Bittersweet: One more episode of IdolCritic, but the last . . . for now. More to come on different fronts. In the meantime, savor Liza:
Posts Tagged ‘americanidol’
IdolCritic finale
Thursday, May 24th, 2007Say it ain’t so
Thursday, May 17th, 2007Melinda gone? How could it happen. Mary C. Matthews, producer of Idol Critic, explained it to me in email: “Did we really expect a nation that voted GWB in TWICE to at least choose an American Idol wisely?”
Meanwhile, over at IdolCritic
Friday, May 11th, 2007Liza Persky’s latest take on IdolCritic and Barry Gibb’s teeth:
Idol Critic: A special double edition
Friday, April 27th, 2007
Idol Critic: Sanjayanara!
Thursday, April 19th, 2007Sanjaya’s gone and Liza’s shocked and disappointed and relieved. Watch to the very last punchline; I won’t ruin it for you; just watch.
And thanks for the reviews Idol Critic is getting. A sampling from the comments:
* MUCH MUCH MUCH better than the actual show.
* I LOVE this show…..I wish IDOL were on eveyday so we could hear what the IDOL CRITIC thinks.
* I LOVE this show. You’re wrap up is better than that “the Soup†Show on E!
* This is the best YET! I’d rather watch this than IDOL.
* Persky knocks it out of the park again…Brava!
* I agree with Joy and Wonder. I LOVE Idol Critic, but how am I going to get my Liza Persky fix when Idol is over?! She needs a spin-off.
* Give this woman a TV show, for God’s sake!!!
* Liza + snarky = FABULOUS!!!
* You all have totally renewed my interest in this dawg-awful tv show, which I now tune into for 90 minutes each week. I really think that without watching Idol Critic each week, I probably wouldn’t even remember that Idol is on their 15th season…not sure if I should thank you for that…
And from none other than Liz George, the Barista: “Liza Persky is my new best friend. OK, online anyway.”
IdolCritic!
Friday, April 6th, 2007
Sorry I’m late but the latest IdolCritic is here. Enjoy!
IdolCritic: The top 9 (+ Sanjaya)
Thursday, March 29th, 2007
The moment you wait for every week: The new Idol Critic is here.
Just what you’ve been waiting for
Thursday, March 22nd, 2007The latest IdolCritic is here:
Watch this!
Friday, March 16th, 2007Being on the road and bandwidth-challeneged, I didn’t get a chance to watch the latest Idol Critic. Just did. It’s great. If we do say so ourselves. This is Liza’s best. I won’t ruin any of the punchlines. Just watch.
IdolCritic: Looney Leslie loses
Friday, March 2nd, 2007Here’s the latest episode of IdolCritic. Liza worries about Leslie losing it after losing. She frets about sex with Chris. She slaps Jennifer Hudson upside the head for dissing her Idol roots at the Oscars.
I just can’t believe that Sanjaya made it by a whisper. I think that’s America’s strange sense of humor. We kept that strange kid around for a longtime last year and now we’re stuck with Sanjaya.
Watch IdolCritic and go here to join in the water-cooler debate.
Making fun
Friday, January 19th, 2007I’ve been troubled by American Idol this year. Of course, it’s essentially unchanged: why mess with a winner? But I left watching this week’s shows worrying about whom they were ridiculing. I fear they’ve started going after the people from — how do I put this with a modicum of delicacy? — the short bus.
Take the scenes about the little guy with the gigantic eyes and his tubby buddy; they made fun of the first but then seemed to realize that they should not make fun of the second. Why let one off the hook and not the other? Because one was more of the bus than the other? Because the stars thought they’d gone overboard? Because they feared the impact on their image? Because they wanted a new shtick? Don’t know.
Now I’m hardly politically correct. I’m a Howard Stern fan, after all. And I believe that on Howard’s show, everyone can be themselves and be taken at face value for that; everyone can be the butt of jokes; everyone is in on the joke; they are all part of the inner circle — that is, the wack pack.
And I can make the same argument about American Idol: No matter who appears there, they are there because they want to be, because their is their shot at stardom and everybody wants to be a star. But I think it’s a bit different on Idol in that there is no middle ground: You are either a star or you are fodder for ridicule. And if you’re the latter, you are what makes the show tick in its first weeks. So Idol wants more people to make fun of. And most times, those are just people who are either trying to get attention by being ridiculous or who do not know how ridiculous they are. But now they are also making fun of people who are not in on the joke. And that left a bad taste.
Making-fun-of is staple of TV. Why do we like game shows? So we can make fun of the losers because we think we’re smarter than they are. Why was afternoon trash talk a hit (until we tired of it)? Because we liked making fun of people with worse lives than ours. What is reality TV all about? Making-fun-of.
But I’m asking — just asking — whether there is a proper limit to whom we make fun of. Or instead, if we discriminate on that basis — ‘You can’t be on TV because we we don’t want to come off badly treating you like we treat everyone else’ — is that unfair to these would-be stars? Don’t know.
