Ellen on Idol — nothing to dance about, yet

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/02/2010 (5699 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

All the pre-show hype surrounding Ellen DeGeneres’s arrival on the American Idol judging panel proved to be much ado about not much on Tuesday night, as the first of Idol’s Hollywood-round episodes focused mostly on the performances and personalities of the contestants and very little on Ellen’s interaction with Simon, Randy and Kara.

True, there were a few brief sequences in which DeGeneres’s standup-comedy instincts brought levity to the proceedings — most notably when she turned the familiar step-forward/step-back cut-and-keep gimmick into a comical dance involving a bunch who were all advancing to the next round — but mostly, all Tuesday’s installment showed was that Ellen wears reading glasses and appears to be taking her Idol judging role quite seriously.

Despite comments reported online that DeGeneres finds Cowell "meaner than she thought," there wasn’t so much as a spark or a sharp-word exchange between the two in Ellen’s debut. No doubt, there’ll be many more chances for friction and verbal sparring when Idol moves to the live-performance/viewer-voting rounds, in which judges’ comments are more frequent and contentious.

For now, Ellen on Idol is much less about "Wow!" than it is about "Whatever."

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