Before I begin, I’d like to stress that the only reason I watched this season at all was because I have family members who insist on watching it, and after this season I’m definitely done humoring them, damn the complaints. No one reason…the quality has been declining for a long time, and taking out two rounds and the judges’ saves screams “point of no return” to me…but the breaking point was definitely Ben Lapidus. When an obnoxious spoiled brat shows up and the show not only gives him all the attention he wants but gives him another week, that crosses the line. I can tolerate a lot of things in my entertainment, but gross immorality is not negotiable. There are few things in this world I find more loathsome than an enabler. Either the show takes out the trash or I take out the show. No exceptions.
America’s Got Talent season finale - NBC, 2 hours, 9/14/22
0:00 Literally the first words out of Terry Crews’ mouth are to announce the Black Eyed Peas, doing Don’t You Worry. Then the moment they’re done, Light Balance, one of many very entertaining acts that got completely shafted due to the endemic injustice of viewer vote-decided reality TV, did their hey-we’re-doing-fine-no-hard-feelings best…with Crews as a guest member. I remember when this episode was a fairly slow paced trip retrospective through the contest and the finallists’ lives, and right off the bad we’re going at Dancing With The Stars speed.
0:04 Crews announces AGT Live, because the only way to prevent all these nonwinners from going their own way and possibly feeling some resentment toward this show for performing their hearts out only to get zilch is to bring them all together by force. I imagine this is going to get pretty big pretty fast.
0:05 The judges. 
For those of you lost track: Howie Mandell is the bitter scold with colossal delusions of grandeur who’s at least 20 years behind the times, doesn’t know the first thing about how reality TV works, and exists basically to spray around his pigheaded opinions like diarrhea, Simon Cowell is the useless washed-up corporate tool with the charisma of toxic sludge who knows as much about entertainment as King Charles knows about NASCAR, Heidi Klum is the hyperactive shrieking airhead, and Sofia Vegara is the backup hyperactive shrieking airhead. They’re here due to a mandate at NBC that the finale cannot be far less irritating than the rest of the season. 
0:06 Recap of the final performances.
0:13 Crews proudly announces that we had “the highest number of votes this season”, which… 
geez, really? I’d certainly hope so! And he couldn’t even give the number. Wow, no way does this mean that the number is way lower than it was previous seasons and this show’s one little setback away from being banished to streaming! 
Oh yeah, 1.5 billion views online, because when your show runs on television, it’s a good idea to hype up one of your biggest competitors. 
In fairness, YouTube is the ideal medium if you want to see a specific act and not have to wade through mountains of dreck to get to it.
0:15 Backstage tomfoolery with Mandell.
0:17 Guest host Henry Winkler, who now bears an uncanny resemblance to Ric Flair (I don’t know how this came to me, it just did, okay? 
) announces Shin Lim, Nicholas Ribs, and Yu Hojin, who regale us with card tricks. Lim’s still as sharp as a razor, the others…charming in their own way. Not seamless, but looks very pretty nonetheless. I was going to draw an extremely unflattering comparison to Dustin Tavella, but I’m feeling too good right now.
Winkler plugs his new book. 
0:26 Drake Milligan pairs up with John Parney to…ugh…
OKAY, TIME OUT - All right, I’ve avoided this long enough. My problem with “both major types” is that it has no types. Metal has a plethora of styles, sounds, and speeds. So does rock. And jazz. Even pop. Electronic, heck, don’t even get me started. Country or southern or whatever the hell you want to call it is the same bland, boring, safe, predictable, consistent, constant, dull, lifeless pablum every time. I was forced to listen to hours and hours of this slop as a child, and I swear I could hear my brain shutting off. Country has poisoned AGT and is one of the surest signs that the quality has gone completely down the drain. Don’t @ me. Don’t #, ^, or \ me either, for that matter.
…well, whaddya expect. Milligan, incidentally, not only has a #1 hit out right now, he’s already signed a record deal, and he’s in talks with…gah. 
He’s set for life. He needs reality TV or a one-day Vegas act like Connor McDavid needs a paper route. If he wins the million, all that means is that he’ll get that nice ranch home in Tennessee a little sooner than expected. Geez. (If you haven’t guessed, I’m fuming just a bit at his presence here tonight.)
0:29 Immediate segue to Chapel Hart. It’s a cover. They set the stage on fire in their audition and each successive week have just gotten less and less impressive. 
0:36 Crews informs us that a comedian has never won, and here to show us why is Mike E Winfield (
) with a montage of some of the other humor vacuums that have been on this show. Of special note is this season’s Mr. Pants, whose thing is dressing up as an oversized pair of pants and making pants puns. That’s it. That’s all he does. A routine that sounds like a prank by a 5-year-old. And he made it past auditions! Anyway, Winfield and his fellow hacks, whom I will not make any effort to research, are here do a hearty roast of Simon Cowell for being critical of their performances. Because as we all know, the proper response to a small bloviating twit ripping on you is to act like an even smaller bloviating twit. Fricking pathetic.
0:49 Ventriloquism act featuring the captivating Celia Munoz. Joining her are past stalwarts Darci Lynne, and soon after Terry Fator (one of the few Vegas headliners this show has actually produced). Thanks to the kindness of the second-chance voters, she not only got to make twice as many appearances as she would have, she got to rub shoulders with two winners. I have to think that she’s flying high no matter where she finishes tonight.
0:54 Something something Halloween Horror Night something something haunted house something something bad acting.
0:57 Kristy Sellars and The Mayyas with some highly abridged bit they whipped up in one day. No real point other than to get them on stage for tonight.
1:04 Crews suck-up bit. This is his fourth season, for crying out loud…
1:06 Avery Dixon on saxophone and Jobo (sp?) Shorty on trombone. Exactly what it sounds like. Dixon, of course, was Crews’ Golden Buzzer, but nobody puts crushing expectations on saxophone players so he should be all right.
1:09 Season retrospective, just in case you needed to be reminded how this season could’ve been so rushed and at the same time seem to last freaking forever. 
1:17 Sara James and…wait for it…The Black Eyed Peas! They do a bunch of singing! 
1:21 Greetings from family and well-wishers. Cool technology. And given how internationalized this show is now, highly practical.
1:22 Oh hey, what’s this? Things have gotten so desperate that there’s now a prize for someone other than the winner! 
Kia is giving an EV6 to the winner and “the runner up or a special person who inspired their act”. Um… 
Well, I only saw two cars, so it’s not going to be both. I have the sinking feeling that this is just going to very slightly alleviate one massive injustice while implementing another one, but I’ll just have to wait and see with the official rationale is. If it ever becomes public. Not holding my breath.
1:28 Promo for AGT Live, in that impractically shaped hotel in Las Vegas. Confirmed acts are Duo Transcend, Light Balance, The Silhouettes, Deadly Games, Kodi Lee, The Clairvoyants, and Lea Kyle.
1:29 All right, it looks like they’re ready to begin. 
First off as always is the not-top 5, in no particular order, not like it matters.
1:30 Mike E Winfield. Eh, he tried.
1:31 Nicholas Ribs.
1:32 Celia Munoz. Whatever, she made her mark. She’ll go as far as her creativity, passion, and props budget take her.
1:33 Yu Hojin. Yeah, didn’t really expect either magician to win it all. Anything that relies that much on a piece of electronic equipment, fairly or not, is going to carry a “ooh, it’s just technology” stigma. That and I don’t really think an act where all the action takes place on a small surface is really a good fit for Vegas.
1:37 Avery Dixon and Chapel Hart. Predictable also-rans.
1:43 Moment of truth. 5th place, Chapel Hart. Three black women trying to make a break into country. AGT gave them TV time but nothing else; now they’re going to have to make it under their own power. The expression “good luck, you’ll need it” comes to mind.
1:49 4th place, Metaphysic. Did as well as could be expected. Good luck with whatever they’re trying to accomplish with that face technology.
1:51 3rd place, Drake Milligan. In an interesting coincidence, this was the same spot Josh Blue, another colossal ringer who had an army of backers before he took his first step onto the stage, finished last year. Let’s be honest, AGT was little more than a glorified publicity tour for him. It served its purpose and now he can drop the pretense and get on with his real career. Ride off into country stardom and never look back. That’s all I ask.
Which means…the two acts I thought should’ve been the final two actually are! Funny how Primetimer thought they were in trouble because they performed the previous week (something about familiarity or whatever), and now here they are.
And now a dilemma I rarely see on reality TV, much less AGT, the contestant who deserves it more versus the contestant who needs it more. Kristy Sellars was the star of this season, hands down. Hers was the only act in the final that I thought had the feel of a grand, bold, gorgeous Vegas act. So she won the Aussie program, so what? Winning a college championship doesn’t mean you can’t also have a Super Bowl ring. On the other hand, with such a pedigree and the airtime she’s gotten here, I have no reason to think she’ll have trouble becoming a success story. The same isn’t true for The Mayyas, who made a big jump from a really, really crappy place to live (Hey, don’t take my word for it!) to a nice place to live if you speak English and have enough money. They don’t have an international presence or any clout in the various entertainment industries. This is their big shot, their foot in the door, their ticket out of the fields of death and ruin. If they come up short here, they just worked their tails off and went the distance only to get no annuity, no Vegas act, no future. (Plus I have no idea how all 36 of them are going to split up that car.)
Huh.
1:58 Winner…The Mayyas. 
As usual, totally sucks that one of them had to finish second. I’m outta here…