My guess is you’re not the target market!
I haven’t seen it, but the ratings were apparently disappointing - 12m rather than the expected 20m for the first show. Came in lower than Idol’s first show of this year.
I bet Cowell is not a happy man right now.
Trash.
I DVRed it, but can’t decide if I want to bother watching it. With Survivor and Amazing Race, why would I need another competition show right now?
If you have it on DVR, and fast forward to just the people singing, you really should be able to get through this in 15 minutes, tops. They have some pretty good singers on this, but mentioned, you have to wade through the crap to get to hear them. DVR is the way to go. So far, between the first two shows aired, there are about 6 singers worth listening to.
He’s fine. He’s way more than fine…he’s fantastically successful and wealthy and he’s having a great time. Not being as big as you might have hoped will not undermine that.
I watched both nights and enjoyed them. I think the talent is a notch above what is typical for American Idol.
The girl that sang Melanie is already in my mind going to be tough to beat. She is so so good.
And the Irish fellow Brendan O’Hara (I think), is possibly the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. He literally took my breath away. I have no idea if he can sing.
I don’t know if I would watch the show without the DVR though. Two hours to see what amounts to 3 good singers overall is too much. I hate the commercials and all the stupid shit.
And Paula’s drama queen nonsense is just too silly for words. She was constantly on the prowl when she was on Idol and yet she’d have us believe that the very sight of a penis is enough to make her puke. That is not the way to get a boyfriend Paula.
I did still enjoy the good talent though.
Obviously I don’t know him, but he strikes me as the kind of guy whose ego was heavily invested in this show beating Idol.
Only saw a little of it in real time. Some initial impressions:
Yes, Simon Cowell has mellowed out quite a bit. Of course, there’s going to be a lot of speculation as to why. My guess is that he’s simply happier now. He has much more control over the process, he’s getting a much higher caliber of contestant, and he doesn’t have to butt heads with Ryan Seacrest and other people that annoy him. Looking at him on American Idol over the years, he looked and sounded exactly like someone who just plain tired of all the crap. Now he has a fresh start and can ditch the contrived villain schtick and just be a smart, no-nonsense judge. (We’ll see how long that lasts!)
The contestants seem to be very good overall. I’m amazed at some of the hopefuls the judges turned down! And even more so because there are four categories, meaning far more contestants to choose from. The producers obviously made it very clear that if they want to have any chance of winning five million dollars, they’d better impress from day one. I definitely approve.
The audience was amazingly well-behaved, especially compared to the yahoos that plague American Idol and Dancing With The Stars. Whenever any of the judges said something critical, or unflattering, or harsh (which wasn’t that often, honestly), for the most part, they remained quiet and let them finish. Okay, a few grumbles and groans here and there, but that’s all. Heck, even the cheering didn’t get out of hand. Where did they find these people? And can DWTS give them free tickets?
Remarkably, this could be the first reality show in a long time that I actually enjoy watching. (Sorry, Hell’s Kitchen, The Elise Wims Show was practically the definition of a shark jump.) It just plain looks GOOD, a quality that seems to be in regrettably short supply these days.
I’ll watch the recording tomorrow if I’m up to it.
Which cities did Episode 2 cover?
Miami and Dallas.
J. Mark the philosophy graduate student singing (and dancing) to “Creep” was AWESOME! I’m so glad he’s going on! I mean, he can’t sing all that well, but damn, he’s entertaining.
Loved the guy from Columbus with the crazy mom. I enjoy it when it seems like someone will be terrible and they turn out great.
He was either really good or really bad. I’m just not sure which. It was sort of hard to look away.
I’m optimistic that they may have actually managed to find some serious talent on this show.
I think all the talent contests find SOME very talented folks. whether I’d want to watch the tv show is another matter.
I watched most of it last night.
There was one audition that was so uncomfortable I could barely stand it…the little red-haired guy of about 45 who came with his mom, he’d never kissed a girl, and he “sang” Mariah Carey’s Hero. You could tell they both really were that clueless. His mom just looked absolutely transported by rapture while he was on stage. Simon managed to restrain his nastiness at least to the point where it flew under their radar, and Paula gave the guy a big hug. Good for her!
Let’s see, there was one girl I really liked: She wore a paisley shawl type thing, was covered in tattoos, and had bleached hair and garish red lipstick. Damn that girl could sing!
Two I hated: There was an extremely good-looking blonde girl, she sang Alone, by Heart. She fucked up the beginning, which was pitched too low for her, then hit it out of the park with the chorus. Did I mention she looked good? Four yeses. :rolleyes:
The other one was the male model, he had written his own song, which was pretty decent, and he had a terrific voice. He thought he was the hottest shit that had ever been shat. I hope he dies.
This show MUST be watched with a DVR, but I am thoroughly enjoying it. I skip all the filler, backstory, time wasting crap, and just stop for the introduction to the judges and the singing and the judging. We get through a 2 hour episode in about an hour I’d say.
Quite a bit better than american idol… I like the audience cheering when someone comes on and blows you away. Even though I’ve only seen about 3 seasons of Idol, the talent on x factor so far has been phenomenal (3 or 4 stick out as being amongst the best I’ve ever heard on these talent shows).
Overall, I’m really liking it. Simon and paula are great together. And LA is SO much better than Randy.
Was there anyone good in the first 30 minutes? My DVR malfunctioned and I missed the first half-hour. Came in when the short-haired girl was singing “Always Be My Baby” and saw everything after that.
There was a mother and daughter team on Wednesday night that was similarly clueless - they both looked like hell and sang even worse, but they were telling each other things like, “You look good. You sounded good. I think Simon would have said yes.” Well, at least they have each other. 
He will someday - does that help at all? Hey, maybe he’ll get a coach who’ll put him in his place!
Yeah…but I’m afraid he’s going to win!
One of my relatives was a contestant in these final rounds of auditions, and our family and I accompanied her throughout the day. She didn’t get enough judge’s votes to make it past this round, and didn’t appear on air except for a brief one-second flash last night and in some of the promos and commercials. In two days of auditions in the city, there must have been 50 - 80 performers, so only a few end up being shown on air. Many of the winners as well as losers didn’t make it onto the air. There was a lovely high-school-aged a cappella group, a cute female country singer, lots of people who didn’t have enough of a dramatic back story to show on air, but hopefully will be seen in the boot camp episodes.
One thing that really surprised me was how clueless the bad performers really were. They all truly believed that they were something special, no matter how terrible they were. None of them realized they were picked only for their comical entertainment value. It was actually quite tragic to see some of the performers who had actually been led to believe that they were chosen to go to these third rounds of auditions because they were good. Presumably, no one close to them filled them in, probably on the remote chance that things could go well. Thankfully, the saddest cases didn’t make it on air, probably because it made the producers of the show look incredibly cruel.
To give an idea of how sad it was, they had two rooms set aside with a psychologist in each to counsel any failed contestants that the handlers thought might be dangerously devastated by their loss and public humiliation. Here’s one of the Psych Rooms, with the handler, and here’s the other one, with “Dr. Chris”, psychologist, inviting in one of the contestants who had been deemed possibly to be too emotionally distraught to send away without help. That session lasted about 45 minutes. (There was also a Security Check room across the hall where all the contestants had been background-screened ahead of time before being allowed to appear to ensure none of them were obviously dangerous.)
Nicole Scherzinger was still one of the backstage hosts, not replacing Cheryl Cole as judge until a few weeks later. She and Steve Jones (whatever happened to him, anyways?) stayed on camera with the families behind the stage curtain as we watched the performance on monitors. She was unbelievably kind, long after the cameras were done rolling. I cannot say enough about her. Contestants didn’t get to meet any of the four judges, though; security was understandably very tight.