A brief Hollywood comment

I had to work late tonight, so I don't have time to write a full blog post on tonight's 2-hour marathon Idol. Plus, I'm still recovering from the amazing revelation by Jim Fassel that his interview with Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato includes the Terrible Twosome asking Fassel how he would seat the players on the plane when traveling to away games. (Really, check out the D.C. Sports Bog.)I guess now we do have sort of an answer for the question, "What could Dan Snyder possibly talk about in a 20-hour interview with a prospective coach?"

Anyway, back to Idol. So the producers responded to some audience dissatisfaction, had the audition shows spend more time on the good singers than in past years, and it was a positive development. Tonight, we had what I feel is one of the most entertaining nights of the Idol year, the Hollywood round. The producers extended the show to two hours, after cutting it back to one the last couple of years. That's good. They let the singers use instruments for their first Hollywood audition. I'm not how good an idea that is (I don't think they're going to be permitted to use instruments once they get to the final 24, so what's the point?), but I'll cut the producers some slack because it at least gave the Hollywood round a fresh look.

But to me, and I think many others (except, apparently, my friend John), the highlight of the Hollywood round was when they paired up the singers into groups of three and made them learn the song overnight and perform it the next day. It always provided great drama (Will some groups be able to work together? Will the one member of the group who decided to go to sleep early pay for it the next day? Will the group that went out partying somehow do OK anyway?) But for some reason, we had no groups this year. The Idol producers took one of the highlights of the whole show and ELIMINATED it. And the show just wasn't as entertaining as past years--it was really just a more elaborate audition show. I'm mystified. As I've said over and over on this blog, the American Idol producers have managed to convince me that they're the luckiest guys in the world--they somehow figured out a great concept for a show but have absolutely no idea what they're doing.