PigtailsOfDoom the Eccentric wrote:
Torpedo up or torpedo down? I'm not looking forward to the five month hiatus either, and I freaking hate American Idol. I detest the talent shows in general, but American Idol is especially bad because of Simon, imo.
Torpedo down. While the truly devoted viewers will hang in there during a long hiatus, the more casual viewers who aren't aware that they show will be back will just give up on it. A new show can easily lose it's audience-building momentum. A long hiatus early in its run has been the death of a good many shows.
I tried AI for a couple seasons, but watching someone be insulting just because he can isn't appealing me, and all it did was instruct me on how out of touch my expectations for good performers were from those of mainstream America.
The only competition show I watch now is
So You Think You Can Dance, and the reason I watch it is because there's really no way to fake it on that show. The good dancers will be the ones that end up in the final competition, and the not-so-good ones will be the ones that get pared away.
Ostensibly, it's a search for "Americans
favorite dancer" as opposed to "America's best dancer" but honestly, in the six seasons the show has been on so far, there has only been a SINGLE time when I have seen a contestant skate through on popularity alone, and that was just a few weeks ago when a very cute and popular pair of dancers turned in a truly disastrous performance and didn't even wind up in the bottom three couples.
Yeah, there have been some times when MY favorite dancer hasn't been the winner, but there has never been a time when I could say that the winner didn't actually have the skills to deserve it. Usually if I'm actually surprised by the winner, it's because the winner turned out to be female, and I tend to overlook the female dancers because my attention is first and foremost on the guys.
Furthermore, the comments from the judges tend to actually be much more intelligent, as opposed to twenty renditions of, "You worked it OUT!" each show. Even Mary Murphy, the annoying and ditzy judge with the irritating squeaky voice, truly does know what she's talking about and can provide solid input about technique when it comes to ballroom dancing.
Edited, Nov 29th 2009 2:01pm by Ambrya