"American Idol has nailed down its first alum turned judge: Jennifer Hudson."

"The other two spots are also intended for former Idol contestants: Kelly Clarkson and either Adam Lambert or Clay Aiken."

Is this something that can revive the old show?

"Even the singers' hair was identical and when it came to hitting the highest notes at the top of the song, Jennifer clearly couldn't help but show off her skills."

"It wasn't massively appropriate, and Candice looked bewildered and nervous at times so it's to her utter credit that she still took the title home. Perhaps realising her mistake, and possibly performing on autopilot, Hudson tried to chivvy the younger singer along at the song's close."

The Daily Mail covers last night's "American Idol" finale. (Hence the incomprehensible-to-Americans "chivvy.") The other DM article is "Must be female intuition! Aretha Franklin predicts Candice Glover's win as she duets with final five American Idol ladies via video." Ha ha.

It's kind of true. "AI" brought in 2 gigantic soul-singing divas as if to launch their new counterpart, Candice (whom I'm sure the producers knew would win) and those 2, each in her own way, stepped on Candice's moment.

It was a funny season of "Idol." It turned out to be a singing contest in which the best singer won. She didn't play to the cameras and beg for our love. She tried to win on the merits, and did. But — isn't it the way things always go? — the show is in steep decline. Where's the audience? Maybe the people who are left really just like great singing and not the attendant hammy bullshit. That makes no sense. That's an utterly irrational way to go looking for great singing.

"'Of course, a little later on, we'll be revealing who is leaving our show,' Ryan said...

"... turning Randy's chair slightly and giving him a pointed look. The veteran judge played coy, shaking his head and laughing as if he didn't know what Ryan could possibly be referring to."

Meanwhile, as for the contestants, Angie Miller got sent home: 1. for lacking the courage to play the piano during the Elton John song that had been chosen to give her one more chance to show off her singing-while-playing-the-piano style that they repeatedly told her was her best look, 2. for having the least heart-tugging of the visits home (despite the attempt to incorporate the Boston bombing into her story, she being a Massachusetts resident), and 3. because she was the last of the skinny girls and just as we learned early on that it's not a boy year, it's not a skinny girl year. That's just how these things go.

As long as we're talking about reality shows, here's a nice discussion of this week's episode of "Survivor," which links to this video of the subtly devious Cochran paying tribute to his mother, with whom he's watched every episode of "Survivor" for the last 11 years. Have you been watching "Survivor" or "American Idol" or some other reality show for many years with a son or daughter, analyzing the characters and the strategies, as a very important part of your parent-child relationship? If you watch that video of Cochran, you might think yeah, that's like the way it's been at our house, or you might think wow, I wish I had a kid that shared something like that with me. I'm sure many of you feel like saying reality shows are a waste of time and parents should want to do better things with their children. If so, don't just scoff at the people who've found a beautiful bond in the watching of a TV show. Say what you did (or will do in the future) that is so much better (as, obviously, many things are).

When Harry Connick Jr. asked Amber Holcomb "to tell him what the song ‘My Funny Valentine’ meant..."

"... she looked like Ted Kennedy explaining to Roger Mudd why he wanted to be president. She clearly didn't have a clue what she was singing about — a problem compounded by an earlier rehearsal clip in which Connick noticed how much better her voice sounded when she forgot the lyrics to Pink's 'Just Give Me a Reason.'"

"Is your figure less than Greek?" What does that mean? Connick wanted to know. A painful moment last night on the dying show they call "American Idol." The contestants were singing old standards, and Connick obviously knows how to sing them well, but his efforts to help them sing those songs fell on — it's mean to use this cliché, which is why I'm violating my rule against clichés — deaf ears.

"If Candice had been in the bottom, she would be gone and we would be on the way to a stretched out final."

"The fact that they are combining the votes says it all. I just hope that when they get their Angie/Amber final they choke on it."

If you understand what that refers to, you have my sympathy.

"But Idol is dropping nearly every week and last night was down 50% from its Thursday night premiere this season..."

"... and that’s scary."

They've obviously got themselves to blame, for several reasons, the main one being the desire to make it a "girls" year. Before the voting even started, they'd stacked the deck to exclude a "boyfriend"-type guy for the young girls who watch the show with their parents. "Idol" lost track of idolatry. The girls liked the boys, but somehow that couldn't be permitted to keep happening year after year. But that was the show! Was.

"You are my wife!" exclaims Nicki Minaj in praise of a 19-year-old singer.

On "American Idol" last night. Nicki Minaj is a female. Whether we're talking same-sex marriage or not, however, proclaiming one of the contestants to be your partner in marriage is edgy for that family show.

Minaj is always coming up with new ways to say "I love you." (For example, last night, she also said "You are a little marshmallow that I want to eat.")

I appreciate the effort not to be boring, and it must be a great effort, when you listening to hundreds of song performances and then must say something. Imagine trying to think up something new to say that advances your image as a sexy, edgy pop star but isn't too dirty for a prime-time network show aimed at kids and the parents who watch TV with their kids. You can't say that you want to have sex with the contestant. You have to take it down a step.

ADDED: I just remembered that Minaj also said to one young female singer: "I love your boobs." To be fair, the singer was wearing a dress with a tight bodice that had high-contrast triangles marking the nipple location.

"After a string of five similar winners, ['American Idol'] understandably would prefer a different kind of winner."

"Whether by accident or design, this goal has been guaranteed by a total absence of straight, white males with sex appeal in the top 10."

"To think that I would go on a national TV show and get away with continuing a lie so big... is ridiculous."

Says the "extremely remorseful" Matthew Farmer, who went on "American Idol" and told a story of military combat service replete with exploding IED, brain damage, and PTSD. In fact, though he was in the army, he never saw combat.

Soldiers who served with Farmer claim that Farmer's injury came from mixing Accutane, a prescription medication for acne, and alcohol.

Farmer denies allegations that he was sent home for unauthorized use of medicine. He blames the producers of "American Idol" for distorting his story through editing.

The contestant, who sang Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" for the judging panel, blames "Idol" for focusing on his war stories rather than on his little girl, who accompanied him to the audition.

Farmer accuses the editors of "chopping up" parts of his interview and focusing unduly on his story of being medically evacuated from Iraq.

He meant to exploit the child, not the military service. Watch the clip at the link. The poor child looks exceedingly displeased with her father, as if she knows he's shaming himself, lying.

Steven Tyler appears in drag on "American Idol" and quotes Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues."

He came out as if he were the last contestant and maybe it took half a second to recognize the big rock star (who was on the judge's panel last season). The news reports of the little stunt emphasize the drag and the (miniscule) surprise, but even where the lyric is quoted, the attribution to Bob Dylan is missing. Here's the NY Daily News:

"What the, what?" Randy Jackson said when he got a first glimpse of his former co-star on stage.

"My name is Pepper. I'm going to sing a song called 'Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa, Our Love Going to Grow, Wah Wah,'" he joked to judging panel. "But before I do I'm going to judge you all (bleeps) first."

I'm not finding any news reports that place the lyric — which I have engraved on my brain — in the old Bob Dylan song. "Talkin' World War III Blues" has 12 verses of Bob talking his way through a dream he had about walking through post-nuclear NYC, with all the people gone from the "lonesome town." Here's the 9th verse:

Well, I remember seein’ some ad
So I turned on my Conelrad
But I didn’t pay my Con Ed bill
So the radio didn’t work so well
Turned on my record player—
It was Rock-a-day Johnny singin’, “Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa
Our Love’s A-gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah”

Tyler said "Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah," by the way, just like Dylan, not "Wah Wah," as the Daily News would have it.

Now that you get the reference, is there anything to be made of it? Maybe Dylan was making an in joke at the time and Tyler was referring to that joke. Maybe Tyler wanted to alert us to the threat of nuclear war. Maybe Tyler wanted to wink at Dylan fans. But the best clue I found — as I did a Google search to see if anyone had recognized the Dylan quote — was an article from back in November about  friction between Tyler and current-season judge Nicki Manaj. Tyler had said in an interview:

“If it was Bob Dylan, Nicki Minaj would have had him sent to the cornfield! Whereas, if it was Bob Dylan with us, we would have brought the best of him out, as we did with Phillip Phillips....”

Manaj thereafter tweeted:

“Steven Tyler said I would have sent Bob Dylan to a cornfield??? Steven, you haven’t seen me judge one single solitary contestant yet!”

And:

“I understand you really wanted to keep your job but take that up with the producers. I haven’t done anything to you. That’s a racist comment.” 

Racist because it's against her... or because sending someone "to the cornfield" is a reference to slavery?

“You assume that I wouldn’t have liked Bob Dylan??? why? black? rapper? what? go f— yourself and worry about yourself babe.”

To quote Bob Dylan — especially while dressed in a garish blonde wig and big inflated breasts — is to tweak Nicki. Talking blues is related to rap, somewhere in the ancestry. The quoted line, which is talked, is about singing, singing like a rockabilly guy — "Rock-a-day Johnny" — and Tyler was acting as though he were going to sing the song Bob Dylan heard. Dylan is all alone in his dream, looking for company, and in his desperation, he turns on the radio, and then puts on a record, and it's this pop culture idiot, singing nonsense — ooh-wah, ooh-wah —but it's very poignant, because, after the war, Bob is longing for any kind of a voice. In the 10th verse, he calls the telephone number where a recorded voice says the time, and he listens to that voice, repeating the same time — 3 o'clock, the time the war started — for over an hour.

So Steven Tyler had a lot to say, if anybody wants to notice. He's saying we don't get artists like Bob Dylan anymore. The music industry — like NYC after the bomb — is devoid of real people. We're desperate for a human voice. And Nicki Manaj is the embodiment — for all her voluptuous physicality — of emptiness. He was spoofing her, critiquing everything, crying out for real human art, which — for him — Bob Dylan embodies.

But did anyone hear him? He pranced out as a clown. He was dressed as a woman. It resonated in the hollowness that has always been television. In drag, with that wide smile, he even looked like Milton Berle.



IN THE COMMENTS: In this post where I chide others for missing the Dylan reference, Mumpsimus dings me for missing a reference:

"To the cornfield" refers to the SF/Horror story "It's A Good Life" by Jerome Bixby. Or, more likely in this context, to the Twilight Zone episode based on that story.

Dust Bunny Queen links to this TZ clip.

"Nobody in el mundo will believe that I am not still and forever the most beautiful person who ever straddled the floor..."

"... so I have to help out the people at People by looking less beautiful all the time, and then also when they pick me again in two years people will be like, 'Ay, yes, and she has put those weird fangs away!' And second, lovers, I won American Idol week. Mariah who? Nicki Minwhat? ME. So do not feel sad for me, lovers, and do not feel sad for the person on my team who got fired for this or for the people at People who I tried to get fired before I understood that this was my destiny."

Is this Mariah-Nicki thing going to work?

Is anyone watching?

We watched the first hour last night (with the rest saved on DVR), and, well, it seems the problem is that Nicki Manaj came to play. She's prepared. She's like the Tracy Flick of "American Idol." She's studied, and she's ready. If this reality show were "Survivor," she's be voted off immediately, because she wants it so bad. Meanwhile, Mariah Carey obviously believed she could simply swan in and be Mariah. That's enough in itself. How awful to have to be one of 2 women, when the other woman wants it so bad. It's like the wife and the mistress.

But there isn't even a husband. Unless America is the husband. But America, in "American Idol," is a whole lot of young girls. And what do they care about a wife and a mistress clawing it out? Poor Mariah! Don't tell me Keith Urban/Randy Jackson count as the husband who will step up — in this exaggerated TV sitcom — and choose the right woman, the true sweetheart, the wife, Mariah. These men are oblivious to the psychodrama. They're floating along aimlessly as if the only thing really happening is a talent show, where various young people try to sing as well as they can, and modestly knowledgeable judges give honest assessments.

Oh! My heart breaks for Mariah. But I must say, Nicki has won it all. She came to win and she crushed the competition in the first hour. Congratulations! But... is anyone watching?