DeGeneres
on 'American Idol,' flat notes
Daytime talk hosts knows little about music
By Tom Conroy
Feb 24, 2010
In Paula Abdul’s eight seasons as a judge on “American Idol,” she dependably provided unintentional comedy, whether by going off on loopy tangents that had little to do with what she was supposedly judging, or by praising the contestants’ clothing when there was nothing else nice to say, or, most notoriously, by critiquing a performance that had yet to occur.
When Abdul left the show before its current season in a reported dispute over pay, the producers must have thought they should play it safe and replace her with someone who could provide intentional comedy. Unfortunately, their new hire, Ellen DeGeneres, failed to come through in her live debut on last night’s show.
Worse, her stated opinions were nearly all of the “I don’t know much about music, but I know what I like” variety. If, as has been suggested, DeGeneres was brought on “Idol” to represent the average viewer’s voice, she succeeded all too well.
DeGeneres provided one small laugh near the opening of the show. In a prepared bit, the host, Ryan Seacrest, asked her why she was sitting at the opposite end of the judges’ table from Simon Cowell.
“The problem is, Simon wants me,” said DeGeneres. “He’s got a thing for me.” Faked footage showed Cowell reaching over to stroke DeGeneres’ thighs.
For the rest of the two-hour broadcast, in which the 12 female semifinalists competed for the first time for viewers’ votes, DeGeneres made surprisingly few attempts at ad-libbed witticisms. After Cowell called a performance by 16-year-old Haeley Vaughn a “complete and utter mess,” DeGeneres said, “If it was a mess, it was a hot mess.”
That might have made sense if DeGeneres hadn’t just praised the performance, albeit tentatively: “Just as someone who likes music,” she had said, “I enjoyed it.”
DeGeneres’ comments obliquely acknowledged that, unlike the other three panelists, she has no particular knowledge of music or the music business. Commenting on Katelyn Epperly’s arguably strained vocals, she said, “I felt like it was pushed. I don’t know if that was right or wrong.”
In her stand-up comedy, DeGeneres has a recurring shtick in which she starts to make a point and then loses it entirely in a mass of repetitions and twisted syntax. At times, her comments on this show sounded like that shtick, without being funny.
After the teenager Katie Stevens performed a Michael Bublé song, Ellen said, in part, “I gotta say, I feel like you, it was good, it was great, you have a great voice and a very powerful voice, but you’re 17 and I felt like it was very, uh, conservative. It wasn’t, you know, and it’s a serious song.”
Though DeGeneres, like Abdul, was generally kinder to the bad performers than her colleagues were, she didn’t take over Abdul’s job of berating Cowell for his harsher critiques.
For his part, Cowell, perhaps missing Abdul, praised a couple of the women for their looks.
The other two panelists, Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi, tended to concentrate on the contestants’ technical skills or lack thereof.
Generally, the judges all seemed a little off. Their banter with each other and with Seacrest tended to fall flat or fizzle off into non sequiturs.
Perhaps, as the live shows continue, they will work out their dynamic with their new colleague. And perhaps DeGeneres was just suffering from first-night jitters and will loosen up.
DeGeneres is such a likable presence that viewers would never vote her off the panel. But last night’s performance gave them no reason to keep her on either.
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