They got it right. For the most part. With the competition over with and only tonight’s concert special left in the series, I can honestly say that this is the most satisfying reality show of the year so. In a year when all the favorites have lost far too early, and the winners were scraping from the bottom of the barrel (Dat Phan in LAST COMIC STANDING, or whoever it was that beat Rob on SURVIVOR), AMERICAN JUNIOR had a strong finish with the one-two punch of Lucy Hale and Danielle White. Yes, you can knock the earlier pick of the two sisters as being heavily influenced by the amount of attention they got during the try-outs, but the last two were strong.

I wanted to see Chantel Kohl make it, also, but she had rough weeks down the line and never recovered from it. In front of her, I would have placed Katelyn Tarver, who deserves to be in the group just for putting up a good front to hearing the same old “You’re beautiful” spiel every single week from every single judge.

The only sad thing about the show last week was when the band sang together for the first time at the end of the episode. The computer modification to the voices was early and heavy. Half of them looked like they were lip-synching, by the time all the modulations were done. It’s disappointing. A strong voice like Lucy’s or the pure voice of Danielle’s doesn’t need the computer to fix it or punch it up. Sadly, that’s something they didn’t learn with Kelly Clarkson, either, and we all heard the nightmare that was her first album. Don’t know why I’d expect anything more from them here.

It’s an amazing amount of work those kids went through in the past couple of weeks, most notably the first four members of the group, who had to learn the words and dance routines to a half dozen different songs in a week. It’s amazing, even if Lucy has some problems with the steps and looked lost half the time. Who cares? It’s her voice that counts.

They’re already planning another one of these shows for the fall, I hear. I hope they change their minds and just make it a summer series. It’s cute, but it would be wrecked and overexposed by a fall launch, I think.

In the end, Chauncey is the lucky guy with four cute girls surrounding him, and the Thompson Twins’ parents are the lucky ones who don’t have to worry about favoring one sister over the other in the coming months or weeks. (I know they’re not twins, but I like the 80s sound of calling them that.) Lucy Hale will be the first to leave to pursue a solo act, and I’m afraid I’m not nearly crass enough to predict who will get the first Playboy spread in a few years….

You can see all the contestants right here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2003 at 10:00 am and is filed under TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.