American Idol: The judging mystery continues

EW.com is reporting that the Fox network won't comment on the American Idol shakeup when it meet with reporters Monday at the Television Critics Association tour in L.A.   

In fact, the website is quoting a source close to the show who says no deals have been signed yet with new panellists.

Fox refused comment on reports Friday that Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler were in line for the seats vacated by Simon Cowell and Ellen DeGeneres.

Website TMZ.com is sticking to its story that Kara DioGuardi has been fired and says today that Randy Jackson nearly bit the bullet as well, but Idol execs wanted to keep one of the original judges at the table.

I can't promise to be glued to my computer this weekend. I've got a lot of laundry and stuff to do, but if I catch wind of any new developments I'll post them here.

(The photo of Randy is by Jemal Countess for Getty Images.)

The Bachelorette: We're going live on Monday

Hey kids, it's the moment all we Bachelorette fans have been waiting for. Will Ali pick Roberto or Chris L. or no one? I'm going to blog the finale live starting at 8 p.m. on Monday. So watch it with your laptop on and hang with me. All comments, snarky and otherwise, will be welcomed.

SYTYCD: Billy's happy to be androgynous (spoiler alert)

IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THURSDAY'S SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE RESULTS SHOW YET, YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO READ THIS POST! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

The first buzzes on my BlackBerry this morning were Twitter posts about people slagging Nigel Lythgoe for describing dancer Billy Bell as "androgynous." (To refresh your memory, before letting Billy go on Thursday, Nigel commented that his "slightly androgynous style" didn't seem to be connecting with viewers.)

Some of the tweeters were outraged at what they called Nigel's homophobia; others defended Nigel, pointing out that androgyny, defined as having both male and female characteristics, has nothing to do with sexual orientation.

"That's kind of a hot topic right now," Billy chuckled when I asked him about the comment during a conference call on Friday. "Actually I don’t mind it, dance is kind of androgynous ... I took it as a compliment. It's something that not everyone has. I guess I've got it."

He says he's not sure what about him America wasn't connecting with. "I got pretty used to being in the bottom three. It turned out I was having fun doing solos."

So no sour grapes from him or Jose Ruiz, the other dancer eliminated on Thursday. They're too busy looking forward to appearing on the SYTYCD finale in two weeks and to going on tour after that.

Billy's hoping to do the stepping routine on tour that he was supposed to dance with Kent Boyd on the show but missed out on because of his injured knee.

During the call, he defended his decision not to dance that week despite having the doctors' okay to do so.

"When it came down to it, I was still in a lot of pain at the time … I was saying if I dance on it this week what if my knee completely blows out while I'm dancing, then I have a serious injury that could prevent me from dancing in the long run or even going on tour."

Resting the knee for a few days was "the smarter decision," Billy said. "I have absolutely no regrets for doing it."

As far as all the injuries this season (Alex Wong's lacerated Achilles tendon, Ashley Galvan's fractured rib, Lauren Froderman's dehydration), Billy said they were likely just flukes, the kinds of things that can happen "when put heart into something, you're giving it your all all of the time, you sometimes forget about what you can’t do."

That was Jose's take, too. "Everyone has such a love and passion for the dance and the show, they will keep pushing anyway (even when they're hurting). Sometimes it's not the best thing to do."

Jose had to sit out two of the group numbers himself because of an injury to his groin, which happened the week of his B-boy routine with Dominic Sandoval, but he said it's getting better with lots of icing and stretching.

Jose said the biggest lesson he learned from the competition was "just how far I could push my body and my mind. You know I never, never imagined I could accomplish what I accomplished," but he also found the feeling of pushing through the strenuous 14-hour days liberating. 

He said he was happy on Thursday because he accomplished all he needed to accomplish, which was getting as far as he could in the competition. "It was my time to go and I accepted it and I rejoiced in it," he said.

Jose said he found Bollywood the hardest style to learn on the program and was proudest of his contemporary routine with Lauren Gottlieb.

In fact, he hopes to branch out into contemporary dancing in the future.

Billy said his favourite routines were the step one he was supposed to do with Kent and the Stacey Tookey contemporary routine that he and Ade Obayomi danced Wednesday, in which Billy portrayed a homeless person.

He called Stacey one of the most inspirational choreographers he's ever worked with. "She talked to me about learning the dance as a homeless man so in rehearsal you take on the character … it really helped," he said.

Billy plans to choreograph some projects for New York in the spring with his Lunge Dance Collective. And he's also received an offer from Company Flak in Montreal. "They’re beautiful. I'm definitely considering that, but it's a complicated time because I have the tour and everything."

Tickets for the SYTYCD tour went on sale Friday. You can go to ticketmaster.ca.

And you can watch the final four, Kent, Lauren Froderman, Robert Roldan and AdeChike Torbert, perform next Wednesday at 8 p.m. on CTV.

 

 

Carrie Ann Inaba does Housecat Housecall

You may remember last month I mentioned that Carrie Ann Inaba, one of the judges from Dancing With the Stars, was going to appear on a show called Cat Chow's Housecat Housecall. The original post is here.

The deal is that Carrie Ann's a big cat lover. She and her boyfriend, accountant Jesse Sloan, have five cats between them and they called on the show's vet, Dr. Katrina Warren, to find ways to keep Jesse's cat Zeus stop bugging the other kitties.

The episode is airing Saturday at 10:30 a.m. on Animal Planet. You can see a preview of it here.

American Idol: Is Kara toast too?

There are reports this morning, unconfirmed, that Kara DioGuardi has been fired from the American Idol judging panel.   

The story came from TMZ.com (remember, this is the website that broke the news of Michael Jackson's death), quoting sources connected with Idol negotiations.

TMZ says the only way Kara would get a reprieve is if the deal with Jennifer Lopez fell through but that otherwise Idol will return to a three-judge panel comprised of JLo, Steven Tyler and Randy Jackson.

This isn't rocket science. With all the talk this week of a major shakeup and Thursday night's report of the Lopez deal, I'd be shocked if Kara wasn't canned. 

But why keep Randy around if the goal is a clean sweep? I think his "dawg" this and "pitchy" that is really tired, but maybe it was too expensive to buy out his contract. Who knows?

What do you think? Do you like the new judges? Will having JLo and Aerosmith's lead singer on the judging panel make you want to watch more or less?

Give me your feedback and don't forget, you can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/realyeo

(The photo of Kara and Randy is by Chris Pizzello for Associated Press.)

American Idol: Ellen's out, Jennifer Lopez is in

So says the Deadline Hollywood blog, which seems to get more things right than wrong.

The same night that Ellen DeGeneres announced the end of her American Idol judging career, Deadline Hollywood said Lopez had signed a secret deal with Idol producers earlier this week.

I was skeptical at first of Ellen's statement that she had asked to get off the show a couple of months ago, thinking it more likely she'd been pushed out given the shakeup underway.

But Deadline Hollywood says Ellen really did want out, but Fox wouldn't let her go unless it had someone to replace her, given the pressure the network was already under to replace Simon Cowell.

The permission to bail came this week with Jennifer's signing, the blog says.

Meanwhile, there's an unconfirmed report that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith has been offered Simon Cowell's chair.

Will either of those choices, if confirmed, be enough to turn the good ship Idol around? I don't know. I guess it depends what else the show changes along with the judges. It certainly makes for interesting blog fodder.

(The photo of Jennifer Lopez is by Victor R. Caivano for Associated Press.)

So You Think You Can Dance: Bye bye boys (spoiler alert)

The welcome surprise on Thursday night's So You Think You Can Dance was that Lauren Froderman was fine.

The "injury" that had her being seen by medics at the end of Wednesday's show turned out to be dehydration.

"So as some of you all may know, I was dehydrated last night and five IVs later I am feeling tons better and drinking lots of fluids and resting," Lauren wrote on her SYTYCD Facebook page on Thursday.

"Lauren is fine, she's okay, she's hanging in there," host Cat Deeley said at the start of the show.

So that was the good news; the bad news was that Lauren ended up in the bottom three.

Colour me shocked. Robert Roldan certainly was, exclaiming "No!" as he stood alongside Lauren and was told by Cat he was safe.

The combination of Lauren's wonderful dancing, the judges' lavish praise and the response of the studio audience had me convinced Lauren would breeze to safety as she has every other week. But there she was in the bottom three along with Jose Ruiz and Billy Bell, neither of them a surprise, both of them sent home.

Based just on dancing ability (Billy had the best solo Thursday night, in my opinion, and the best performance on Wednesday), I would have put AdeChike Torbert or Robert in bottom three before I put Billy there for the fifth week in a row. But as Nigel Lythgoe has often reminded us, the show's about America's favourite dancer, not necessarily its best dancer.

Nigel speculated that Billy's "slightly androgynous style" wasn't connecting with viewers, but he is connecting "with choreographers and artistic directors all over the country."

In other words, don't cry for Billy: there's lots of work waiting for him out there.

Billy and Jose certainly didn't look glum.

"I'm so blessed to have a new family of dancers and just to be so inspired ... it’s been an amazing experience and it’s changed my life completely," said B-boy Jose.

He left with the blessings of the judges. Nigel told him, "We never anticipated this season that you would be as good as you turned out to be. A lot of that has to do with your personality. Without question you shine."

Nigel didn't have much to say to Lauren in ushering her into the last spot in the top four, other than noting that some people think young girls who watch the show are only voting for boys and urging people who'd like to see that change to pick up their phones.

"We are supporting you this week and we are going to keep you in the program," Nigel said.

He also noted this is the last week that the judges will make the call. Next week, the voting is entirely in the hands of viewers.

Nigel also said Thursday's decision was probably the toughest the judges had ever had to make on the series.

There was news for whoever wins the competition: besides getting $250,000 (U.S.) and the cover of a dance magazine, that person will be recognized by Gatorade as the sport drink maker's first ever dance athlete for a fall print campaign, meaning they'll appear in ads "alongside some of the most famous athletes in the world," Nigel said.

Elsewhere on the show, we were treated to a very entertaining group number choreographed by Mia Michaels that had Allison Holker as a sort of combination rocker chick and fairy-tale princess in pink pouffy dress surrounded by an all-male group of contestants and all-stars in shades of black and grey. She was passed around by the men on and off a chair before taking to her own two feet on a very long table. It was great spectacle and Mia at the top of her slightly warped game.

Allison Iraheta, an American Idol finalist from Season 8, performed her song "Don't Waste the Pretty" with the help of guitarist Orianthi; the dancers from Step Up 3-D, Adam Shankman's new movie, performed; Christian TV also did a number with dancing from Kherington Payne and Lexie Contursi.

So there you have it: the top four are Kent Boyd, Lauren, Robert and AdeChike. Tune in next Wednesday at 8 p.m. on CTV to see them perform, read the recap here and tell me what you think: did the right dancers make it into the top four? 

Ellen DeGeneres quits American Idol

American Idol is suddenly down two judges.

The news broke Thursday night that Ellen DeGeneres quit the reality show, saying her workload had become too large (she also hosts her own talk show) and that judging wasn't the right fit for her.

In a statement, Ellen said, "A couple months ago, I let Fox and the American Idol producers know that this didn't feel like the right fit for me.

"It was a difficult decision to make, but my work schedule became more than I bargained for. I also realized this season that while I love discovering, supporting and nurturing young talent, it was hard for me to judge people and sometimes hurt their feelings," she added.

Me, I'm curious that if she told Fox this a couple of months ago, nothing leaked out about it before now.

It's also interesting that this was announced the same week as all those rumours about Nigel Lythgoe returning to Idol as an executive producer. Nigel has said publicly he would replace all the judges on Idol and go back to a three-judge panel if he were in charge of the show.

The rumour is that Fox may announce a replacement for Simon Cowell, the other judge who left the competition, on Monday. Some of the names being bandied about this week included Jessica Simpson (really?!), Chris Isaak, Justin Timberlake and Elton John (those last two have emphatically said no).

Simon moved on to focus on his own talent show, a U.S. version of The X Factor, which will also be seen on Fox.

Frankly, I don't think Ellen's departure is a loss for the show. Her lack of music industry cred was really obvious, a lot of her humour fell flat and she was too busy trying to be every contestant's friend to give accurate critiques. But of course, that's my opinion. What's yours?

 

So You Think You Can Dance injury update No. 2

Nigel Lythgoe, executive producer of So You Think You Can Dance, has commented on Lauren Froderman's condition.

Nigel tweeted that Lauren will be in the studio Thursday, but she won't dance in the group number. In fact, she won't dance at all unless she's in the bottom three (like that's gonna happen).

"I can't tell you what the problem was with Lauren until I speak with her and her doctor later today," Nigel said. "I just don't know at this point."

So that's encouraging news since, if Lauren is well enough to hypothetically dance a solo tonight, she's presumably well enough to carry on in the competition next week. If I hear more, you'll hear more.

So You Think You Can Dance injury update

 

I've been googling this morning trying to find out what's going on with Lauren Froderman, who was being seen by a medic at the end of Wednesday's show.

So far I've seen two references, one on the Buddy TV blog and one on Twitter, suggesting she has been hospitalized with a concussion and dehydration, but there's been no official confirmation that I can find.

I'll try to keep an eye out for updates before tonight's show.

There was one other injury that NIgel Lythgoe mentioned on Wednesday's show, to Jose Ruiz's groin. But to be blunt, I don't think it much matters because I'm sure that Jose is going home tonight.

I've been a fan of his sunny personality and I liked his Broadway routine with Kent on Wednesday, but his technical shortcomings are becoming more and more apparent each week.

(The photo of Lauren and Allison Holker dancing Broadway on Wednesday is by Mathieu Young for Fox.)