Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Fringe, American Idol

Basically, what was on Fox last night.

Fringe: What's most interesting about the last two episodes is that they were free standing. There were no references to the Pattern or Massive Dynamic, the two conspiracy nodes of the previous part of the season. There was no obvious appearance of the Observer. If he was in there, I missed him. There was no development of Peter's mysterious backstory, or anything revealed about his childhood.

American Idol: I never felt like watching this until a friend gave me a link to Adam Lambert's performance of "Tracks of My Tears" a few weeks ago. It was a very nice performance. In conjunction with his sexual ambiguity, discussed in this New York Times article this past Sunday, he's caught my interest. I inadvertently caught his performance last week because American Idol ran late, into Fringe's time slot and he performed last. Also see this NPR blog piece analyzing an ABC news report on Adam after last night's show, which described him as "coy". The NPR blog says, no, he's not coy at all, he's completely above board. (If you Google "Adam Lambert kissing", you'll see what I mean. Digging the purple hair, Adam.) He just hasn't made some big announcement. Anyway, I decided to just give in and tune in to American Idol full stop.

I didn't see the entire show. I missed a couple of the performances in the middle. Of the ones I saw, I think Adam's performance of "Born to be Wild" was far and away the best. Simon Cowell's comment was rather strange, I thought. He said he thought the performance was like something out of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and that half the audience might not like it. I have no idea what that means. Was he trying to compare Adam to the transvestite character in that movie, Frank-N-Furter? Because he was wearing eye makeup? Umm, really not sure. Did he think the singing style was too over the top? It was kind of mysterious.



Second was Allison Irehata, which surprises me because my basic reaction was that I didn't like her performance. But I liked it better than the others. It was more lively and charismatic. The rest chose very limpid, slow songs. Although I love the song "Falling Slowly" from the movie, "One," Kris Allen bobbled his notes at the beginning and it was just not a very interesting performance. Generally I don't care for the styles of singing or music chosen, sorry to say. They generally have nice voices, but the energy just doesn't compare to Adam's or Allison's.

I know that Quentin Tarantino has been on American Idol in the past, but I have no idea why he's on it. I thought he was a movie director. Since when is he a vocal coach? I noticed that he had nothing to say to improve Adam's performance. Or they at least chose not to include anything he may have said like that.

OK, I couldn't resist.

1 comment:

Will said...

I love Walter on Fringe, but I have only watched bits and pieces of that show. I love the blond--which I think I may have mentioned to you before. The first episode, I thought was great, but subsequent episodes turned me off. Should I start watching this show again?

Also, I love Adam. I saw him sing some cover that I really liked a few weeks ago--wanna say it was The Smiths? And I think he has a great look--and loads of charisma. I don't watch American Idol, but I was clicking around and got mesmerized by him and his singing.