I typically enjoy NBC's “The Voice” reality singing competition. It differs from “American Idol” in a few ways, most notably that none of the contestants are purposely shown because they are awful, and none of the judges/mentors are able to see any of those auditioning – they can only hear their voices initially as the singers try and perform their way onto one of the mentors' teams. Mentors include Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton and Adam Levine. Sometimes only one mentor will turn their chair around claiming a contestant for their own and other times, all four may be impressed enough to turn their chairs and try and get a particular singer on their team.
The judges/team mentors are allowed to choose 12 singers initially (with duos counting as one choice) and downright begging often ensues for the more popular singers to choose one mentor over the others. Promises are made by all of the judges to those singers that they will be taken to the end of the competition, given every bit of help needed, really, quite a lot of schmoozing that the younger singers, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, fully believe.
This is where things get ugly.
You see, each mentor can really only go into the actual competition with six team members and the process to narrow the field are the preliminary “Battle Rounds” that pit one team member against another, singing together on stage for the right to remain on their respective mentor's team. Sometimes the process was fair – country singer vs. country singer, rock-n-roller against rock-n-roller, but more often than not, the competition was heavily skewed in favor of one contestant over the other to the point that all the favored of the two contestants had to do was show up and breathe, and he or she was in, while the other was forced to sing six octaves out of range or in a genre that just happened to be the specialty of their opponent.
I understand the mentors need to have the best people on their teams, but it was difficult watching last night's final battle rounds, when some pairings were so obviously in favor of one contestant over another. So much for the promises. The mentors all act like the decisions are so difficult, but I think they fear being called out more than anything and I believe that was very close to happening last night when male and female country singing duo, “The Line” was put up against the show's first singing/rapping MC and given a Rolling Stones song to perform. Contestants work together to divide the song up into different parts with the help of their mentors. “The Line” walked away with almost all chorus, while the MC got to belt out the song in his style, adding in some rap (which yes, was very good, in fact, it was the only good part of the whole hot mess they presented on stage) and couldn't help but to win the battle when the country duo ended up looking like a couple of Lawrence Welk background singers. I'm not a huge country music fan (sorry, Blake Shelton) and my preference from the start would have been to choose the MC, but I was not a fan of the obvious favoritism and neither was Hailey, the female half of “The Line” who refused to comment after the heart-breaking defeat. Typically, the losing contestants are put on the spot and forced to say a few words and all inevitably thank their mentor for the "opportunity," but my guess is that Hailey wasn't exactly feeling all too thankful for the opportunity Christina Aguilera gave her to look like an idiot on stage.
Christina seemed to think the whole performance was super neato-peachy keen and then, when the other mentors chimed in saying that despite the beyond odd song choice, “The Line” possessed the singing ability that Moses, the MC didn't, and would be their choice in Christina's position. Christina, in that horrendous hat that must have had her channeling beings from outer space, then declared that sometimes “The Voice” really wasn't about singing. Um...okay, what did I miss? You call the show “The Voice,” the mentors have nothing but a voice to base their initial decisions on, but now it isn't about singing or voices at all?
Christina, please, I implore you, take off that ridiculous hat! It seems to be blocking intelligent thought from entering your cranium.
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