Mad Men: Oh my god! They killed Kenny!!! Oh wait, never mind, he just got Cheneyed. Yeah I would want off that account too. I do not see how anyone can get hard feelings if you leave after getting shot in the face. And Don was really on point this week, giggling like a baby, saving, then humiliating Ted, gets caught nailing a neighbor by Sally last week and this week she ships herself off to boarding school. I wonder how long until he asks Megan to wear that wig in bed. But I was really disappointed that Bob Benson juts turned out to be another Don Draper, but possibly gayer. I wonder if there s another shoe to drop. And I do not mean the heavily rumor that he is the love chick of Don and the hooker from the flashback earlier in the season. But that still was not more disappointing that the unnecessary return of Creepy Glen. That had to have been the worst choreographed fight scene ever put to film.
You can download Mad Men on iTunes.
Switched at Birth: Ouch, Daphne really looked hurt when Regina told her not to clean up because she was “a guest.” And it only got worse when she caught the Vasquez clan dancing together at the end of the episode. I have a feeling she will be taking out that frustration on the tennis court this season.
You can stream recent episodes on Switched At Birth on iTunes.
The Voice: I skipped out on the show after the egregious elimination of Caroline Glaser but tuned into the finale because I figured she would pop back up and of course the awesomeness of Bob Seger and the first live performance from Cher in over a decade which turned out to be the worst live performance since the Britney Spears VMA debacle. The finale was pretty befuddling; I get Danielle Bradbery, not the greatest voice but was always in my Top Ten Power Rankings this season and rates very high on the likeability scale. But how did the other two turn out to be The Swon Brothers and Michelle Chamuel made it that far? I thought Michelle benefited from being on the worst team and would not have even made the Live Shows if she was on any other team, instead she benefits from being the anti-country choice this season. While The Swon Brother lucked through on Blake’s Team taking a spot in the Live Shows that should have gone to Caroline, Savannah Berry, Grace Askew, or even Luke Edgemon. I thought for sure after the first Live Show, they would be one of the first three acts voted out with Josiah Hawley and Garrett Gardner.
After the lackluster second season, I was inspired to write 10 Ways to Fix The Voice and two seasons later the implemented four of them the next season and three more this season (well Shakira was closer to a “rock” judge than they have had before but they came close to banning Adele, the only person who sang one of her songs did not get any of the coaches to turn around for her and I do not recall anyone annoyingly screaming “I Love You” while Adam was talking). Even the sob stories seemed to be toned down this season. Still season four was the worst season yet, I stopped watching season two just short of the finale, but was out this season after the first live shows. But unlike after season two, the fixes are easier and really only need three.
1) Tweak the Voting System Again: One of my biggest complains about season two was how Chris Mann made it into the finals when Lindsey Pavao crushed him on the iTunes Charts every week (and to a lesser extent RaeLynn and Jermaine Paul). In season three they introduced the iTunes Bonus where if an artist reached the top ten on the iTunes Overall Chart their iTunes votes would be multiplied by 10. Trevin Hunte advanced further than his iTunes sales would have suggested but for the most part I think every week but one where the lowest selling artists were voted off.
Fast forward to the first live show of this season, Caroline and Sarah Simmons are the only two artists to have all four of the songs enter the iTunes Overall chart after they were released, that week Caroline was the only contestant to have all four of her songs on the Overall Chart at the same time (to put this into perspective, no one else this season did this until they started releasing two songs per week a month later), all four of which were higher than Josiah’s highest charting song. Despite being the two best selling contestants overall up to that point, Caroline and Sarah ended up in Adam’s bottom two while Judith Hill inexplicitly went through even though she was over fifty spots behind them on the iTunes charts. It did not help there were voting irregularities that week where they threw out all the internet and texting votes. That meant there were a lot of phone calls for Judith to make up the difference. I can buy if someone is within ten or so spots on the iTunes charts can overcome someone by other methods but not fifty spots, especially during a week with “voting irregularities”.
So the show really needs to tweak the voting system again to put more say into the hands of the music buying public because those are the people who are going to buy the albums after the show, not the people who just vote on the internet for an hour trying to stuff the ballots. Even though I like the iTunes voting, it is a bit arbitrary and clunky. I believe there was a time last season where Amanda Brown sold more copies of a song than a previous week but it was the previous song got the iTunes bonus because it just so happened to chart higher despite selling less songs. They could maybe change that to a fixed number like say if you sell over 25,000 songs you get the bonus. Or if they are really like having it fixed to the iTunes Charts, expand the iTunes Bonus to something like top ten gets a x10 multiplier, top 25 gets a x5 multiplier, top 50 gets a x2 multiplier. The more the show lets the music buying public decide who advances and wins, the better chance that artists has of becoming successful and more credible the show is.
2) Make Sure the Live Shows Are More Diverse: If you remember back to the first Live Show, America saved only country and RnB artists (again Michelle was extremely lucky to be on a team with only one RnB sing and no country) while the rockers, pop singers, latin, and folk artists were stuck hoping their coach saved them. Country ended up overtaking the RnB singers with four of the last six contestants. In comparison, here is the breakdown of the final four contestants’ genres of the four seasons:
Season One: pop dude, indie-folk chick, pop rocker chick, and classic rock chick
Season Two: RnB dude, rocker chick, folk-rock dude, opera dude
Season Three: pop rock chick, rocker dude, blue eyed soul man, RnB dude
Season Four: three country singers and whatever Michelle was supposed to be
Really last season, each team was super diverse with the exception of Christina and her Mini-Me’s (who were not surprisingly quickly eliminated). Blake even said he only wanted to take one country singer last season because he did not want them to siphon each other’s votes. But that is not clearly the case. When fans of Danielle were done voting for her, they would then vote for Amber. Then the Swon Brothers. Then Holly Tucker creating a coattail effect where all the country artists benefited from being alike. I guess it would be easy to limited people to only ten votes per person per method (with the exception of iTunes) where voters would have to chose if they want to give all ten votes to Danielle, or if they want to go 3-3-2-2 to Danelle, Amber, Swons, and Holly.
Of course it would be much easier just to tell the coaches to make sure they have a more diverse team next season because have two genres takes up over half of the live shows (nine of the sixteen spots) really hurt the quality of the show. It is very telling that as the Live Shows went along the ratings in the much coveted 18-49 demo crashed and burned, breaking record lows multiple times during the Live Shows yet the overall viewers stayed about the same, and even had the most watched finale. This says that the audience got really old really quick over the course of the season. It almost turned into American Idol overnight which was helped by being dominated by two genres that skew old and this season of The Voice going against a season of American Idol where even the most loyal viewers were jumping ship to avoid Nicki Minaj. To think how much more entertaining and diverse the top twelve could have been had it included Caroline, Luke, Jess Kellner, and Mary Miranda instead of eight country and RnB singers.
3) Put a Moratorium on Songs: Thankfully were not stuck listening to singers trying to out-Adele Adele this season, but there were still way too many recycled songs. Case in point when Judith sang Feeling Good. Not only had the song already been performed this season during the blind auditions, but it has been performed four times on the show over the past year. That is overkill. I Have Nothing has been performed each of the last three seasons. There really needs to be a moratorium on singing a song on back-to-back season if not a full year ban. It is time for the song selection to be more diverse. Seriously people, Tom Petty is one of the greatest artists of all time but if you watch the show you would think his only songs were American Girl and Won’t Back Down, both repeat song this season. I would make an exception if the singers switch up the arrangement. Like how Seven Nation Army was performed each of the last three seasons too (I would have thought if there was on The White Stripes song that would become a standard it would have been We’re Going to Be Friends), but Jamar Rogers did a more straight forward version while Melanie Martinez did a folky version and Garrett Gardner went with a reggae arrangement. But that is the only exception. I am sure The Voice has a couple thousand, if not million, songs available to license, they should not be recycling songs so often, especially in the same season. If you need help selecting some new song, my services are available.
The show took my advice after the second season and the third turned out to be the best yet. It was just followed by the worse of the four. But these are easy fixes that the show really needs to implement especially when it comes to a diverse Live Show where the show quickly became American Idol this season. And if The Voice does not make these easy fixes, it will quickly go the way of American Idol where old people with their telephones determine who advances and the boring winner if forgotten by the time the next season starts up.
You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can buy my ten favorite performances this season with the widget at right.
Pretty Little Liars: I love Hanna, where all the other girls are calculating and plotting, Hanna just does not care. Her best moment was last season when she confronted Jenna about being able to see. Her confronted the rival swimmer was not as epic because I am still not entirely sure who she is. It seems like just through that character in because neither Jenna nor Melissa were available for stretches of time. But Hanna just went ahead and put her on blast with little to no evidence. Love it. Then randomly she just takes Allison’s old parrot just because it may remember something Allison could have said two years ago. But I really hope they do not wait until the end of the season to reveal that Allison is still alive, it just seems inevitable at this point, so why drag it out.
You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Pretty Little Liars on iTunes.
The Hero: Everyone was really altruistic the first week, but after Shaun screwed over his team last week, the floodgates were opened this week with both Athena and Darnell taking the money. We have to wait until next week to see if Darnell actually tells anyone he took the money or lie and say he lost. But the house really crushed Athena unfairly. When Patty turned down the offer (by a hilariously disguised The Rock), I thought she was an idiot. Then more people turned him down until Athena said yes. Personally I would have said yes in a heartbeat and would not have begrudged anyone who would have. During the first two episodes I really did not have any rooting interest in any of the contestants, but after seeing everyone gang up on her unfairly, I will probably vote for Athena at the end of the season.
You can download The Hero on iTunes.
Hannibal: I have longed assumed the season would end with either Hannibal or will in jail. A great finale that tied (quite literally) everything in the season together. Cannot wait until next season to see how long until Will is able to clear his name and at the same time prove that it was Hannibal that set him up. Complicating things is that Hannibal knows that Will knows. Hopefully people will be able to find the show in its second season so there will be a third.
You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Hannibal on iTunes.
The Swons were in the finale because of some entertaining and much improved performances at just the right time; they peaked when they needed to while others were backtracking. Michelle was in the finale because she was the most dynamic performer on the show the entire season and consistently emotionally connected to the songs and the audience. This is, of course, my opinion, but it was also the opinion of the studio audience - she got by far the biggest crowd response on a regular basis - and also the people writing for Rolling Stone, EW, E!, and most major entertainment blogs. Well before the finale, they were predicting it would come down to Danielle and Michelle with Danielle probably taking the victory; the Swons were indeed a surprise, but they created their later success. Speaking of surprise - I'm surprised that I am responding to your blog, particularly with such a fairly lengthy post, but I feel it's wrong for you to essentially dismiss the talent of 2 of the 3 acts in the finale when you admit to not even watching any of the live rounds save the finale. That's like writing a negative restaurant review that comments on the entree and desert selection when you only ate one appetizer. Hubris is not a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI do not think your restaurant comparison is apt. I watched fifteen of the twenty-one performance episodes this season, that would be more like walking out after eating half the main course after realizing my meal would have been better spent by going to McDonalds instead. I think four performances is a good sample size to judge a singer. I do not want to wait around for the Swon Brothers to improve when there were already people around them much better. Most improved is an award to school children to make them feel better.
DeleteAnd of course those website ended up champion Michelle at the end, you really think Rolling Stone would get behind one of the blond teen-aged country singers from Texas? (Same goes for an audience made up of young people of Southern California, not known as a hot bed of country music.) Like I said above, the main reason people rallied around her was she became the anti-country candidate. When I was paying attention to the show, no one had Michelle as the front runner, everyone thought the winner would come from Adam's team while they thought Usher's team was laughably bad, with one critic calling it the worst team ever formed on the show (I still have Christina's team last season as the standard barer of bad). But let's be honest, had she won, Michelle would have become the female Taylor Hicks, a singer people who never watched The Voice listen to and think, "This person won a singing competition?"
Just out of curiosity, just how much do you like the Swon Brothers and Michelle? How exactly do they stack up to the other finalist on the show in your opinion? Personally I would have them in the bottom four with Christina's two finalist back when they had team quotas. Maybe the bottom two if I really sat down and thought about it.
Now if you excuse me, I need to go hunt down a Sahara Desert Sundae
obviously I meant dessert....duh...though definitely check out that fantastic Sahara Desert Sundae...
ReplyDeleteSo you missed all 6 performance episodes between knockouts until the finale? My comparison stands, though I'll give you that you strangely went back to this restaurant you wanted to spend no more time at and grabbed a desert. (I'd like to think it was a Sahara Desert Sundae.) Just fyi, I wrote a much longer reply to this in which I pointed out the circular logic of your Rolling Stone assertions and added that I indeed think Michelle has a great voice. (Do you think Glazer's voice is universally lauded btw? It definitely isn't and is in fact quite polarizing, though I do personally like her voice too.) However, I erased all that stuff because I realized this is an audience of only 2 and neither of those 2 is going to be swayed.
ReplyDeleteI still think four is a good sampling, that is an EP right there. In comparison, the finalist in season one only sang five solo songs the entire season.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, in the age of the internet, nothing and no one is universally lauded but I do think Caroline has a better chance of being successful than most everyone that made it further than her. I find it more impressive those that can sell songs before the live shows when they do not count as votes and Caroline was the only one besides Sarah Simmons that had all three pre-Live Shows songs on iTunes Overall chart while Caroline was the only one who had all four songs on the iTunes charts the week of the first Live Show (not to mention out selling the eventual winner when releasing the exact same song). That is more impressive to me that getting someone to download a song that just counts as a vote. As the failures of Voice contestants of the past have shown, just because you can compel someone to buy your song when it counts as a vote does not mean they will bother to buy it when it does not. Caroline and Sarah were the only contestants this season who were able to get people to consistently buy their songs just for the love of the music.