Mikey Likes TV

American Idol has come to be one of the most necessary evils in my life. I loath it because it wastes countless hours of my time with the same manufactured content, and regardless of how much I swoon for one or two contestants each season, none of them ever go on to produce any music I’d actually go out of my way to listen to (save scanning the shower radio every morning for the station kind enough to be playing “Before He Cheats”). No, it does nothing but transfix me for almost half the year before leaving me scratching my head every May as the confetti falls on some genuinely talented but ultimately uninteresting sap singing the newest stinker in the growing pantheon of shockingly bad made-for-Idol singles. I vow never to put myself through it all again.

But summer passes, the leaves change, snow (or at least the threat of it) blankets the better part of our fair country and I find myself curious as to what different brand of crazy will be showcased during another round of auditions. It’s already too late. I’ve already latched on to a few pretty faces and once again sought comfort in Simon’s predictably snide remarks. It’s like trying to smoke socially after a few months on the wagon. I know it’s a bad idea, but it feels so good and familiar.

I’m hardly saying that I was suckered into watching last night’s premiere. I’ve known for over a month that I’d be walking into this trap willingly. As my ensuing coverage will likely prove, I’ll be nothing short of obsessed with American Idol for the duration of its seventh season. And I’m beginning to think it may always be that way. As long as the show more or less stays the same and the original players are on board, you will probably find me tuning in with eyes fixed in horror and wonder and my phone ready to go to bat for someone I’ll have discarded by the premiere of So You Think You Can Dance.

Something is rotten in the state of American Idol. And it’s not the results. As much as my devotion to Team Blake made me want to think otherwise, we all know going into last night’s finale that it was Jordin’s coronation. But given the song the two were being judged on, was this year’s final really any kind of contest?

American Idol finale songs suck. Though Sandals Resorts would have you think differently, even Kelly Clarkson’s iconic “A Moment Like This” really, really sucks. The magnitude of this suckage is never a surprise, and despite recent efforts to reinvigorate the showdown by opening a song-writing contest to the public, season six’s gem “This is my Now” proved no exception. What was an exception was that one of this year’s contestants didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of coming across as anything short of a complete dufus.

With only his argyle and a swatch of platinum to help him maintain some semblance of his identity, Blake Lewis moped across the stage, with his tail between his legs, like a newly castrated dog. That was not his now. It was his nightmare. Last night’s loss was largely a relief, if only for the fact that we know the poor guy will never have to sing that song again.

But for Jordin, “This is my Now” seemed to be a tailor-made fit. I wouldn’t be surprised if her sheet music actually instructed her when to start the crocodile tears and beauty pageant wave. She probably isn’t all that thrilled with the prospect of the song being her first official recording, but at least she didn’t look like a complete ass.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m even considering giving up on American Idol. As stale and tired as it is, it still manages to entertain me each year. The next couple of weeks will probably find me succumbing to sporadic panic attacks, unable to fathom another seven months without my weekly dose of Simon Cowell. But American Idol needs to find a way to stay exciting through the very end. Having the winner release an original song the week after their victory was a nice thought, but it just doesn’t work. Just because they’ve gone this long without changing the formula, doesn’t mean we should continue to resign to anticlimactic finish to what should be the most exciting night of the season. Other countries have fully embraced the commercial release of cover songs from new artists, and given Idol’s audience, I doubt there’d be much objection to the same thing here at home.

It just doesn’t get more exciting than this. In a moment I really didn’t see coming, vocal juggernaut Melinda Doolittle was ousted on last night’s Idol – just one week shy of the final. Despite the fact that she’s better suited for a touring musical adaptation of one of the more mediocre Disney films, she’s been the favorite since day one and no one’s been able to shut up about her.

Shocked or not, she’s gone. And that means next week’s showdown will be between Blake Lewis and Jordin Sparks. And while my allegiance to Blake may have caused me to make disparaging remarks about Jordin in weeks past, I am genuinely happy to see her make it to the final as well. They’ve been the most consistently entertaining from the beginning, and they’ve remained so close in the standings that either could win if they show up the other next week. It isn’t often that we get to this place without near certainty about who’s taking the title home.

American Idol concludes next week, with an hour of performances on Tuesday night and a two-hour finale and results show on Wednesday.

Singing ain’t everything, folks. Jordin and Melinda might be the most vocally talented Idol contestants, but they’re also some kind of crazy boring. Not only did Blake bless us with actual movement last night, he was also the only one to perform something new during the “contestant’s choice” category. Back before he was creepy and pseudo-popular, Robin Thicke was just “Thicke” and he made an awesome song called When I Get You Alone. Blake sang it and more than made up for the involuntary Maroon 5 (barf). Everyone says he’s going home tonight. I dare think not.

Sanjaya lived every moment like it was his last… until around the top ten when he become completely deluded. Not that he really had any choice in the matter. Sanjaya’s big head was ceremoniously placed on his shoulders by a media who’d reached their saturation point with Anna Nicole Smith. Sanjaya sucks, and he won’t go away. What does this say about the competition? What does this say about America?

Um… Absolutely nothing.

In retrospect, I sure hope that everyone finds Sanjayagate as foolish as I did. It seems that more has been written about him in the last three weeks than any other Idol contestant to date, yet all of these dark predictions of his winning the title and steering pop music into the proverbial iceberg didn’t come anywhere reasonably close to fruition. Each season has had an awkward, untalented, ambiguous high school boy. Sanjaya was just the first who was willing to ham it up.

Remember this little turd? He was a horrible singer with no stage presence and even less personality, yet he beat out Jennifer Hudson and made it to the top 6. Nobody was calling him one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, and Idol continued to gain momentum, unscathed. Last season, Kevin Covais had similar aspirations of being the pubescent barnacle on the U.S.S. Idol, but he was knocked out just before the top 10. Regardless, the votes of the American public carried him long after he should have been sent back to homeroom.

After hours of cable news coverage and too many blog posts to read in one lifetime, we are already Sanjayaless with almost two months left until the end of the season. Sanjaya will return for the finale with some grand, unimaginable haircut; he’ll go on the tour and make little girls cry in 42 the 50 states; he’ll probably even be able to milk his cult of personality well into his 20s, but he’ll never be an American Idol. And while I’m glad to see Howard Stern and the self-important tools at Vote for the Worst are now learning that they aren’t as influential as they’d been giving themselves credit for, it will be with a heavy heart that I turn on next week’s episode. As much as I didn’t want him to win, he at least provided some fodder – a rarity in this ho-hum season.

It may have already gone into heavy rotation, but I leave you with this Sanjaya-themed clip from my favorite TV critics and vloggers, Buns & Chou Chou…