You Can't Get It Right Every Year: How "American Idol" Just Broke My Heart

*sigh* Yes, I was a Melinda Doolittle fan. Yes, she was just sent home on "American Idol" last night. And yes, I'm still pretty angry about the whole thing. Sure, I get attached to singers on the show every year, just to see them whither and die in the competition or make a misstep that costs them every thing they've worked for on the weeks on the show preceding. There's no real science involved with who goes through round-after-round on this gargantuan ratings hit, but there is an art to the same idea. Really, I knew Melinda was going to go home, but for the first time in a while, I just didn't want to believe it.

I'm sure I'm not the only one in the country to say it, but I consider myself a sort of scholar of this particular television show. Anyone who followed my writings at the Los Angeles Loyolan knows I spent an unhealthy amount of space writing about this yearly phenomenon, often in ways that I'm sure cost me the small amount of readers who actually took the time to peruse my personal articles aside from my more objective critical pieces. In season 3 when Jennifer Hudson was booted from the show after only reaching seventh place, I placed an ad, separate from my own personal column, with a false obituary, putting the date of her ousting below that of her picture. My editors looked at me funny, but I kept it. Now she has an Oscar, is in the midst of probably creating one of the biggest R&B albums of this decade and has been requested by Ms. Franklin herself to star in the early-in-development biopic of Aretha. Bottom line: listen to me.

Sure, I've backed other losers like Paris Bennett (season 5, fifth place), Constantine Maroulis (season 4, sixth place), Nadia Turner (season 4, eighth place), Kimberley Locke (season 2, third place), Gina Glockson (season 6, ninth place) and my Bay Area darling LaToya London (season 3, fourth place). But with the exception of a couple, each went home exactly when I thought they would. It's really difficult to know what America wants in a singer week-after-week, and when their story no longer seems interesting, really, it's time to go.

Case in point: season five's golden boy wasn't Taylor Hicks, but Chris Daughtry. Now, let's put aside that his debut album has sold about 17 wackydongzillion albums (I think that's the official amount as of yesterday's Billboard charts) and has probably outperformed the combined sales of the three contestants who did better than him that season (those being Taylor Hicks, Katherine McPhee and Elliott Yamin). He has that voice that alternative rock stations love: you know, sort of Grunge 2.0, kind of like Fuel and Nickelback and Staind and all that other crap but more sellable to the masses and, more importantly, the teenage girls who made sure that "Titanic" will always be the biggest box office champion of all time. Here was a man who auditioned for "Rock Star: INXS" but was rejected, forcing him to move to a more family-friendly venue.

Now, when he was ousted, the country went up in arms. There was more of an outcry for a recount for him than it ever was with Al Gore or John Kerry. Thing is, I called it the moment he sang "Suspicious Minds" during Elvis week. I had the privilege of attending the "American Idol" dress rehearsal a week earlier for the top 5. Really, there's not much to the untrained eye that would make the dress rehearsal more interesting. It's merely for the singers' own benefit, as the clips that attach to the respective phone numbers at the end of the real live show happen to be taken from the dress rehearsal (in case you've ever sat through a live show, and then wondered why the clips at the end "didn't feel right").

But to a true fan of the show, it was a lot more subtle of a discovery. With the top four of Taylor, Katherine, Elliott and Chris, I saw their true colors and what put them into the final positions: how their fans treated them, and how they treated their fans. Taylor, of course, had his infamous Soul Patrol, made up mostly of women above 35 who swooned over, as David Spade once referred to him, "an overweight, grey-haired, slightly retarded Southerner." Taylor ate up every moment of this, gave them his full attention when he could, and seemed genuinely respectful of these people who had made him their lives for the four-five months of the show's duration. Elliott was the same: he had a loyal fan base, not nearly as large as Taylor's but one that really let their freak flags fly. He was kind and grateful, and enjoyed having their company and fed off their energy.







Katherine, on the other hand, was an Ice Queen in big capital letters. After each of her songs, Ryan spoke with her for a moment and recited the phone numbers necessary to vote for her, and she immediately walked off the stage the first moment she could. No wave to the crowd, no acknowledgement, no nothing. Really, I don't feel she ever really had much of a fan base, those with "McPheever," but I can tell you what she did have: a beautiful face and great tits. It's the 21st century, but great tits will still get you pretty much everything you want. Except for a top spot in a reality competition and an album that's anything other than excruciatingly lame! (Zing!)

What surprised me, though, was that Chris did almost the same thing, but with that very frightening scowl of his. Yikes. I knew how he treated his fans, and karma's a bee-eye-itch my friend.

Therein lies my very longwinded explanation of why I'm usually right when it comes to "American Idol." Sorry you had to go through that, but really, everybody and their mother (literally) seems to watch this show, as it does not focus on any age group or gender demographic, and is watched pretty much equally in all states. (Except for Montana, where I hear they have horses instead of televisions.) It's a lesson I learned and have been able to apply with the following season (this one). Really, predicting "Idol" is a continuous learning experience. You have to pay attention to the trends and the signs. If Simon wants somebody off that week, he shouldn't praise them (to energize that singer's fan base) or completely demolish them (which REALLY energizes that singer's fan base out of protection), but merely say "that was okay." Apathy and wishy-washiness equates to death on "Idol."

Other items I learned over the years:

-Nobody likes "gospel jaw." (Bye, Jennifer Hudson)
-Hot legs without showing off your boobs barely gets you halfway. (Enjoy your fiancee, Haley Scarnato.)
-Having eye sex with the crowd and the camera each week gets old. (How's that two-week stint on "The Bold and the Beautiful," Constantine Maroulis?)
-Don't have the same hairstyle each week, then suddenly change it. (Fuck off, Ace Young.)
-Don't be a black person who can't sing. (White people are more forgiving of their tone-deaf kin.)

Hell, it didn't even surprise me when this year's villain Sanjaya Malakar made it all the way to the top 7 with nary a note on key at any point after Hollywood Week. True, I wanted him gone with every fiber of my being, and definitely shed a tear when he was chosen to stay over the incredible voice that is Gina Glockson (too rock-n-roll for America, to state another "Idol" trend).

To continue to precede my true thoughts on why Melinda is gone, I have to deal with another topic. (I'm sorry I'm sorry, but for every person who thinks I'm just going crazy with all this "Idol" talk, there are four out there who know exactly what the eff I'm talking about.) That being this whole controversy on Howard Stern's show as to why, say, Sanjaya finally left and how the show truly picks who goes home each week. See, Stern's show, along with the website votefortheworst.com, were trying to really pull a prank on TV-watching America by asking their fans and visitors to vote for Sanjaya Malakar to stay in the competition. Both pretty much claim it was their doing that made him last so long. When he finally left, one of Howard's "insiders" at "Idol" said it was because the producers sent him home, not America. This guy claims that while most of the "paperwork has already been shredded," everyone knew that it was producers Simon Fuller and Nigel Lythgoe who made the decision, and apparently make the decision every week, about who stays and who goes based on buzz and ratings. Each week, he comes on to say who will be off next, and can be right.






Now, I have a major problem with Howard Stern. I used to be a fan, but I don't like the person he has become since moving onto Sirius radio. I don't listen to him enough to really speak of his new show in detail, but my mother listens to his full show everyday and relays these things to me. But there are some really big issues with these claims, in no particular order.

1. To rig a game show is illegal. Seriously. It absolutely is. There is a law specific to television game shows for such a thing. Hell, Robert Redford made an entire movie about what created this law. It's called "Quiz Show," it got a fuckload of Oscar noms, and it isn't a bad movie. Howard's insider claims that the voting process on "Idol" is done so that nobody but the producers can actually check on the numbers, so it's their word against everybody else if they cheated. Now, this seems far-fetched for anybody who cares about this show, because why would they bite the 30 million hands that feed them? This doesn't take into account the long-lasting presence of such "Idol" duds as Scott Savol (s4), Anthony Federov (s4), Jasmine Trias (s3), Diana DeGarmo (s3 final two), Carmen Rasmusen (s2) and our very own Sanjaya. But I can tell you why each of these contestants made it as far as they did. Seriously. I wouldn't even break an intellectual sweat.

The insider finally made a wrong move this week and said that the producers were going to get rid of Blake Lewis, the sole remaining eye candy for girls on the show. Wrong!

2. Howard has been struggling like crazy with his ratings ever since moving to satellite radio. Sure, he likes to tell you how many new subscribers come to the service each month solely because of him (which you can't really prove one way or the other) and how much praise he gets, but really, I think Sirius Radio made a $500 million dollar mistake. A good deal of people don't know that a lot of these new subscribers aren't subscribers at all. Sirius bought the opportunity to have their service installed in a series of new car models (forgot which specifically) and are counting those toward their subscriber numbers. So let me make it clear: Sirius is counting the radios they personally paid for in cars that haven't even been bought yet, that are simply sitting in lots across the country. Way to boost your numbers Enron-style, assholes.

Howard also happens to be a huge fan of reality television. Seriously. He can't stop talking about the latest developments of "Survivor," "Big Brother," et al, but he seems to have a problem with "Idol." Why? I think it's because it's far and away the biggest hit American television has had in years ("Grey's Anatomy" and "CSI," while juggernauts, can't even TOUCH what "Idol" has), and he's just trying to stir up shit to boost his own ratings. People are talking about him in relation to Sanjaya's long "Idol" life in great numbers. Hell, I'm doing it. Fuck this, I can't give him anymore press, as small as it may be.

3. A good predictor of "Idol" results, though it took me a few years to believe it, would be dialidol.com, which is a service one downloads to speed-dial your favorite contestants, then with pretty damn good accuracy tells you who is going home this week due to the amount of busy signals each contestant gets. They say they were 87% accurate with season 5 predictions, which is honestly better than most pop culture publications such as ew.com and zap2it.com. They've been pretty dead-on this year, and finally, last night, they decided it was too close to call a winner, just as they did last year when Taylor, Katherine and Elliott each received 33% of the vote, plus a few different decimals. Howard's insider (dammit, I'm doing it again), as aforementioned, said Blake was going home. Nope, it was Melinda.

4. Sanjaya stayed on because he was a young teenage boy, cute in a very odd kind of way, was unthreatening and unassuming, didn't stir the pot, had a sister who also auditioned and made it to Hollywood week and was probably incredibly gay (for that good ol' Clay Aiken vote). He was voted off when that became boring. Each week he stayed was not a surprise. Not by a longshot. It wasn't Howard. It wasn't votefortheworst.com. In a show that got around 60 million votes for this week's competition, I cannot believe that either's relatively small fanbase had any kind of impact on the voting. This is the kind of program that got all of Ruben Studdard's hometown in Alabama to vote hundreds of times until the voting time ran out. "Idol" fans are RAVENOUS, and no stupid shock jock or lousy website can really affect that with any true seriousness.

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Now, onto Melinda Doolittle. She has, in my opinion, the best voice I've heard on "American Idol" in the five years I've watched it (sorry, didn't really get into season one until the final damn episode). Clay Aiken and Jennifer Hudson are the other two, but both have a tendency to go wildly over-the-top, and hence neither one won the competition. My mother is a rabid Claymate, so I choose my words wisely (she goes across the country for his concerts, used to sell his old demos to benefit his foundation, and has a painted portrait of Mr. Aiken hanging on the wall in her office), but Melinda really did have something special. And she brought it week after week.

Herein lies the problem: she was great. Every single week. Every. Single. Song. This may sound incredibly odd to outsiders, but completely normal for those in the "Idol" loop, but being consistently great doesn't get people fired up.

She started off with a great origin story, though. After graduating from Belmont Unversity in music, for years she's been toiling as a back-up singer for such acts as CeCe Winans, Aaron Neville and "Idol's" own George Huff (s3, fifth place), and has never really had much confidence in her abilities, at least not enough to be a headliner. She came to the auditions on a whim after her accompanying friends suggested she try out, and she was the only one who went through. For much of the first half of this season, her story has been a heartwarming yarn about breaking out of her comfort zone and finally allowing herself to be the star she was destined to be.

Unfortunately, that story disappeared once everyone jumped on the "what the fuck is Sanjaya still doing on the show" bandwagon. It's a fickle world on "Idol," and when you're not the center of attention, your days are numbered.

But she just kept on being great, with each theme, which each mentor, with each and every note. There was absolutely nothing wrong with anything she did, and that's just not what "Idol" audiences like. They like a roller coaster. They like bad weeks from which you can recover, allowing that your fans give you that chance with enough votes. Both Jordin Sparks and Blake Lewis (this season's final two) have had bad weeks, and each have actually had awful weeks. But all this does is serve to ignite a match and start a fire underneath their collective and respective fan bases, hoping that they can come back strong. And they have. Not as strongly as Melinda, but enough to create a story.

Melinda is now free to make a great album away from the controlling hands of 19 Entertainment, who pretty much entirely owns these people for the duration of recording and promoting their first album. It's worked for Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood (still the only two "Idol" winners to really become more than that), but it's interesting to listen to Clay Aiken and Taylor Hicks talk about how much their creative spirit had been crushed by the company. Now Melinda can do whatever the fuck she wants, and just like I'm itching to pick up Paris Bennett's debut album, I will be the first in line to pick up Mindy Doo's triumphant debut. Fuck that idea that she's not marketable (she isn't as much as Jordin or Blake, but she's still got a lot going on), and fuck that idea that nobody cares. A great voice will always find its way to the top, even if it takes years.

I bid you adieu Melinda. And if Jordin Sparks doesn't win "Idol," I may return for more insane bloggage. That girl's got some pipes.