American Idol Needs to Seriously Tone it Down With Sob Stories
TV shows have long relied on emotion rather than talent or creative storytelling, and it may seem that a reality singing competition simply won't succeed if there's just singing on the screen.
Reality producers are sure that viewers need to dive deep into contestants' lives to compare, empathize, and criticize — and sadly, negative emotions prove to be the strongest, and this is what has shaped much of the modern reality TV landscape.
American Idol has been a flagship reality competition show that has garnered a huge following over its 14 years airing on Fox and five years on ABC.
However, watching the new season that premiered in February this year, fans feel that the hit show is going overboard with negative emotions, such as sadness, despair, and even depression.
Viewers agree that the initial audition phase was difficult to watch, as there were too many sob stories. The show spends too much screen time on the contestants' backstories, and somehow, all of those stories happen to be sad and depressing. Fans say they'd rather hear more singers perform in one episode than sit through the entire biographies of a few contestants who may not even go any further.
"Spending 10+ minutes on a sob story after sob story and admitting people based on how much trauma they've sustained is irritating," u/parmesanightmare wrote, starting a fan discussion on Reddit.
And commenters readily agreed with this view, while some even admitted that they stopped watching the show live just to be able to fast-forward through all the intros that inevitably turn into tearjerkers. Others said that they were waiting for the next stage of the competition because that's when the drama ends and the actual singing begins.
One of the Redditors even expressed an idea for how the show could tone down the sad stories while still maintaining the drama angle. The recipe is simple: singing first, sob stories later.
"Imagine hearing an amazing contestant sing for two months and then finding out that pre-Idol they were living on the streets. The writing and the drama the show is trying to create would just be so much better in this format," Reddit user u/MarionCotesworthHaye suggested, and many fans supported this brilliant idea.
People are plain tired of American Idol focusing on negative emotions and unnecessary drama and want to see more positive and humorous moments — like hearing someone sing poorly and thinking they're the best — instead of listening to life stories of contestants with average voices.
It seems that these people are trying to impress the audience and the judges with their traumas rather than their talent, forgetting that American Idol is, above all, a singing competition.