Maybe it’s not just the subpar contestants sucking all the energy out of “American Idol” this season. Nor is it Ryan Seacrest’s snippy new attitude or Simon Cowell’s short-timer’s disease.
It might just be “Glee.”
Week after week, the members of New Directions are showing up the “Idol” contestants -- on screen, on iTunes, on Twitter – just about everywhere but the ratings.
It’s still early … but the “Glee” club is growing fast.
For Fox, putting the shows back-to-back on Tuesday nights looked, on its face, like a stroke of genius. With the Tuesday night “Idol” performances providing TV’s strongest lead-in, “Glee” has achieved its highest ratings ever, including total viewers and in key demos.
Here’s the problem: Next to "Glee’s" supercharged vocals, over-the-top choreography and radiant glow of professionalism – not to mention white-hot record sales of late – those kids struggling away on “Idol” are starting to look kinda … lame.
The most cringe-worthy example of this: the “Idol” group-sing, a weekly staple of the results show that was once a harmless time-filler.
Stuck against “Glee,” it's become a saddening flameout of crappy lip-synching and contestant eye-rolling (you know who you are, CASEY JAMES). All of this performed to “choreography” that includes walking around and, when they are really inspired, more-vigorous walking around.
On “Glee,” cheerleaders do zany stunts on stilts, the glee club trampolines around a mattress store in pajamas and the football team scores a game-winning touchdown by performing Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” dance.
All of this, done to a soaring soundtrack that’s topping the iTunes charts and, if predictions hold, the Billboard charts as well.
When singing and dancing to canned music is made to look and sound this good, what, exactly, is “Idol’s” excuse?
That it’s easier to pull off when it’s been edited? Please. Roll the contestants’ latest Ford commercial, and do the math.
What’s really at play here is that our decade-long national obsession with amateur, “undiscovered” talent may finally be showing its cracks – at least in the face of outsized professional singing/dancing talent, packaged in a fresh, entertaining way.
It also shows the weakness of the “Idol” model of attempting to unearth the best talent from hundreds of thousands of hopefuls. Given how quickly contestants are shuttled in and out in the earliest stages of selection, it’s easy to imagine that for everyone who makes it through, a dozen brighter lights are sent home before the judges even arrive in town.
(Example: Hillary Scott, lead singer of Lady Antebellum – whose second album was just certified double platinum after 12 weeks on the charts – has famously said she tried out for “American Idol” twice, and was twice rejected. The country trio performs, ironically enough, on Wednesday’s elimination show).
It would be folly to sound a death knell for “Idol” here, as TV’s highest-rated show is holding up well this season, ratings-wise.
