American Idol: Review of Season Eight Premiere

Tuesday, January 13, marked the first episode of season eight of American Idol. As in previous years, the show started with the preliminary auditions, but this year there was a new twist: a fourth judge, Kara (pronounced care-uh, not car-uh) DioGuardi. However, this was the only aspect to set this show apart from many, many before it.

As in previous seasons, we saw a large number of American Idol hopefuls whose aspirations were much higher than their talent could take them. We saw the drama queen rocker boy, who cried through the whole audition because it meant so much to him-but not enough to actually learn how to sing or anything. There was bikini girl, who was surprisingly not awful, but nevertheless felt the need to rely on a gimmick to get her through.

While there were a few gems who may go far in the American Idol competition, such as rocker girl with the multi-colored hair and the very sweet blind boy who loves music, there were far too few of them. There were 37 golden tickets given out in Phoenix, but we saw a sadly small selection.

While the bad auditions are rather amusing and memorable (remember the guy from last year in the feather costume who sang his original song "You are my brother..."?), the joke is growing old and stale. As Simon said to one hopeful, "Have you seen the show?" Why people continue wasting everyone's time in auditioning when they have no talent whatsoever is beyond me. In my opinion, the judges are saints for putting up with all of them.

For myself, I would like to see all of the good auditions and just a few of the more notable bad ones-and the obligatory bad singer sing-along, Tuesday's being "Wanted: Dead or Alive". Those are hilarious.

The coming weeks will show whether American Idol will be worth watching this year. If all of the auditions go as Tuesday's did, there is little hope. However, I for one will continue watching in hopes they come up with some good contestants.