[S10.E24: Semi-Final Results 2]

Wow! Is anyone else as floored over these results as I am? First of all, having Piff, Paul and Stevie in the top 3 was exactly what I hoped for and we avoided another Siro-A scandal.

 

I was also really happy for Uzeyer. Yes, he fell last night and yes, he made a mistake which others did not. BUT, he also took the biggest risk out of all the other contestants and he's unique in what he does. I'm not a fan of people voting just for pity's sake, but in this case I believe he deserves another chance because he still has the fight in him, even after such a blunder.

 

I would have chosen freelusion over Gary myself, I've never found the latter all that funny and we already had a comedian in the finals, where we have NO dancers now. It's an odd thing, back when the season began acts like Siro-A, Freckled Sky and Freelusion all seemed like they were going to be the ones fighting it out for the final spots and now look at where we are.

 

BUT...BUT...BUT... I think we can all agree that capping a 10th anniversary season off with a final dominated by variety acts like comedians, magicians, acrobats and ventriloquists, is quite a wonderful thing and gives hope for the future of this show. It took us a long time to get there, but AGT has finally become a show that celebrates ALL kinds of talent, not just singing and dancing. You and I both might feel that some of them don't deserve to be in the finals, maybe Gary never made you laugh or Oz was too predictable, but no matter what we think of some of these acts, we should all agree that the overall variety of this lineup is what the show was meant to be from the very beginning.

 

I've seen some people calling this season a disappointment, but ultimately, these results prove to me that it's been a success.

[S10.E23: Semi-Final Performances 2]

Overall, I found this weeks show much more interesting then last weeks, even with the mistakes some of the contestants made.

 

3 shades of blue - I started writing my thoughts down, but came to a sudden stop when I realized I couldn't remember who the first act of the night was. That's probably NOT a good thing on a competition where you have to stand out and be memorable. Look, theres nothing particularly awful about them (besides MAYBE the haircuts) but they have always come across as a poor mans garage band to me. There are thousands of amateur bands in America right now that could blow these guys out of the water and at the end of the day, they simply feel like filler.

 

Gary Vider - I just don't get why the judges want to champion this guy so much. Humor has always been subjective, but I simply don't see this guy giving anyone belly laughs. He didn't exactly bomb nor is he awful at what he does, but he just came off as a bit stale last night. Especially if you compare him to Piff and Paul who came later on and ended up being MUCH funnier, much more inventive and unique with their comedy. His introduction sketch with the roommate were far better than anything he did on stage and if the whole act was about this quiet, awkward guy living with an obnoxious roomate, it would have been more unique and interesting. Instead he just comes across as a Last Comic Standing dropout on a show where even a guy swallowing raw eggs manages to be funnier than him.

 

Alondra Santos - You know what? Considering the singers on this show love to pick serious songs and mangle old ones to show off their voice in the typical "I'm gonna scream and shout until you believe I can sing" fashion, I actually found this to be somewhat refreshing. Is it going to blow anyones mind? No. Is she going to pass to the final? Probably not. But was it fun? Yeah, yeah it was and thank god nobody was here to see me watch this show because I was this close to dancing along.

 

Freelusion - Despite their dancing taking a backseat this time, I actually really liked this. I mean we already KNOW they can dance so this showed off some inventiveness. You can argue that it's become more of a special effects show than a dance act now, but the voting has proved that people are tired of dancers anyways, so why NOT put on a good show? This would probably look a lot better live than it did on TV, but I'm rooting for them.

 

Alicia Michilli - I've liked her from the beginning, while not the strongest singer by any means, she is the most LIKABLE...to me at least. Theres something about her attitude that's not the usual "please like me and vote for me PLEASE" desperation some other singers show. That being said, she didn't do anything that interesting today and the whole laser show part just felt extremely weird and off for a song like this. They might as well have dressed her as the terminator and given her a pink sword, would have made as much sense.

 

Piff - I was worried for him tonight, but man did he prove me wrong. He staid away from the mistakes he made last time and got back to what he does best, being surprising, funny and charming with small, but yet impressive tricks. Is he the greatest magician the show has ever seen? Not really, but he does it with such style and humor that it ends up being much more than a simple magic act. If it's one thing I have to note it's this: he's sped up his act a bit for the show, his usual style is a lot slower and more deliberatley paced, but yesterday especially it felt like he was speeding through it, trying to get as much done as possible. Whether it's the nerves or something else doing this, I don't know. His act still works perfectly, but it's in danger of coming across as "trying too hard" at times.

 

Daniela Mass - For a moment there, I thought she would be singing "let it go". Thankfully it just seems the set designers were heavily intoxicated last night and doing whatever they wanted. Opera used to be the big "WOW" category on shows like this when it first started out, you'd have simple people from simple walks of life coming on stage and impressing everybody with their voice, leaving all the pop singers feeling plain and unimpressive by comparison. 10 seasons later and we've had SO many of them that it's no longer impressive and they just melt together with all the other singers now. I like Daniella and she certainly has passion, but none of this is unique any more.

 

Uzeyer - I don't think I've ever felt quite as bad for an act before on this show. I can't remember the last time an act like this actually failed live on stage, they always say that "Anything could go wrong, this is so dangerous" but usually the danger acts go through without a hitch and you never really feel like they were in any danger of failing. Uzeyer is the only one whose actually made me nervous and today it call came down. What made it even worse was him begging for more time in the end, and while I know it's unfair to the other contestants to let somebody try again, his act only lasted for 3 minutes while Piff and Paul went on for nearly 6 so they could have easily fit in another 90 minutes and just skipped the BS judges comments which took even MORE time. That being said, this could have gone REALLY bad in the end and you could just tell he was absolutely gutted, but to be honest here...I feel that he has more chance gaining pity votes by failing than if he had actually succeeded. His act pretty much seemed like a carbon copy of last time, but with a smaller ladder and the giant ring thrown in (which really wasn't impressive at all). I'm not sure what he was planning on doing with the smaller rings, but I can't see it being impressive enough to get him through even if he had succeeded.

 

The Regurgitator - I can't help but love this guy, even after seeing him on SO many shows before. Tonight felt like a small step back for me and I KNOW he's capable of much more, but I'm guessing he's saving it for the finals. I've seen people mention that he failed to bring up the smoke when he swallowed the egg, but he actually DID bring it up, it was just harder to see because it wasn't as compact as in the bubble, so it would have been better had he just blown ANOTHER bubble. Still, I'm rooting for him, he's just so unique at what he does that he deserves at least a spot in the finals.

 

Sharon Irving - Weeks go by and people rave about her, but I still don't quite love her. Her passion and energy comes through when she performs and she is VERY skilled at what she does, but I've yet to really be "wowed" and her song choiches so far have come across as a bit pretentious to me. Maybe I'm just being too harsh on the singers, if any of them deserve to go through tonight it's definitely her.

 

Paul Zerdin - I've seen Paul on other shows enough to have guessed what he was going to do tonight, but it still worked BEAUTIFULLY. Week after week he keeps showing us something new, mixing it up and breaking the rules of what acts do on stage just like Piff. One could say that they concentrated less on his face this time so we didn't see him being a ventriloquist, BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER. We already KNOW he's a great ventriloquist, he's proven it time and time again, now he needs to surprise and amaze us and he keeps doing that with EASE. Definitely a major contender at this point, just hoping he has more tricks up his sleeve for the finals.

 

Prediction:

 

Paul Zerdin, Piff and most likely Sharon straight through as the top 3.

Freelusion, Regurgitator and Uzeyer as the dunkin save acts, with Regurgitator and Uzeyer through.

But I wouldn't be surprised if Daniela or Gary sneak in.

[S10.E21: Semi-Final Performances 1]

ira and his Mom were much funnier during the packaged bit than during the show. If they want to do a huge production number, they have to change it up a bit ... change the lyrics or interject comedy or something. Just straight singing and dancing brings little new to the table. That they are puppets is not enough.

 

 

I liked the personalities from the beginning and the puppeteers are clearly talented, but the act itself has always seemed a bit half-baked. Their behind the scenes and intro skits were always much better than the actual act and it feels like they never really figured out what to do once they actually had to perform on stage. I feel like they could have gotten much further had the act JUST been sketches. Just set up an elaborate comedic sketch on stage, perform it with puppets and have it be funnier than the comedians, BAM finals. They clearly had it in them based on all the intro videos. Or if you are going for the musical route, try to do something original, like a comedic song with original lyrics not just "Heres a puppet singing that song you once heard..LAUGH DAMN YOU!".

[S10.E22: Semi-Final Results 1]

Indy said, "How in the world was Siro-A that far down in the results? They could have been no better than 7th. That's crazy."

===============

I think a lot of the surprises come from the way AGT arranges the voting.  For example, let's say that the votes hypothetically had Oz Pearlman as #1, Drew Lynch as #2 and Siro-A as #3. Putting Drew against Siro-A would knock out Siro-A, even though they were the 3rd best!  In fact, if Drew's votes put him as #1 and Siro-A was a very close #2, Siro-A would still be thrown out and replaced by acts at the bottom of the list.   I wonder why none of us complained that the voting puts two of the bottom three in the top 5.  That means that two acts in the top 5 are knocked out to make room for two of the three worst.  What's the logic in that?  So when we say that they could have been no better than 7th, you can see that they might have been second!  Two out of five is 40%, so the vote allows 40% of the winners to be those that the views felt were the least deserving!!

 

What's the logic of taking two acts who viewers put in the top 5 and throwing them out so that they can be replaced by acts at the very bottom of the list?  I didn't think about that until  today and wonder why we all haven't been screaming about that!  It's also clear that if the show carefully selects who goes against who, they can knock anyone they want out, except for the top vote getter, just by selecting who goes against who.  Keep in mind that all this is legal and does not imply any distortion of the votes count.

 

 

You've answered your own question! I'm positive TPTB already have a winner picked. This weekly voting is just lip service. Or vote service! to make their winner win.

 

I've seen confusion regarding the voting system before, so I'll try to clear things up a bit. The whole "please step forward act x and act y" is just for show, they don't arrange 3 acts on stage and pick the one that got the most votes to go through, they simply pick somebody from the top 3 and pair them with someone who was in the bottom 5.

 

The "bottom 3/dunkin save" is also just the acts that came 4th, 5th and 6th, NOT actually the bottom 3, those get called on stage with acts that got to the top 3 in the voting. They don't disregard the actual voting results, the televoters top 3 ALWAYS make it, and the next 3 acts are in the dunkin save.

 

Same goes for the judges choice round, It's never been about "Ira vs Aiden Sinclaire, we are gonna choose IRA over you", the choices have been made LONG before that, when all the acts have been compared to one and another, they simply pair up 1 act that they sent through and 1 that they didn't to ANNOUNCE the results.

 

All of this is done for drama, nothing more, nothing less. But the choices/voting have always happened before all of this.

[S10.E21: Semi-Final Performances 1]

I definitely see your point Frankenstein (heh, no clue why, just typing that gave me a chuckle).

 

I guess I just didn't realize how well traveled these people are. I didn't realize Siro-A has been out there THAT much. Would figure they would be a little more polished than they are in that case.

 

And yeah, I saw that clip where you can clearly see the light bulb in the back of his mouth.

 

It has to be a combination of sleight of hand and being able to hold things in the back of his throat. He obviously doesn't have fingers in his stomach, so it is physically impossible for him to swallow a lock, key and ring and manipulate them to put the key in the lock, unlock it, place the ring on it, lock it and take the key out.

 

He IS very good at what he does. He is good enough people have been speculating on how he does it for decades now. But It is just like others have said, having seen his act before, it just doesn't wow me. But, others haven't seen it, so again, I do see peoples point on that.

Heh, there are certain sentences in life you never expect to write and "I definitely see your point Frankenstein" is one of them.

 

I find him quite entertaining, despite seeing him on a thousand other shows, but he definitely needs to spice things up soon. My guess is, he will do the whole "swallow the goldfish" act next.

[S10.E22: Semi-Final Results 1]

Siro-A losing is quite an injustice, but I actually guessed it would happen. It's not even the fact that people are getting bored of multimedia acts, more it's the "they will qualify anyways" effect. Whenever you checked blogs or forums, Siro-A was always "that certain one that will go through anyways" like it was a GIVEN they would make it and there were only 4 spots to fight for. The constant praise they've been getting from the judges pretty much confirmed them as front-runners. Which is why I'm guessing a lot of people simply chose to vote for the underdog (Derek, Drew, Benton) and skipped Siro-A because they thought they would get through anyways. 

[S10.E21: Semi-Final Performances 1]

Putting aside the "same act" argument for a moment, with regards to the Regurgitator, have we figured out whether it's an illusion/sleight of hand dealy or is he truly swallowing these items? Or some combination thereof? I know it shouldn't make a difference, entertaiment-wise, but I admit I'd be more impressed if it was for "real".

 

Then again, I impress easily.

People have been trying to figure him out for years, but haven't really managed to. The most popular sentiment seems to be that he never FULLY swallows everything, but uses a combination of hiding things in his throat/mouth and sleight of hand. The pool ball/light bulb never fully go down, but are hidden in his throat (he tries not to talk much when he swallows big objects as you can clearly tell his voice has changed)...yet at the same time some items COULD be swallowed as a whole, while others are simply hidden in his mouth. There must be some sort of a physical abnormality that allows him to do all of this. He is probably using this in combination with sleight of hand magic (ring goes into lock before he puts it in his mouth)

 

As for the "same act" bit...Paul Zerdin, Piff, Alondra, Siro-A, Uzeyer etc have also been doing EXACTLY the same routines on AGT as other shows. However I do agree that The Regurgitator having appeared in like 6 different "got talent" shows has made his act quite stale for those who HAVE seen them and it's getting a bit silly by now. Still, like I mentioned earlier...most people are seeing him for the first time so he's still "new" to them. 

[S10.E21: Semi-Final Performances 1]

Yes, and I am especially irritated that the regurgitator (that's a TALENT?)  gets praised, when, as we've all been discovering, he's been doing the same thing, has been on the "Any country's Got Talent" show numerous times, the judges have seen him, known about him.   at first I thought that other people do that same act, I KNOW I've seen a guy do that on late night TV shows.  No - it's HIM.   same guy, same trick, over and over .  

 

If anybody deserves to be X'ed, it's him.  Except he doesn't even deserve to be on the show in the first place.   

I think they brought him on, knowing exactly what tricks he was going to do, and they're already decided when he's leaving the show.   He's an act that they call on to rev up interest, there's no way in hell he's going to win, and he (and the judges and producers)  know it.  The fact that he's there makes me not believe in the show at all 

 

 

Out of curiosity I looked up how many times he has been on television....just, wow:

 

"Tonite With Jay Leno" (USA) (x6)

"Late Night With Letterman" (USA)

"Arsenio Hall Show (USA)

"Howard Stern Show" (USA)

"Incredible Sunday" (USA)

"Thats Incredible" (USA) (x2)

 

And that is just on American TV.

 

 

I find the whole "He's been on TV before, thus this whole thing is a fix" notion quite silly. If we are to start eliminating contestants based on how "professional" they are, then we'd have to get rid of about 80% of them.

 

Everybody loves Paul Zerdin, but he's appeared on the Royal Variety Performance 3 times (something considered a PRIZE for the winner of Britains Got Talent), won various other talent competitions AND has professionally produced DVD's out. Piff already HAS his own show, is part of the magic circle AND has appeared on Penn and Teller. Myq Kaplan has appeared on all kinds of Late night talk shows (Letterman, Conan etc) and has multiple comedy specials out. Derek Hughes has been on TV loads of times, he was a professional coach for celebrities on Abracadabra, has acted in sitcoms and shows like Angel and CSI, been on Jay Leno, produced his own shows AND even been an extra in Captain America and Adam Sandler movies. 

 

Siro-A have toured the world for over 12 years, have won more awards than anyone could possible count and have appeared on other talent shows like BGT before. Same thing with Freelusion (also on Britains got Talent). Uzeyer has been doing his act for over 20 years now, has travelled across the globe, been part of some of the most prestigious circuses, been on TONS of TV shows and even performed as part of Cirque du Soleil. The people behind Ira are known broadway stars, behind some of the most critically acclaimed musicals like Avenue Q.

 

Benton already has multiple albums out and tours across the world. Daniela Mass has won over 20 singing competitions and even composed songs of her own that have become anthems for various big events. The CraigLewis band have appeared on Oprah and been a part of Tyler Perry musicals. Alicia Michilli already has an album coming out and has been performing wit Keb' Mo' for quite a while now. Alondra Santos has been singing these exact same songs on various other talent shows like The Voice.

 

The list goes on and on and on... This show likes to play the "We've never seen anything like this before, I'm so glad we discovered you" card because it makes for good TV, but don't be fooled...most of these people have had LONG careers before AGT ever came along. 

 

At the end of the day, this show has never been about discovering people who woke out of bed 2 weeks ago and found they could yodel like a pro. It's about bringing talented people together, those who have been performing for 30 years and those who just started a week ago EQUALLY, and showcasing them to the rest of America, who usually would not check out opera singers, magicians, comedians etc. It would be silly if Lady Gaga auditioned, but none of these guys are a household name like her. They are semi-pro's and quite known within their respective circles, but 98% of the people who tune in to AGT have NEVER heard of them before. And it's to these people the show is aimed at.