My husband and I started to watch American Idol again yesterday. We were unsure whether to tune in after Simon Cowell left, but we gave it a shot.
I must admit that we were pretty impressed with the way it worked. While we both miss Simon a bit, both Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez work extremely well as jury members and Randy seems pretty content on Simon’s seat. I never really missed Paula abdul after she left and Kara was getting on my nerves for a couple of seasons now. I liked Ellen a lot as a person, but unfortunately she didn’t really have anything remotely relevant to say.
I was initially surprised by the choice of the new judges, actually I was unimpressed if not mildly disappointed. Season 9 started with guest judges for each audition and I particularly loved Neil Patrick Harris and Kristin Chenoweth and hoped that either one if not both of them would be considered as a permanent judges. On the other hand, who knows how busy they are with their other projects, so they might be a thousand reasons why they are not sitting in a judge’s chair now.
It doesn’t matter so much now, because as I said, both my husband and I were pleasantly surprised by the new judgery. A few things I noticed though and then we’ll wait and see how the rest of the season turns out.
1. It seemed like they put through a lot more people than in the seasons before. There were a couple of people who I think wouldn’t have made it past Simon Cowell’s approvement, sometimes for good reason. I’d write this off as the new guys trying to settle down in their new role and am not particularly unhappy with it.
2. On the plus side I noticed that there’s no more „A million billion percent yes!“ anymore. I didn’t notice how much this had bugged me until it was simply gone this season. Mostly it’s just „I say yes!“ and we’re done with it. Although I agree that Steven Tyler needs a new word for beautiful somewhen soon.
Mostly I’m glad that the departure of Simon Cowell didn’t ruin AI for us. So that’s something and we’ll see how the rest of the season will go.