Idol Chatter & Voice Views

And now comes a critical week for American Idol.

In the wake of Pia Toscano’s elimination, will more fans flock to the show because of its unpredictability?

Or will they jump ship after watching a singing competition send home its arguably its  best singer in ninth place?

More importantly, can Season 10 regain its momentum?

Or was last week’s show a sign of more sorry shows to come?

Because, folks, as pitiful as Pia’s elimination was, it was simply the capper on a pathetic performance by Idol producers.

Consider everything that went wrong.

* We had will.i.am, the king of autotone, mentoring our Idols on rock week. Remember, this was supposed to be the season Idol ditched guest mentors.

* We had Gwen Stefani dressing the Idol gals. Lauren Alaina should always look young and fun on stage.  She didn’t.  Pia should have looked ready to rock as she tackled a Tina Turner tune.  She didn’t.  She looked much more ready to rock on the night she was booted off the show.

* We had the judges praising every single performance, giving no clue as to who merited hanging around and who didn’t. Which made their dismay at Pia’s elimination on Thursday night both baffling and maddening.  “Vote,” Randy Jackson demanded of viewers.  “Judge,” viewers demanded of all three judges in a flood of tweets that followed Pia’s ouster.

* On to Thursday’s results shows, the in-show commercials are starting to outnumber the real commercials. First up, we get comedian Russell Brand mentoring the Idols.  Why a comedian?  Because he’s got a new movie to hawk.  Thing is, poor Russell wasn’t funny in this segment.  Not in the least.  Producer Nigel Lythgoe had promised “hilarious” in a tweet earlier in the day. Just proves to show that it’s not only Nigel’s feet that are dizzy.

* Throwaway segments featuring TMZ staff mentoring the Idols and Gwen dressing the girls follow. Hmm, seems I recall Nigel promising that the Idol result shows would be cut from one hour to one-half hour this season.  These segments are prime examples of why that should have happened.

* The weekly return-of-a-past-contestant segment features Constantine Maroulis.  This sort of makes since, since the guy has been starring as a rock star in the Broadway show “Rock of Ages.”  Except he’s going to sing “Unchained Melody?”  On rock week?  Oh, and is it ever a tortured version of “Unchained Melody.”  So tortured, it made a Jacob Lusk performance look restrained.  Guess what?  Constantine just released “Unchained Melody” on iTunes.  Another in-show commercial.

* And, then, while we’re waiting to find out who goes home, we had 63-year-old Iggy Pop performing shirtless and getting bleeped out repeatedly during a results night performance that ranks among Idol’s most bizarre. Any Idol producer who watched a rehearsal of that performance should have said, “No thanks,” and gone back to the drawing board.  I’m still trying to figure out what Iggy had to sell.

Idol’s saving grace last week was that the nine remaining Idols all performed reasonably well.

And that cast might be Idol’s saving grace the remainder of this season.

No, the cast is not as talented as the Idol folks would lead you to believe. There’s not an Adam Lambert or Crystal Bowersox among the bunch. From top to bottom, they’re not as talented as the cast of Season 7.

But there’s more depth this year than there has been since that season. And the lack of a clearcut frontrunner does lend an air of unpredictability.

Now it’s time for Idol’s judges and producers to do their part.

Or at least not chase away viewers.