American Idol

To me, the only reasons to watch this show were the early-season tryout episodes showcasing the delusional freak show contestants. Once they got to the actual competition I stopped watching, because honestly who cares.

I really enjoyed the first season, back when there were two hosts. There was Ryan Seacrest, the terrible human with no redeeming qualities. Then there was Brian Dunkleman, hilarious and entertaining. Unfortunately he didn't get the memo that America doesn't care about that if you aren't good looking and fail to give yourself a good stage name. I'll never forgive the show for cutting Dunkleman after the first season.

I've watched every single season since inception. It's my guilty pleasure (along with Big Brother) The best part was obviously the auditions, especially the early seasons with Randy and Simon just laughing in people's faces (William Hung) What kept me watching was the singing talent. Some truly great voices came out of this show, most notably Carrie Underwood. Remember when people were trolling the show and voting for the bad contestants? Looking at you Sanjaya. That's gonna be a no from me dog!

Take the excellent concept of bringing unknown talent to the stage, then ruin it with sadistic, high-pressure, over-produced contest which does not even come close to fair or representative of anything but the power to auto-dial.

I found this show's ratings dominance super annoying.

https://youtu.be/lHjIXCCHh3s

Demoralization propaganda for scholars? At times needlessly cruel as a sport, but mostly just rewards artistic conformity. Sometimes audition reels are funny, you wonder if they are staged just for attention sometimes? Other times, it’s just some little weirdo doing their thing & getting dissed for it when it wasn’t objectively bad, it was just quirky. It’s the kind of show that makes me feel like human mass extinction is probably fine, but then I remember it’s just a fraction of one country.

How to rate these shows that go on for 20 seasons of extremely variable quality? Almost impossible. (Especially when you stop watching).

it gave us masterpiece performances, more specifically that by Mary Guilbeaux AKA icon supreme of the universe.

Despite occasionally having incredibly talented people, American Idol suffers from focusing on compelling backstory than compelling performances. It also lost all credibility after Simon Cowell left the judges' table.