American Idol Hollywood Week: The Battering of Bruno Mars

 
Fox airs American Idol's two-hour Hollywood Week competition tonight. The judges were far too gracious and allowed more contestants a second chance in Hollywood than ever before -- more than 300. This will prove problematic for them since they are tasked with whittling that lot down to 20, four fewer than previous seasons. This means they were merely postponing the inevitable. Expect plenty of tears as the mostly subpar lot get the ax.

Follow me on http://twitter.com/HowardCohenfor live commentary and then return to the blog later tonight or tomorrow for a wrapup. 

Was tonight's theme Rape and Pillage the Bruno Mars Catalog?

How else to explain so many tone deaf destructions of Mars' Grenade, F-You (he cowrote the Cee-Lo hit)and Just the Way You Are? Some, like the opening group rendition of Grenade, proved beautifully harmonious. Props to Pia Toscano. Much of the others were offkey and painful.

But painful defines Idol group nights, a pointless, mean and unpleasant, not to mention boring, two hours in which hundreds of novice teens are thrown into a room and left to fend for themselves while leering camera crews play up the ugliness. OK, I know these kids sign up for this, but it's still gross when a 15-year-old boy is seen getting thrown out of a group by a pack of self-important jerks (Clint Gamboa, I'm talking to you) and made to feel as if he's last-picked-in-PE-class on national TV.

Instead of producers putting the contestants into groups, the kids have to pick their own partners and this inevitably leads to backstabbing, nastiness and a descent into chaos. For near the entirety of the first televised hour, we see no singing, just squabbling and disorganization. The mess also leads to plain unfair rules bending by the judges. Obese egomaniac Tiffany Rios, whose offkey singing is only slightly less irritating than her all-around demeanor, can't find anyone to sing with her because she insulted all the other contestants during her audition. But producers bend the rules and let her sing with one other girl, a generic blond whose name I don't care to remember. Not fair. Happily, they sing like two cats trapped in a bag and we'll not see Tiffany again, until, perhaps, the finale when Idol has to pad its two hours with some of the season's lowlights. The judges also pass two competitors onto the next round after they bomb in the group performance "based on what they've done before" but then don't do the same for offkey Devyn, and she calls them out on that. "I'm going to have to figure out a way to get back in there," she weeps to no avail. Well, she has a point.

James Durbin, a weepy, screeching subpar Adam Lambert wannabe complains because some stage moms in a competing group coach their kids who selected the same Queen oldie to cover. (Get over it, the moms didn't SING for their kids who all, by the way, sang Queen much better than Durbin's caterwauling group.)

 Inexplicably, the judges passed Durbin Dud onto the next round and it appears he's going to become this season's polarzing contestant. Sign me up now in the Can't Stand Him Group. Scotty "Josh Turner One Not"e McRreery, the banal country baritone, also acted the diva by shunning the 15-year-old from his group but then cried like a baby in an attempt at an apology when he realized how the show's editing was going to make him look.

 
Thankfully, two people rose above the stench of Idol's version of child (and viewer) abuse. Jacee Badeaux, (pictured) the aformention teen who showed grace under fire and Boca Raton's Brett Loewenstern, who finally won me over tonight. Jacee is a classy young man, a young pro with a golden voice. (Bieber Fever cardholders should rally 'round this 15-year-old and his sweet singing.) Jacee might not have learned the words of Mercy, a song he was forced to figure out fast after getting bounced out of Clint's crummy group, but he made up his own words and revealed a can-do personality. That's part one of becoming an Idol.

 
Brett (above), 16, wins points for showing Jacee compassion by welcoming him to the group and for then delivering a fine vocal and stage performance of his own. Both teens advance into the Top 40 and, hopefully, into the live finals. This group performance went a long way to extinguish some of the night's stench, but not quite enough.

Overall, Idol's annual group night two-hour carnage leaves me with two words for producers, and I'd like to borrow them from Cee-Lo. But not the sanitized Forget You version we saw one too many times tonight.

Comments

[Lane]

anyone here tonite?

[Lesley]

i'm late to the party! oh the drama...

[daygojim]

HoCo, your spot on I just wish producers would have shorten thgat 1st hour of drama, but I guess they think it sells. I'd like to see Jacee make the top 20 the kid has a great voice..

[HoCo]

I hope he makes the finals too. I know he's made it to Top 40. I'd be surprised if he's not in the finals, tho.

[energie belts]

I hope so.
energie belts