Good review of Season 7...so far.

IMO This is a pretty good blog. Hope you enjoy

And so the understated audition tour glides to an understated final stop in Miami. In interviews, Executive producer Nigel Lythgoe dangled the very specific number three as the quantity of unmistakable earth-shattering talents we would meet in the pre-season.

Idol_3 Though admittedly, this critic is more of a theater gourmand than a licensed arbiter of musical abilities, I nonetheless am not quite sure of which three he was talking about. I feel that along this audition trail we have met a good number, as many as 20 or so, of very credible talents with great growth potential (not to mention tear-jerking back stories). But I can’t say I’ve had the “Oh My God” moment that I remember when first gazing upon Katharine McPhee or Melinda Doolittle.

Then again, both of them lost in respective seasons, and I have little to no memory of the first visions of Carrie Underwood, Jordin Sparks or Fantasia Barrino. I remember Taylor Hicks’ first audition all too clearly, but for different reasons. Kelly Clarkson’s audition wasn’t aired during the Season 1 tour, proving that the fates can be capricious to the producers’ attempts to construct an orderly narrative out of this vast, sweeping process.

In truth, as one more drawn towards the spectacle of the "Idol" experience, the audition tour is not my favorite part of the journey; ultimately, I appreciate the drama of those moments of truth, but I find too few moments of real suspense during the auditions. It is too easy for the judges to hand a golden ticket to those with any talent and the fates of those without are all too clear. The producers insist that without the magic of finding the raw talent in the midst of the masses, the rest of the journey would be incomprehensible, and I believe that. The discoveries of a McPhee or a Doolittle are incomparable moments. But it would be nice if we could feel a bit more stakes during the six-stop tour.

Perhaps the problem is that half the auditionees, the weirdos, are being brought forward just to be discarded. Perhaps "Idol" needs to consider that it is not doing enough to harvest every bit of potential out of this end of the contestant pool. Perhaps a more dramatic, and fair, way to move forward would be that rather than using the auditions to merely sort the wheat from the chaff, they could send every auditionee to compete in one of two parallel competitions. On the top end, the traditionally blessed contestants would continue on to "Idol" as we know it, but on the lower end, the rejects could go head-to-head in their own season-long sing-off, competing for the William Hung throne. I propose that this solution would not just be more equitable and more dramatic, but more efficient -- wringing every ounce of entertainment potential out of "Idol’s" masses. No singer left behind in ’09!

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