I really like Cas Haley as well. He has a wonderful voice and a great personality. I prefered him solo with the acoustic guitar to electric with backup singers, but it may have been smart of him to show he can do both. I think regardless of if he gets the million or not he’s already won. Some recording executive will offer him a contract and he’ll be on the national stage. I too will probably buy his albums.
I missed the stilt walker guys, but I can’t imagine a stilt act winning this thing.
Cas- he’s entertaining and a nice respite from all the kookiness of the other acts.
Southern Girl- meh. Keep rehearsing.
Boy [pop-tart du jour]- oh, please. Go home. Your 15 minutes were up a couple episodes ago. Let’s not confuse ‘talent’ with ‘attention whore’.
Beat box singer guys- they’re all great except for the lead singer. He missed many of the notes and his voice is more suited to rock while the others actually have very finely tuned vocal instruments. He’s the weakest link. I had to laugh, though, watching them get critiqued. Lead singer keeping himself posed full-on to get all eyeballs on him, and the little pipsqueak guy immediately to his left being boxed out by him and the dude at the far right. There’ll be some inter-group attitude problems before long.
Ventriloquist guy- very talented, but I’m a little wary of these guys that spend their entire lives making puppet voices for little stuffed animals. How far can that really get you? Maybe if you’re world class level, someday you’ll occupy the upper left box on Hollywood Squares for a season or two. Now, that’s living.
If I counted correctly, last week’s show had five singers and five variety acts. The voters put through four singers and one variety act.
I wonder if we’ll get the same type of results this week.
BTW, how does the rest go down? Next week another 10 act show, with five from last week and five from this.
Then what? Is it just a high vote getter takes all?
So, any surprises for anyone?
<spoilers ahead>
I’m surprised that the Second Story Guys never made it. And I would have rather had that acapela rock group stay than the country singer or the Glamazons.
My top three picks so far are Cas Haley, Terry Fator, and the Calypso Tumblers.
Is Terry Fator the ventriloquist? I think he’s frigging amazing. Him and Cas – either one of them would be hokey doke with me. (Though as several people have said, Cas should be good for a record deal regardless, and I’ll certainly buy it.)
The martial arts guys can go home now, and the King Family*.
*reference no one under the age of 50 will get.
So, they whittle it all the way down from ten acts this week to EIGHT acts next week? They are really stretching this thing out pretty thin.
I think the comments from Piers on Cas Haley were right on the money - I liked his blues, but he needs to go back to acoustic. I also agreed with him on the karate guys - they took an adult, sexy (yeah, I said it) act and turned it into a cutesy kids act. Blech.
I’ve had fun with the Glamazons, but I think they have run their course.
Terry Fator has an amazing talent, but I’m growing tired of that, too.
The tumblers came back strong this week, in a big way (are those the guys that work in Battery Park for the folks standing in line for the Statue of Liberty Ferry?)
The country guy was good again, but it really bugs me how he looks into the camera while he sings with that phoney earnestness.
I’m also impressed with the 14 yr. old girl - but this is a grown up talent show, and I don’t think she can win it.
My top five (IN order)- Cas, Tumblers, Butterscotch, Country Guy, 14 yr. old
Wow, this is a terrible show. Several of the acts are good, but the production is awful. Terrible camera work, the audio sounds bad, even for the singers, and the bickering between the judges is so contrived and predictable it’s insulting.
Most of the acts are entertaining, but it’s a shame I have to watch them on this show.
I’m actually rooting for Fator, simply because picking a singer is too obvious and there is already a hit show that picks new singing talent.
However, I do think Butterscotch is amazingly talented and wouldn’t mind seeing her win.
That’s what TIVO is for. 
It takes me about 15 - 20 minutes to watch the entire hour and a half show I’m interested in: which is the act itself, and maybe the judges comments. All of the artist’s background, and Jerry Springer time I fast-forward through.
But that’s not why I’m replying. 
My pick for top 3 would be Butterscotch, Cas Haley, and the Glamazons.
Butterscotch is VERY good (this from a 50-something old fart who has little interest in beat-boxing) and could very well win the competition. Cas Haley has a great voice, great phrasing, and great stage presence. He may be even more likely to win it.
The Glamazons got a couple of negative comments above, but I really like them. Their act is great, even though I’m not really interested in fa… uh, even though I’m not usually interested in rubine…, uh Ah, hell, you get the idea.
J.
There’s no doubt that some of the more talented acts are going to go on and do things well worth their time on this show. Nevertheless, the top ten here, will, over the course of the show, each earn the producers several times a million dollars in advertising alone and the top prize is $1 million spread over FOURTY years? Jesus that’s cold.
I also thing the layout of the show is insane. Last year it was 50 acts widdled down to 10 over 5 shows and then down to the winner. That was MAYBE five on screen performances per performer before a winner was decided. Right now they’re hitting five and they’re down to their top 8. Then what? top 6? Top 5? Top 4? The final final final finale of all finales showdown?
There’s only so many times an act can “step it up” and “take it to the next level” week after week after week before you say of even the most talented acts out there “oh, another flip? Didn’t they do that last week?”
Which is why the singers have a great advantage. It’s got to be easier to polish up another song vs. choreograph and learn a new tumbling routine.
Am I the only one who doesn’t ‘get’ Butterscotch? I don’t mind beat-boxing - but her beat-boxing doesn’t sound all that good to me. And her singing-while-beatboxing isn’t very good either. It’s not very seamless. And she doesn’t sound like that great of a singer, other.
Everyone else seems to love her, so it’s possible I’m just missing something. Maybe there’s an ‘it’ factor I’m just not tuned into.
[Finally been in town long enough to catch up via TiVo]
I think that he legitimately fucked up, tried to recover, realized he was falling, and was then too embarrassed to stand up and shuffle offstage and thought “if I lay really still, they’ll think I’m seriously injured and I’ll save face.”
Glad that Boy Shakira and Bollywood guy are gone. We have been aghast at the judges’ decisions–letting great acts go home and putting utter crap through.
My favorite right now is the ventriloquist guy. I really liked the magician, but he made a very bad call doing that trick as his act. When you have more time you can start with silly stuff and build to something impressive. You don’t have that luxury here–you have to come out with the good stuff right away. I was sad to see him go because I’m sure he has amazing stuff he could have brought next time, but I am not surprised because that was some dumb shit. The pet theater guys made the same mistake–they did something that would be a great build up during a longer performance, rather than cutting right to the money shot which is what was required in this type of situation. They were also on my personal short list and I was sad to see them go. Sideswipe or whatever they’re called were cool, but it’s the same thing every time. The Tumblers I thought would be the same way, but they’re actually bringing new stuff and impressing me. Can’t stand the Duttons. At all.
I can’t express how much I loathe “Butterscotch”. Like Sam Stone, I have no idea where the love is coming from, because I think she’s unwatchable and unlistenable. She actually makes me angry when she’s onstage, she annoys me that much.
So, Butterscotch, what did “My Funny Valentine” ever do to you for you to do such grievous bodily harm to a perfectly nice song?
Wish it had been the Calypso Tumblers instead of Sideswipe – I think they were the more interesting of the troupes of men with six-packs bouncing around.
What happens next week? (When, dammit, I’m going to be on vacation – in a house that I think lacks a TV.)
If I understood what they said correctly: next week they do the same one-by-one ‘you’re in, perform’ routine EXCEPT only the top four will be in, and the other four out.
And then the top vote getter from next week’s show is the winner.
Seems really strange to go from 20 → 10 → 8 → 4 -->1
They say next week will be the finale. Does that mean the winner of the whole thing is the person who gets the most votes this week? Or is there another show after that just for announcing the winner? It’s a strange setup.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a competition between Terry Fator and Cas Haley. As for the others:
Butterscotch: I think she’d actually be better without the beat-boxing. It just doesn’t sound right doing that while trying to sing. When she just sang and played piano, she sounded great. Every time she beat-boxes, it takes me right out of the song.
Sideswipe: Much, much better than last week. Until they performed tonight, I thought it was a mistake to send the Calypso tumblers home and keep Sideswipe. But after that performance, I think it was the correct result. But they shouldn’t win.
The Glamazons: eh. A novelty act that’s only there because the women are overweight and therefore different. They can’t sing all that well, their timing isn’t very tight, and they don’t move all that well.
The other three singers (the girl, the country guy, the R&B guy): All decent singers, none all that special. Bianca Ryan, who won last week, is about two orders of magnitude above them in talent. If any of those three win, it would be a big letdown from last year’s winner, who truly was someone who stood out from the pack. If I went to any one of thousand lounges across North America and heard any of these three, I wouldn’t give them a second thought. Nice background music, and that’s about it.
Cas Haley is truly gifted. Although I’m pissed that the judges slammed him for doing the electric blues last week - I thought it was fantastic. But the judges are like that. At heart they’re a bunch of old farts who like MOR crap music, and any time a contestant steps out of the box and does something a little edgy, they get slammed for it. Then they get nervous and come back the next week with something safe and forgettable. I remember last year, when Bianca Ryan came out and did a flat out balls-to-the-wall version of Janis Joplin’s Piece of My Heart (Video Here), and the judges trashed her for it, saying it wasn’t ‘her kind of song’. So of course the next week she came back with another broadway show tune, and the judges loved it. She won the million bucks, but her first album was yet another collection of boring broadway tunes and old standards. I hope they don’t do that to Cas Haley.
Terry Fator is also fantastic, and as much as I like Cas, I’d like to see Fator win just as much, because it would be nice for someone other than a singer to win one of these shows, and the guy is singlehandedly rejuvenating ventriloquism as an art form.
Either of those two guys can win and I’d be happy.
Exactly. Plus, the good news is, both of them is going to get a pretty damn good career boost just out of being on the show – yup, Terry will get a Vegas gig, and Cas will get a CD. What they do with that boost – who knows. But I think they’re both incredibly talented, and I’d love either one of them to win. And I think one of them will win.
I agree with you. I pretty much got fed up with the show when they passed Bollywood Guy and Boy Transvestite on to the top 20. That was ridiculous. I haven’t made much of an effort to watch but when I do I mostly just watch the performances of Cas and Terry. The thing about Cas is, his voice isn’t fantastic, it’s unique but what comes through in his performance is his total love of the music and that makes it fun and enjoyable to listen to him. I’d probably buy a CD of his right now. Even if he doesn’t win he should still get a recording contract. But if he or Terry don’t win then I think I am truly done with the show and I will make a pointed effort not to watch next season.
I think Sam has basically nailed my feelings about the show.
I want Butterscotch to go away right this minute and never show up on my tv again. I can’t express how much she irritates me.
Like everyone else, I want either Cas or Terry to win, preferably Terry.