It pains me to say this, as there was a time when I was one of
Australian Idol's most vocal supporters, but I am no longer looking forward to this season.
Allow me to explain a little more thoroughly, especially in light of having waxed extremely lyrical over the
Idol '09 season promo, which remains one of the greatest ads this country has ever produced.
In fact, let's talk about that. Just one last time, to jog your memory, here's what they were pimping out:
Having watched most of Sunday night's episode (a gig had me pulled away from the couch before their time was up, though I missed little from all reports), I think we can now safely say that the
Emotions promo is a simple and horrible case of a show having blown its wad before it even started.
How can they ever top it? The simple answer is that they can't. Here's the moment when
Idol '09 jumped the shark for me - yes, I'm calling it after one episode:
Look, the problem is not that Kate doesn't look all shiny like the
Emotions promo, nor that she has a complicated and tragic family story to tell, nor her "honest Aussie battler" personality (etc). She's got a decent voice and an engaging personality, if you were one of the people who voted for Shannon/Luke/etc during
Idol's history.
(It goes without saying that the employment of Brian "Potato" McFadden-Goodrem was a catastrophe of the highest order.)
The issue is that the modern incarnation of
Idol - that is, since contestants started to be able to bring in their own songs and instruments - lives for these stories, and loves to turn them into something they're not. The show thinks nothing of telling people like Kate to "stay who you are", only to viciously turf them down the track because they can't do rock, or pop, or R&B, or anything that the cookie-cutter weekly shows require of them.
You need only think back to the show's treatment of other "stay who you are" contestants - Lisa Mitchell, Ricki Lee, Bobby Flynn, Chanel Cole - once the judges (or producers) became tired of their idiosyncrasies and wanted them to fit easily into the
Idol mould. Here are a few highlights from that particular viewing charnel house:
The squirm factor and sheer terror in the eyes of many contestants when the judges suddenly turn on them goes beyond train-crash viewing and into a deeply uncomfortable and potentially even unethical realm. Some would say this is what
Idol viewers live for, but I doubt it. Most of us just want to watch a really fun, big-budget karaoke contest.
Here's the problem: we know the tropes by now, so why would we get excited about discoveries like Kate, or any other non-Fox-FM types that the audition process uncovers? The show feels almost unbearably stale - and things may pick up once the Top 100 stage is out of the way, but surely by then it will be too late?
My former partner in pop-cultural crime Jess over at
Defamer summed up Sunday's offerings perfectly:
After watching about twenty minutes of auditions and judges comments, I had a shocking realisation - watching Australian Idol is like logging into MySpace these days.
You can remember a time in your life when you couldn’t get enough of it but for some reason you just don’t enjoy the experience like you used to. Has it changed that much? No. The problem is it hasn’t changed at all, but you certainly have. So long as it’s still around, you’re probably going to log in from time to time due to a strange sense of obligation and a naive hope something exciting will be happening. You’ll probably be disappointed though. It’ll never be like the old days when you were addicted to it.
It remains to be seen whether the removal of Kyle Sandilands from the Finals weeks and the injection of celebrity guest judges and mentors will freshen up the franchisee, but I remain doubtful. (And don't even speak to me about James Mathison's departure; that wound is still too tender.)
So, what of you, gentle readers: will you be watching this year? Will a lack of Kyle equal a plus? And what
did happen to Chanel Cole?