NYC and SJ, PR: At audition's end

And so at last we slump to the end of the audition tour.  Truth be told, this portion of the season is "American Idol's" toughest balancing act.  I meet many, many people who declare that the audition episodes are the only part of the season they watch, just enjoying the freak show.

But for those of us here for the serious business of picking the next American Idol, it is a bit of a slog.  The producers of "Idol" have frequently told me that they believe the entire season would make no sense if it weren't for the auditions; that those needle in the haystack moments set the context of discovering these little talents in the middle of nowhere, plucking them out from behind the plow or lunch counter and bringing them to the Big City where they can make good.  If the show opened on stage in Hollywood, the producers say, it would make no sense as a journey from nowhere to stardom. 

I pretty much buy all that, far as it goes.  (I could do with a few less tragic tales and a little more acceptance of people's past musical careers as part of a redemption narrative.) And indeed, there is little more satisfying in life than that moment when you finally find that needle in the haystack.  That is a great moment.  The problem is, if you don't love the freak show distractions, sorting through a mountain of hay is not in itself the most enthralling process.

Simon himself said tonight, "I hate comedy auditions."  I can not disagree and thus, as much as I know we need the auditions, and treasure certain moments, I am very relieved that the trail has come to an end.

But Simon saying that suggests an adherence to a fiction that he certainly knows better than.  The parade before the judges is presented as though it occurred on the same day as the tens of thousands lined up outside the stadiums, thus suggesting there was no vetting process prior to standing before Randy Jackson et famile.  Thus suggesting what the judges see is a random sample of the masses (if not all of them) and not a group weeded out in multiple rounds as either the best or the worst of the masses. (Indeed, when the contestants are sitting in the waiting room, producers come out and tell them, "Half of you are here because you are really good, half of you because you are really bad.")

Given the state of narcissism in our land, it is not terribly surprising that the contestants are surprised to learn they are terrible. What is surprising, seeing as we are in Season 8 of the television show, is that the judges, as evidenced by Simon's remark above, seem surprised that they are terrible, knowing that half have been selected for that purpose.

But then again, if forced to watch eight-cities worth of these auditions, how else would you play it?

And while we're on the point, the person Simon made that comment to got through to Hollywood, so who's not to be surprised by anything?

Any how, having picked our way through America's haystack, having slogged through all of it, one can't be too blase about what has just happened.  From tens of thousands, a good percentage of whom have spent years wanting nothing more than to be on American Idol, training, preparing, dreaming; we have found 150 some odd singers, called forth from the multitudes to bear the burden of history on their shoulders.  In the next two weeks, a handful of these will be called to greatness, and the rest, having come to the very city of the flame, will be cast back to obscurity, forever.

And in the next few months we will see whether as a group, they can stand with the great seasons before them (four and seven) or whether they will be seen collectively as having failed to carry the torch that so many of their predecessors struggled so hard to keep aloft -- the Idol dream.

Hollywood Week -- the most dramatic hours of the most dramatic show in the history of entertainment -- is upon us. 

NOTE: Please join us Friday for our regular post-game chat at noon Pacific when we'll have the final word on the auditions, right here at latimes.com/idoltracker.

- Richard Rushfield

Photo: Mike Perlman, 25, auditions in New York. Credit: Courtesy of Fox