One for the Americans

I thought American Idol rocked, a lot of people did, obviously enough for the show to spawn a whole range of attempts at recreating the hype and glamour of the Hollywood based outfit. Among those failings are the Singapore Idol and Malaysian Idol.

Firstly, I’d have to fault the choice of judges. With Paul Moss and Roslin at each other’s throats all episode, it’s a small wonder that the contestants pick up on anything at all constructive. Even with Fauziah, every performance falls into two categories: Pitching? Ada/Takada; and Style: Gaudy/Not gaudy enough. And who hired the stylist? Aside from the fake Malaysian accent, she always forces the issue of light brown, tan, dark brown, medium brown, not-so-light brown, not-so-dark brown, and shit-coloured brown. I say more power to those who stood up to the brown!

Singapore hasn’t fared much better. In true kiasu fashion they went one up on Malaysia and the rest of the world and hired FOUR judges. To be perfectly honest, I can’t tell two of them apart, but not like it makes a difference because they all say the same thing anyway. They spend most of their time ranting about the failings of the entire ‘sorry bunch of jokers’ than at the poor sod standing in front of them. Worse still, the poor sod'll happily nod along, at least in the Malaysians' case they didn't always understand what was being said.

I mean it’s not like we don’t already have enough problems getting the rest of the world to take us seriously…besides, only Americans can pull off this sort of stunt simply because they have an impressionable enough audience who actually care about their highly irritating judges and contestants with more backbone than jellyfish.