First off, if you do not record American Idol using a digital video recorder, such as Tivo, you really should. Unless you are a fan of the tedious, such as watching paint dry or televised golf, sitting through the show’s interminable commercials can be sheer agony. That being said, once you start zipping through commercials, you can also speed through other less engaging portions of the show. That is, if you are my husband.
From my husband’s perspective, the singing on American Idol is everything. He would just as soon zip through the judges’ comments, the poignant biographical videos, Ryan’s post-performance interviews-in other words, anything that falls under the category “human interest.” When I am not in the room, my husband keeps the remote control at the ready, clicking from song to song without any chit chat or melodrama. If he doesn’t like a performance, he will zip through that, too, slicing a minute and a half song to 30 or 60 seconds. He is proud of the fact that he can watch an entire hour-long American Idol show in less than 15 minutes.
As you might have already guessed, my American Idol viewing style is the opposite of my husband’s. Sure I enjoy the performances, but half the fun is wondering which of the judges will like them and what they will say. Will Randy say “That didn’t do it for me, Dawg” or call it “pitchy?” Will Kara act as if her dog just died when she has to tell someone his performance was painful to listen to? Will Paula fall all over herself raving about the performance as if it were the best vocal performance she has heard since Judy Garland sang Over the Rainbow? And, most importantly, will Simon dig deep into his bag of insults and pull out another sour lemon… or will he surprise us with one of his underwhelming compliments (e.g., “That actually wasn’t completely terrible”).
All I can say is that my husband is lucky that I do not commandeer the remote control on Superbowl Sunday. If that were the case, we would skip through all of those endless group hugs and repetitive running around the field knocking people over and instead skip from commercial to commercial, which everyone knows is the most enjoyable part of the Superbowl along with the half-time show and nachos.
Now, with the voting portion of Season 8 of American Idol just getting underway, the battle of the remote control has just begun in our household. Fortunately, my husband is usually chivalrous and relinquishes the remote to me, though he lets me know about every five minutes how painful it is for him to watch the show using my method.
As they say in TV-Land… stay tuned!!
