Idoltracker Review: Hurray for Hollywood Week
“I want this more than anything. It’s under my skin and it bursts out when I’m on stage.”
The immortal words of Nathaniel Marshall, American Idol Hollywood Week aspirant, are a fitting tribute to what is the most exciting week of the most important program in entertainment.
Along the American Idol trail -- a slow, arduous climb up an increasingly steep cliff -- Hollywood Week represents a sudden detour into a demolition derby. For the rest of the season, contestants will be executed at a gentlemanly once-a-week pace (or a bit more in the Top 36 rounds), but for this one segment, death does not take a stately stroll across the Idol set, but rampages across, a rabid dog unleashed seeking to bury his fangs in any victim at hand.
As the curtain rose on the Kodak stage -- the platform where Sparks and Underwood received their coronation -- we saw 147 young hopefuls, plucked from absolute obscurity and dropped at the gates of immortality. By the end of the night, 43 of their number, a full quarter, had been cast out and told that the kingdom would never be theirs. They have been called forth from the seas of people who flooded America’s stadiums for a chance at this dream; astounded to be 1 of 147 chosen out of tens of thousands. But for most of those, the gates of the kingdom are as close as they will ever come. And this is the drama of Hollywood Week.
Hollywood Week is the Iowa caucuses of the Idol electoral process. To get here and be a contender takes a certain degree of talent, organization and drive. But there are far fewer tickets out than there are tickets in; so once the battle is joined the struggle becomes about positioning one’s self for one of those. For those who are in this to win, the question is do you become an establishment candidate singing the traditional Celine Dion, Faith Hill, Idol songbook (Lil Rounds, Jasmine Murray, Stephen Fowler, Michael Sarver, Alexis Grace), or do you position yourself as a change candidate –- offbeat but focused enough to be taken seriously if the electorate tires of the traditional role models (Rose Flack, Anoop Desai, Danny Gokey and Jorge Nunez all seem to be following this path). Or knowing that you have very little chance in heck of ever wearing the Idol crown, do you go in as a wild card candidate, shock the bourgeoisie for all the attention you can get and ride it as far as it can take you -– which sometimes can be very far indeed (Von Smith, Katrina “bikini girl” Darell, Nick Mitchell Jackie Tohn).
By the end of the Hollywood Week episodes next week we will in all likelihood (but not definitely) have gotten to know the person who after four long months will become our next champion. Between now and then, the blood they shed will transform them from faces in the crowd to the seeds of heroes, and worthy contenders to lead a nation.
NOTE: Don't miss our live chat at noon PT Wednesday with Season 4 star Mikalah Gordon. Join us here at latimes.com/idoltracker.
- Richard Rushfield
photo: Fox
I can't wait for "bikini girl" to get booted. She shouldn't have made it past the day one of Hollywood.
May Kara be the one to deliver the news.
Posted by: Tom | February 04, 2009 at 10:20 AM
I think it was ridiculous that "bikini girl" was allowed in to the tryouts with only a bikini. I would have told her that her
"dress" was inappropriate. I hope that she doesn't get away with
anything else so disrespectful.
Posted by: Jackie Rosner | February 04, 2009 at 06:14 PM