After a seemingly endless hiatus of two entire years, during which this beleaguered country’s weekly exposure to abnormally cheerful handsomeness golem Ryan “Toothpaste” Seacrest plummeted by as much as 30%, American Idol is back! Yes, that’s right, a new reboot/remake/re-release of the original big daddy of televised singing competitions has returned, and a nation has risen as one to say “Uh, didn’t you just get cancelled like, a couple of weeks ago?” There are new hosts, new rules, new sets, and an entirely new batch of drearily earnest young crooners from the heartland being set up for devastating failure and humiliation. It’s all back, and when it’s over, America will have a new and smiling face to look at on entertainment magazine covers and say “Oh, right, I remember them kind of” before buying a tin of Altoids.
Given that I have used this space a painfully enormous number of times to recap the ephemeral behavior of the gaggle of aspirational teeny-boppers in previous seasons of Idol, you might think that I’m here to announce that I’m back on board. You might think that just because I’ve engaged in an orgy of pixel-wasting smart-assery about the trials and tribulations of the various white people who make the inexplicable annual decision to belt out a half-assed cover of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come”, that I’m excited to do it again. Well, you’re wrong. A lot has changed in the last few years, including the amount of time I have to waste on excessive and overproduced singing competitions; the degree of emotional involvement I have in the future career paths of adolescent singers doing covers of other adolescent singers; the ability and inclination I once possessed for tolerating Ryan Toothpaste; and, of course, the marked increase in my awareness of my own mortality.
So the weekly updates are gone. They’re a thing of the past, and though I’ll miss them as much as Conan missed his beloved wheel of pain, they will no longer appear on this site. Anyone who still wants daily Idol recaps can find them at any number of corporate-owned entertainment websites, where they are written by overenthusiastic interns who really believe their trenchant insights into the judging habits of Luke Bryan are the first step to a Pulitzer. For myself, my heart just isn’t in the game anymore. Only two episodes in and the sob stories already bore me, the original songs already make me miss the relatively sophisticated pop energy of the cast of Glee, and the blatant racism and classism of the show really seem like overkill considering that we all already live in America. So I’ll be taking a break from continual coverage to medicate the entire existence of this show out of my brain with the careful application of imported baked goods from more enlightened American states. The show is already three episodes in, and I have neither the energy nor the passion to go back and track down the contestants’ real names, or to start parimutuel betting on whether or not the bland, overly earnest, well-behaved young Caucasian with an acoustic guitar, who will eventually win the title based on the overwhelming love for him shown by millions of astute young Tiger Beat non-readers and rural grandmothers who think he’d be less rude than their ingrate nephews, has already been selected.
However, they did go to the trouble of making the fucking show , after all, so I reckon I owe them something for their efforts. Let’s take a look at a few critical aspects of the new Idol and see how they’re working out so far.
LIONEL RICHIE. The big shift on Idol so far this year is that there’s a whole new set of judges, starting with beloved pop star/clay bust model Lio-Nel Richie. Lio-Nel has the ‘jaded music pro’ slot which means that he gets to talk about how much he knows the business and say “man” a lot. Yes, he’s the new Randy Jackson, and like his predecessor, he likes to nod knowingly whenever a contestant sings a song by a dead person. Also, because he is really fucking old (though in remarkable shape for a dude of his age), he gets the job of chastising the other two hosts for making references to pop culture that happened after the 1990s and of having his face melt with the knowledge of his own inevitable demise every time some kid says he’s 14. For some reason, Lio-Nel is into giving out hugs, but mostly he’s here to sigh wearily and let his shoulders drop every time he runs into someone who hasn’t heard “Dancing on the Ceiling”.
KATY PERRY. Katy is here to be ‘the girl’ and to give a little sexy-sexy up to all the middle-age dads who are watching this show resentfully with their kids. They’ve even given her a short blonde pixie cut so she can compete with Miley Cyrus. (Which, again, looks great.) Her role beyond that is pretty clear; she’s not quite grand enough to play the Jennifer Lopez/Mariah Carey part, nor is she abusively alcoholic enough to step into Paula Abdul’s shoes. She doesn’t loathe anyone else enough to go for a Nicki Minaj schtick, although that seems to be what the producers intend, but one place they’re really going for it is how profoundly thirsty she seems. Nicki used to get a little flirty and Paula actually fucked at least one contestant, but Katy is really going for it; I can’t speak for the quality of Russell Brand’s dick, but she appears to miss it so much she’s one clonazepam away from humping some excitable teenage hunk’s leg.
LUKE BRYAN. Who is this country-gurgling nobody? Why is he here? The country guys are always a waste of space on this show, there to remind us only that there are vast swaths of the country where they still throw fits over the easy availability of ‘race music’. Bryan leans into this hard, but even on a show that constantly beats us over the head with how fucked we are because of white southern voting blocs, he’s unusually worthless in every other regard. Katy clearly can’t stand him, but their hatred is neither mutual nor intense enough to be really entertaining. He has no rapport with Lionel, the crew, or any of the contestants. And he tries to be silly, but because he lacks any actual sense of humor, he just comes across as a repository of especially uninspired dad jokes.
Sorry this won’t be a regular feature anymore, but stay tuned — once all the final contestants are selected, I’m sure I’ll need a reliable location for the stupid nicknames I come up with for them.