Cheers and Jeers, Over and Out

Now that the Great American Election is over, and Taylor Hicks has won (thanks to those millions of Alabamans who voted 25 times each), the television season has come to a whimpering end. I'm so frustrated by the sudden lack of anything to Tivo that I'm actually writing again. But to stay on topic, I will analyze the conclusions of the many series that kept me casually rapt the past month or so.

"American Idol" actually grew duller as the series went into ist final eliminations. Once Chris Daughtry absorbed his jaw-dropping expulsion the show seemed to lose its credibility. It seems only hayseeds can win this one. That is not to say that Katharine McPhee was a better singer than Taylor Hicks (though I think she is). She was not distinctive enough and couldn't bring sufficient energy to her numbers to counter the spasodic gyrations of Hicks that could have easily been dismissed as bad Elvis. Her strength is the slow seductive ballad, which is limiting. I don't fret for Kat, though. Her looks and counterintuitively unspoiled personality will carry her far. Living in L.A. won't hurt either, though Kat's bailiwick will certainly be Broadway, like Diane DeGarmo, a previous runner-up who's been doing "Hairspray." Kat can slide right into Belle in "Beauty and the Beast" or Fantine in "Les Miz." Not a lot of dough there, and her album won't sell as well as Taylor's. I'd buy it though, and wouldn't be caught dead playing a Hicks CD.

As popular as this show is--and it is Fox's Gravy Train special--it is getting tiresomely formulaic and almost as predictable as "Survivor." If I had to hear one more "Hey, Dog, check it out!" from Randy I might have thrown a brick into my HDTV. I'm getting to like Simon more and his coworkers less. I agreed with Simon's early "karaoke" judgment of Taylor's appeal, and also give him credit for backstepping to acknowledge, at least, his populist appeal.

Also getting very formulaic is "The Apprentice," the only spring reality show not yet concluded. In an upset, the last two female contestants were cast aside when they started to criticize each other cattily in the Boardroom. If they had been men, the phrase "cattily" would not have been applicable, which underscores a certain sexist double standard from the Donald, who usually expects his candidates to fight for their lives. The two finalists, then, are Metrosexual Britisher Sean and Very Jewish New Yorker Lee. Sean is suave and smooth but seems to have been coasting through the competition. Lee is very young, rather grating, but feisty and very, very intuitive. This is a hard one to predict. Trump, a slave to appearances, may simply prefer the handsome guy over the dweeb. On the other hand, with Old George heading off to retirement or the Great Miami Beach in the Sky, it might behoove Trump to bolster his Semitic ranks.

The three other major Reality programs all provided satisying conclusions, which somewhat allayed my rooting frustrations, since my Rotisserie Team has been dreadful and cellar-dwelling. (Jeers to the Cheers!) "Survivor," following its recent pattern alternating athletic guy champs with designing women, fell into the lap of Aras the Lithuanian from Santa Monica, who at 24 has an MBA and played pro basketball in his ancestral land. He was a decent sort and hard not to like. The same went for B.J. and Tyler, the so-called "hippies" who gladhanded their way around the world on "Amazing Race." Just short of being annoying, they outplayed some neglibible competition. The producers really manipulated the editing to make them the sympathetic heroes, so I felt a little used.

The "American Idol" spin-off from Simon Callow, "American Inventor," was a bit tedious, because the inventions that were displayed did not rock the imagination. Rather than go for glitz, the producers emphasized the Horatio Alger angle for the contestants to maximize the emotional power of their stories, while mining as much comic relief as they could from the hopelessly tacky inventions of the early rounds. Eventually the finals came down to a vote that seemed to disregard the inventors' personalities and focus on their gadgets. The four finalists were a chest device to help train pass receivers, a dangerous extension of a tandem bicycle, a nifty but simple word game, and a cradle to save babies form getting killed in auto collisions. I didn't cast my phone ballot, but I would have gone with what the plurality decided. It's hard to vote against saving babies.

More about the plethora of satisfying ("24") and unsatisfying ("Desperate Housewives") finales in my next edition.