PremiereWatch: 'American Idol' Philadelphia auditions

On Jan. 15, the Idol Curtain descended over TV.

Follow me, dear readers, as I engage in a twisty analogy.

As World War II ended, the Allied forces -- England and the United States mostly -- greeted the Russians with decidedly mixed emotions.

On one hand, they were all, "Ummm... Thanks for holding ground at Leningrad, Stalin. That was mighty heroic and the loss of Russian life really went above and beyond."

On the other hand, there was a healthy sense of "Ummm... Not to sound ungrateful, but if there's any way you could avoid spreading Communism across all of Europe, we'd really appreciate that. But feel free to keep Poland."

That's the way I imagine other network heads are greeting the seventh season of American Idol.

On one hand, they're all "Ummm... Thanks for keeping anybody at all watching network television in the midst of this strike. You're helping advertisers remember that network TV is still the best way to reach impressionable eyeballs."

On the other hand, there's a healthy sense of "Ummm... Not to sound ungrateful, but if you could avoid crushing everything in your path and leaving us all battling for fourth, we'd really appreciate that. But feel free to monopolize Fienberg's time."

In this scenario, Simon Cowell is probably Stalin, American Idol is the USSR and that's the best explanation I can give for why, after steadfastly refusing to recap audition episodes for the past five years, I found myself glued to the TV on Tuesday night to watch the best and worst of Philadelphia.

You see, there's a problem to recapping audition episodes. You run the risk of saying really stupid things. Things like...

"Through the first four hours of American Idol audition footage, I'll guarantee you that we haven't seen this season's winner. In fact, I feel prepared to say that nobody from the Minneapolis or Seattle auditions stands more than the slightest chance of making it to the Top 24, much less the Final 12."

Plus...

"There was also a sense that the judges were having such a bad time they were overpraising mediocrities like the 6'4" giraffe [and] Giants cornerback Phillippi Sparks' daughter..."

I made both of those comments after last season's two-night premiere. Of course, the Seattle auditions ended up yielding Sanjaya, runner-up Blake Lewis and Jordin Sparks, who I doubly maligned. All apologies.

So, in the interest of providing addition bulletin board material...

How 'bout those Philly auditions, boys and girls?

Much was made last season of the difficulties the producers had in properly presenting and packaging the talent from the very beginning. Jordin's dark-horse rise to Idol winner was interesting, but the lack of deep investment in other contestants -- I found myself rooting only for Melinda after just a week or two -- was far more damaging to the show than any improbable Sanjaya run.

So credit the Idol team with doing markedly better to present potential talent right off the bat this season. If I didn't see any Top 24 hopefuls in the first four hours last year, I've got at least three Philadelphia singers pegged as strong Top 12 candidates and at least one girl who I can already imagine winning.

Really, who's going to stop Angela Martin? It's one thing that the 26-year-old wedding singer from Chicago has a nice voice, only slightly marred by "Git on up and dance!" affectations. She's like a prettier LaToya London in that respect. But she also has a young daughter with Rett's Syndrome, a little girl whose condition is so troubled she's being cared for by a circle of Angela's devoted friends and family. Between the obvious talent and marketable looks and her swiftly recounted story -- the sort of soapy personal narrative we were missing last year -- she's got everything she needs to develop a swift fan base. If she gets booted before the Top 24, I'd be astounded and I can see her easily singing into April and May.

Kristy Lee Cook would be my second plausible Top 12 aspirant. I like that she lives in a log cabin in Oregon. I'm amused that she sold her barrel horse to fly to Philly to audition. I'm intrigued that she seems to be a capable kickboxer training to cage fight -- and not in a morose Ryan Atwood kinda way. All those things just add up to make her hotter in my eyes. Empirically, her version of "Amazing Grace" wasn't distinguished, but I'm already rooting for her for reasons that go beyond mere aesthetics (which was more than could be said for my 2007 Idol crush Haley Scarnato).

I can also picture 20-year-old Chris Watson going far. With his big smile, strong cheekbones and dreds, he's like Anwar Robinson with a bit of a country-rock edge. He was the only good-looking guy we saw from Philadelphia and packaging him to viewers wouldn't be hard.

I was less convinced by Joey Catalano. His falsetto may have been better than the squeak that took Blake to last year's finals, but would his voice have sounded as sweet coming from a man who hadn't just lost 200 pounds and hadn't just gained a new lease on life? Even if we'll never see Joey again, I'm glad the producers took the effort to give one or two decent people the time normally reserved for freaks and geeks.

I'm also not ready to jump on the Cute Blonde Bandwagon for either Beth Stalker or Brooke White, but knowing that Beth once recorded an album of church songs as a four-year-old and that Brooke has never seen an R-rated movie made them more engaging than, say, Antonella Barba, who was introduced as a skanked out Jersey Girl and never had the chance to recover.

Although the normal assortment of fame-seeking losers were presented with a smidge more dignity this year.

No, Temptress Brown the 16-year-old linebacker couldn't sing. And yes, her odd extra-curricular forced Ryan to butch himself up by showing his football acumen. But who didn't sympathize with Temptress and her morbidly obese, seriously ill mother? And who didn't find something vaguely admirable about the level of respect with which Simon treated her.

Simon was also on his best behavior with the episode's showcase lunatic Alexis Cohen, whose oddly acceptable Grace Slick impression and catchy mottos -- "Always have true faith and always be victorious" is goin' up on my Facebook page -- earned the normally snarky judge's restrained, "I think you're either end up as a country vet and end up quite normal or wind up in a band." Alexis, though, sensed that the more crazy she gave the camera the more screentime she'd get and she launched into a torrent of obscenities and middle fingers.

Also missing out on any serious cruelty were a quartet of oddballs who seemed like rejects from a couple movie comedy favorites.

Tapping into our residual love for Borat was Youka, a gap-toothed Egyptian who sang a song by Mr. The Bee-Gees and said that all he wanted was "To love a girl from the hair to the nipple." Less loveably Borat-y was Udi, who didn't understand Simon's complaint that he was just a bit disturbing.

Meanwhile, there were a pair of 40 Year-Old Virgin wannabes, including 39-year-old Milo Turk who regaled the judges with an original composition titled "No Sex Allowed" and featuring the lyric "Sex is weak and love is strong." Also tapping the Virgin vein was Ben Haar, who single-handedly killed that most resilient of fetishes the Slavegirl Leia gold bikini by showing up first hairy and then smoothly waxed in the geek-friendly garb. Ugh. Give me back my fantasy, man!

No recap of the night's fun would be complete without mention of fellow Leia aficionado Christina Tolistano, who may have been right that Idol always needs more diversity, but her point was weakened by the fact that she couldn't actually sing. This is a show that's rewarded people as different looking as Chris Sligh, Kevin Covais, LaKisha Jones and Ruben Studdard. They could all just sing.

Finally, special notice to Paul Marturano, whose song about stalking Paula Abdul was creepy, but also included such lyrics as "I'm not much of a talker/ So I guess I'll just stalk-her," "If I were Columbo, I'd Peter Falk-her," and "If he were a bathtub, I would caulk her."  I hold "creative crazy" to a different standard than "crazy crazy."

I'll be back tomorrow night from Dallas and for more blogular Idol coverage, check out Zap2it's Guide to American Idol, which is true to its name.

So what'd you think of the premiere? And does anybody want to join me in filling out a petition to name Angela Martin the season's winner so that we can all spend our spring watching the Celtics and the Red Sox?

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