Sample 1: An Idol's Decline

There’s something addictive about American Idol. How else can you explain the 20 plus million people who tune in every week? Sure, people sing, and that’s entertaining, but the quality of the singers is usually far below what you can hear by simply turning on a radio. And on a results show night it’s nothing but an hour of shameless product placement and waiting to see who gets kicked off. You could easily find out the next day without sitting through the Idol’s Ford Focus commercial, yet 20 million people sit glued to their televisions, waiting to see who stays and who goes. I don’t blame them. I am an Idol addict. The fun isn’t so much the singing, but picking a couple of favourites and watching them win out against the people you don’t care about or the people you don’t like. And before that you get to watch deluded people try out in the auditions, and later a hundred teens come close to bare knuckle boxing each other during Hollywood week. But this season, something is just not right. Idol is in decline and in a big way.

For starters, the quality of singing is low. Not just “I’ve heard better,” but “I could do better.” The majority of the performances sound like bad karaoke. There are contestants on the show, like Andrew, Katie, and Mike who obviously have no chance at a career and shouldn’t have made it past the top 24. For years you could expect to tune in and watch some pretty good performances. But this year it seems like only one contestant, Crystal, consistently brings it. The rest stay entrenched in mediocrity while sometimes falling into horrible territory. Bad performances are fun at the beginning, but by the top 12 (or top 11, 10, 9) you expect the best of the best.

Not only are the singers off, the judges are too. Lets face it, Randy has never been that useful. His shtick is “yo” “dawg” and name dropping. Only 1 out of 10 comments are understandable, and 1 out of 20 useful. He’s best ignored. But Ellen. She was going to fill the shoes of Paula. She was going to be the new fun judge, and not in a drunk drug addict way. But she’s not. It seems like she’s barely there. Her advice is worse than Randy’s and her jokes are weak. This season has ruined her. Don’t get me started on Kara, who personality seems to consist of stupidity and awfulness. And Simon. Poor Simon. Some people are conspiracy theorizing that he’s torpedoing this season, but I just think he’s completely given up. It has been 9 years, and his last group are being outshined by the kids of Glee.

I’m still an Idol addict, but I have had to find news ways of being entertained. I’m a part of Vote for the Worst, which intentionally votes to keep the worst contestants in the competition, teaching them if they let the bad ones through, we’re going to keep them in. Still, I miss the days of being blown away.