By Pat Bataillon
All I wanted last night after watching America’s Got Talent was a bottle of whiskey. A bottle of Jack Daniels would have helped me to understand what had just happened on that show. It was like I had walked into a bad dream. Think about it: David Hasselhoff in purple sunglasses with his all too familiar chest hair sneaking out of his pastel green shirt, a British guy insulting everyone, a singer I don’t know, and Regis singing. There was so much going on in this show I really don’t even know where to start.
The show started out with Regis singing to the crowd. Then a magician came out and performed with women wearing swimsuits. The next thing I know there is a guy catching eggs in his mouth and a biography about a guy that can’t juggle. Another act featured a man playing his teeth with his fingers. Suddenly, a car is awarded to a guy who did a backflip. Three out of the five contestants spoke broken English. See how this is confusing? And I am not even at the halfway point.
After the commercial break, The Blue Man Group covered “Baba O’Riley” with a band and a woman holding a violin leading the vocals. As the camera work spun and panned the audience of twelve- and forty-year-olds, the Blue Men sprayed silver toilet paper into the crowd. After another commercial break, two girls got up on stage to sing a song, and this is when I changed the channel. I’ll admit it, I didn’t know why I was watching this at the time and I freaked out a little.
I came back to see who won and it was a girl who danced. However, she did not perform last night. Apparently, she had performed last week and I had missed it. I gathered that she was doing some Celtic dancing and that won her a million dollars. I was so happy it was over. I willl never watch American Idol knockoffs again. Regis did a fine job playing Ryan Seacrest and the addition of the Knight Rider was a great call, but it just wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to convince me that America has got talent.
A note to the producers of America’s Got Talent: Possibly get people with talent to determine who does and who does not possess talent.
Posted on August 18, 2006