I mentioned earlier on this blog that I’ve decided to save hours and sanity by skipping the American Idol auditions this season. I make an exception, at least partially, for the Hollywood round, which is one of my favorite parts of Idol even if Idol’s TV audience doesn’t seem to share that opinion. But last night’s episode, which ended with a “cliffhanger” that was either exploitative or ridiculous, is another example of the reasons I’m losing patience with this show.

I’ve never understood why Idol doesn’t do more with Hollywood than it does. Well, I do understand, in that these are traditionally among the lowest-rated episodes of the season. But I feel like—unlike almost anything else Idol does—it could actually make more of the winnowing process, especially the group auditions, which are kind of like a mini-reality show within a reality show. As stressed-out, tired hopefuls work through incompatibilities and conflicting ambitions to try to pull off a number, it produces reality-TV drama that nonetheless is legitimately about the artistic process.

Instead, Idol wants to focus on one individual audition after another, and on drama that has little or nothing to do with singing. Case in point: last night’s audition episode, which spent an evening hyping up a medical crisis and ended on a cliffhanger as a contestant went wobbly and fell off the stage after singing for the judges.

Everything that a decade-plus of watching reality TV has taught me says that the medical crisis will not be as awful as it was made out to be. Of course, I don’t know that, and it’s hard to say which is worse—if Idol used a serious health problem as a draw for viewers, or if it inflated a small accident to make sure viewers come back on Thursday. Either way, it reeks of desperation amid declining ratings and suggests a reason those ratings may be declining. Too much of Idol now has to do with things that don’t involve the songs.

I don’t mean that I need Idol to become more musically purist: it has always been as much about performance and packaging as about pure vocals, and I think that’s fine, because it’s a pop-star competition. But I suspect part of the success of The Voice comes from frustration that Idol has become too much about things like the audition round gawking and the musical-chairs of the judges. Last night’s cliffhanger is a little thing, but I think it’s also symbolic. If Idol really is falling, this is not the way to get back up.

source:http://entertainment.time.com/2012/02/09/the-morning-after-how-the-mighty-have-fallen/#ixzz1lxLDmBtq