It's that time of year again, that time when Fox programming executives start doing a happy dance because they are about to dump another season of American Idol upon the TV watchers in the U.S.A., and they know that there will be plenty of watchers because it's just like a train or car wreck and we can't avert our eyes and avoid watching.
I must admit that I had expected the American Idol craze, much like the Survivor craze, to have run it's course in much the way that the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? craze ran it's. Reality TV is so, well, last year, or perhaps even the year or several years before, and yet we continue to see reality TV flooding our airwaves.
Things have perhaps gotten a bit better, thanks to the popularity of some new scripted shows, like Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Desparate Housewives, My Name is Earl, How I Met Your Mother, and even a few shows on FOX such as Prison Break, Bones and a few other shows. There's also a host of coming "new series" that look like they may do fairly well, Emily's Reasons Why Not which brings Heather Graham and all her perky cuteness back to series TV.
But despite all of those great scripted shows, we also continue to be served heapin' helpin's of American Idol. First it's 2 nites a week, then it's 3 nites a week, and eventually it seems that it's the show that eats up the entire FOX network schedule. We'll see more crap-tastic "the best of the worst" shows, and a bunch of mediocre singers that all think they are the best when in fact they aren't really any better than anyone else that is in the competition. That someone wins the contest normally says much more about the lack of competition than anything else. The show becomes a big popularity contest where the cutest wins votes, while the more talented gets sent home early because they just don't have the looks or personality of others they are competing against.
When will it all end? Must we be subjected to American Idol 2019, or whatever it will be called when we see the 30th consecutive season of America's most popular TV show on America's lamest TV network? I certainly hope not. Someone plese save us before things get that bad.
