary bout with insanity, this week the collective Idol voting base returned a sane verdict. As I predicted, Lacey Brown was sent packing. She wasn’t the weakest this week, but she wasn’t particularly good either and her collective body of work so far has been… weak, to say the least. It was a perfectly justifiable boot.
However, it seems to be that in Idol-land someone always has to be holding the proverbial Idiot Ball. 19E and Fox have picked it up, and they’ve picked it up with a vengeance.
First things first: the Judge’s Save, also known as the Lambert-Gokey Insurance Policy. TPTB rolled back almost all of the rule changes from last year, why didn’t they include the unlamented save? The answer, of course, is for the drama. However, I’ve always maintained that the Idol format by itself is plenty dramatic enough. You don’t need to add any forced drama.
The real idiocy, though… is in the theme. Teen Idol Week? Really? Out of all the possible genres of music in the world, you had to choose that? It seems to be that Idol’s long-running love affair with the tween fanbase is back in full force. This is a fanbase that can’t get enough out of Disney singers like Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and the Jonas Brothers; and clearly Katie Stevens – this season’s Chosen One early one – was picked with that market in mind.
Unfortunately, however, Katie got exposed early as a subpar singer, throwing those plans into chaos. The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this theme was originally supposed to push Katie; instead it has turned into a golden opportunity for song rearrangement. This was the kind of challenge that the likes of David Cook or Kris Allen frequently thrived on. If someone not named Siobhan Magnus or Crystal Bowersox wants to prove themselves, this is going to be a good week to do it.
This being Idol, however, what we are likely to end up with, however, is a cheesefest to end all cheesefests. Oh boy. Is there anyone out there who likes this theme and isn’t a tween?
