The Kinder, Gentler American Idol & Michael Nicewonder

I got around to watching Wednesday's second episode of the new season of American Idol, last night. I'm still not quite getting how this version, that is supposed to be somehow a kinder, gentler version, is much different than previous versions of American Idol.

After I watched the first 2/3rds of the first episode and wrote about it, I said it appeared that it was being kinder and gentler, due to not showing a lot of self-deluded nutcases. Well, when I finally got around to watching it, the final third of that first episode brought out the cases of delusion. An entire long montage of them all singing the same song.

The second episode did the same thing. That part of American Idol, though often funny to watch, has always seemed a bit mean-spirited to me. And with some of these people seeming to be maybe right on the edge of mental illness, it seems sort of cruel to humiliate some of these sad creatures.

Like on the Wednesday, Kansas City episode, there was this pathetic guy named Micheal Nicewonder who was sure he was about to be discovered, despite his mother telling him he couldn't sing.

The judges could barely contain their wonder and Nicewonder when he walked in before them. The poor guy is a strange looking soul. Overweight, slobby-looking, banana yellow hair, badly cut, wearing a t-shirt with his "fans" signature on it and a medal he won for singing. In 8th grade, to which he had attached a fortune cookie that made no sense to me.

Nicewonder asked if he could sing an original song. Of course you can, he was told. He then proceeded to sing, badly, a very morose song that sounded like it was directed at an ex-girlfriend. When asked by Simon if Nicewonder wrote that song for a pet, he said, no, he wrote it about his mother.

Simon then prolonged the agony by asking Nicewonder if he had a more upbeat song to sing. Sure I do, Nicewonder said, one I wrote to my grandmother.

It sounded the same as the first. After Nicewonder got the bad news that he wouldn't be going to Hollywood, he exited awkwardly, then began to bellow out his pain, crying and sobbing. He felt Simon had been mean to him.

Now, if putting a sad case like this kid on the screen for a dose of public humiliation is a new kinder, gentler American Idol, well, I think it's just wrong. It would be one thing if the person being humiliated was not so obviously burdened with serious problems, but this Nicewonder kid, well, he had issues, and that was just cruel, what American Idol did to him.

Aside from all that, I could not figure out what Nicewonder had all over his face. In high definition it looked like maybe oddly shaped moles. And why were his eyelids so pink? Was that makeup. It was all just very disturbing in so many ways.

Maybe the kinder, gentler American Idol has to do with all the sad, maudlin back stories they are doing, but they've always done those. Maybe there are more of them this time. We did get a guy sobbing over his recently deceased wife, another who was victim of a tornado, another without a mom and dad, living with her very very old grandma, who can't hear.

I'm sure there were more sad stories that I'm not remembering. Oh, the blind guy that ended the first episode. I liked him. His story was more uplifting than sad.

And I guess the judges, well, Simon, is maybe being a bit less harsh. Maybe.