American Idol 7: Semi-Final Round

Oh my. The shtick really has calcified hasn’t it? The principals on American Idol really are phoning it in and they’re not even bothering to pretend that they’re not.

Let’s see now: Ryan Seacrest as the preening ass who thinks he’s much wittier than he is? Check.

Randy Jackson as the goofy over-aged “hipster” who hasn’t a clue how far removed he is from being as cool as he imagines he is? Check.

Paula Abdul playing the role of the den mother desperately trying to organize her sunny comments into something coherent but failing at that more often than not? Check.

And Simon Cowell…so bored with the proceedings that he spends his time playing bratty brother to Abdul and then trotting out the same old tired put-downs? Check.

Add to that the fact that they made the singers do songs from the sixties (except for the one kid who did “Jailhouse Rock” which no one seemed to notice was a hit in 1957) and then had the judges (mostly Cowell) whine about the fact that the songs were not “relevant to today”.

They keep telling us that the top 24 talent this year is the best ever but none of the performances proved that out (they were mostly bland, inoffensive, and, yes Simon, forgettable...hopefully the women will show something more) and the rote interactions between the judges and the host have gone past annoying right into utterly predictable and completely boring.

Perhaps this season’s Idol will pick up steam as it moves along…maybe they’ll, as Randy would doubtlessly say, “work it out”… but at this point I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, dawg.

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2/21 addendum:

The ladies were a little better as a group than the guys were the night before...but nobody thus far has jumped out as someone who would put out a CD that I would be rushing out to buy. We'll chalk it up to first week jitters and hope that the contestants will start living up to Seacrest's incessant claim that they are the best Idol semi-finalists ever. We shall see.