America's Got Crap

Why do I continue to watch America's Got Talent? It is pretty much the worst show on TV right now.

They really play to the lowest common denominator. Every aspect is just so dumb. First and most obvious, the judges are annoyingly stupid. It is rather odd to have a show dedicated to finding talent and then stock the judges table with the most untalented people imaginable. Everyone who shows marginal talented is described by the judges as either what America is all about or the show or both.

Just as bad is the audience. I really hope that they are instructed to be annoying by the producers and aren't naturally that rude and impatient. It is hard to know for sure.

Both the judges and the audience suffer from the America's Funniest Home Videos syndrome-- kids, old people, and animals get a free pass. Apparently, if the title of the show has the possessive form of our country's name, it is going to pander and pander hard.

You don't even have to watch the performances on the show to know if they advance (although, you have to watch to know if they are even marginally good since a lot of crap gets let through do to both the aforementioned AFHV syndrome and the fact that they let "interesting" acts through to add variety and torture us again in the later rounds). If the music they play of the intro is touching or happy, they are moving on (even if they try to add the drama of having one judge say 'no' , you know the last one is saying yes when the treacly music kicks in). If the music is weird, they are going to be horrible.

Usually, in reality shows, seeing people embarrass themselves is fun; schadenfreude in its fullest flower. Somehow the producers of this show screw that up and it is just frustrating to see them parade the shrill and the tone deaf, the deluded and the moronic. AGT also has the highest commercial to content ratio I've ever seen (and I use the term content loosely).

The only good thing about all this is I can watch an episode in about seven minutes... so it saves me some time. It allows me to both watch it and write out this complaint about it in less time than the episode was scheduled for. Now that is efficiency.