S17.E10: Auditions End and Judge Deliberations

[Mr. Sparkle]

As the auditions conclude, the judges decide which acts will move on to the live shows, where they will get the chance to impress America.

Airs Tuesday, August 2nd, 8:00 PM EDT. 

[ams1001]

Guy: "My wife and I are mentalists..."
Me: 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

So hand balancers aren't good enough but a stripping great-granny and a drumming cow are. 🙄

I actually liked the Indian dance crew. They were fun.

[Mr. Sparkle]

37 minutes ago, ams1001 said:

I actually liked the Indian dance crew. They were fun.

I agree, so of course they only showed about 30 seconds of their act, but every second of every singer. 

It may be my mood, and I'll write more tomorrow, but that was even more boring than usual. 

[ams1001]

6 minutes ago, Superclam said:

It may be my mood, and I'll write more tomorrow, but that was even more boring than usual. 

One of the judges was telling the mentalists how great their presentation was just as I was saying (out loud to no one) "god that was boring."

[Neet]

Emily Bland - Once I heard that bassy voice, I was thrilled to hear the crowd cheering for our shared 'persuasion' until the man walked out and made me feel a fool for being attracted to a real woman. Jokes aside, this was the first sign that tonight's show was really scraping the barrel for something to fill the time. I naively thought that last week was the last audition show, but fast forwarding as much as possible must have omitted that detail. She pivoted to doing improvisational lip syncing, which is a water cooler trick at best.

Mind2Mind - It must be law that every mentalist act needs to be hosted by an expressionless man and his assistant-wife who looks and sounds Russian no matter her real ethnicity. As per usual, we're supposed to simply take the paid-off judge at their word that the trick is real and wasn't rehearsed ten minutes prior. When convinced that the microwave doubles as a hard drive for my deepest secrets, these acts fail to impress. And this one was worse than usual, which really says something when the supposed time limit goes out the window for this genre.

Aubrey Burchell - She's autistic and had to bring it up, even though she's clearly functional enough to barely be affected by it. (and a woman, so double that) Also kind of odd that her neurodivergence comes through by looking like any girl you'd find with one swipe on TikTok. I know autistic people aren't good at social cues and I could relate to them during this performance due to staring at my feet throughout. Simon was grinning ear to ear, pretending he won't disavow signing her the moment the cameras are off.

The Lads - "Now that's how you support a 30 year old man", I said to my feeble father who was watching this while ironing my shirts after a 12 hour shift. For how many of these body balancing groups this show has, they were one of the better ones. At least walking around with the teammate in a one-arm handstand was something a bit different.

Penny Starr Sr - If they're going to milk this show so hard for remaining auditions, at least the acts are getting condensed. I think she was shown waving her hand once and that was the whole dance. She's so old, her parents probably named her Penny because a cent had tangible value back then. The judges throw all criteria in the toilet and usher her through, perhaps off the back of Sofia and Heidi being impressed that attention whoring into their eighties is still viable.

Mr. Moo Shakes - Another shitty act that fools the audience like peekaboo just because he's wearing a costume. There always has to be several 'performers' who get a huge round of ironic applause by people who will swear on their first born that they'll be a paying fan, but will bow out before he even appears again. (he won't)

Bay Turner - There was little doubt that he was a singer, since that douchey "artist" hat is never worn by anyone else. I thought being named Bae Turner meant that his vocals were hypnotic enough to make Sofia and Heidi do lesbian acts, but they sat at the table with their hands firmly at their sides, so it must have been an off night. A fancy way to say I have eff-all to really say about it. Even the story about his vocal chord being struck during surgery didn't get me further invested.

Waffle - I was confused that they called their act 'double Dutch' when none of them had blue eyes and blond hair. Nonetheless, it was pretty decent, notably the guy jumping onto his forearm. They got montage'd regardless, and there were a few other brief acts I don't care to mention.

Camille K - In typical fashion, she's stopped after getting one line through a song that pales into comparison with the one she should have just started with. Pretending this wasn't orchestrated for the thousandth time, of course. She mentioned writing a love song despite never going through heartbreak, which makes sense because I didn't hear any lyrics about the man in question being jobless. Naive girl. Anyway, her voice was pretty decent and might have to be a replacement for Debii Dawson inevitably not getting through the fan votes.

The Nerveless Nocks - I didn't know the Dad's name was Michelangelo, which is probably the only example of a man with that name producing a work of art that depreciates over time. I kind of thought that AGT Extreme was cancelled after the one stuntman got injured during rehearsal, but that must have been in name only when another dangerous act comes back to perform with no crash pad or any other safety gear. Pretty excellent, hopefully there's room for variety.

Probably my worst post, fitting for an episode that barely deserved to air. It's hard to add much commentary when needing a thesaurus for 'good'/'decent', etc. from feeling lobotomized for not leaping to my feet with the audience for the same variations of every niche.
Somehow, the list of contestants moving on to the next round being posted on NBC builds some hype, even though actually watching most of them will feel like unpaid labor. Did they just announce this format for the season today or was it known in advance that 100 acts that got "put through" are getting kicked out immediately? It's more interesting than several rounds of fodder, but two months of auditions is one hell of a punishment to get there.

[InternetToughGuy]

Damn, more auditions really saps even more morale from the already empty reservoir, so obviously I'm not in the mood to write this, even though the desire to be idiotic never stops. At least the show has anti-aging properties as it made me revert to the mindset of a teenager thinking "I hate everything".

///

Emily Bland - She really loves Garth Brooks, whom I wonder if he saw Morgan Wallen's career spike after saying that slur on camera and is ever tempted to yell it into a stage microphone while raising his cowboy hat, unaware he'd have a 99% chance of being cancelled on the spot, but she did manage to make me think she was the one singing, thus ending my decade long streak of not believing anything shown on NBC. Seeing as how I pretend to sound like an adult male everyday, I really didn't see what the talent was and don't get what the act is supposed to be about.

Mind2Mind - These acts are always hell to sit through, since they'll spend the first 30 seconds describing what they'll do while you spend the next 5 minutes impatiently scratching your ass while waiting for them to deliver on exactly that. I'm going to assume Terry was concealing a full script in his suit, because how else would these work. If I bumped into the girl in public and she didn't instantly run away after sensing the filth in my head, she would be instantly exposed.

Aubrey Burchell - Despite her looking like the kind of person to screech if you called her a girl, this was a pretty decent performance. Of course the autism diagnosis had to be shoehorned in there, even though girls having impairments like that never affect the opposite sex from worshipping them, while a man with even a minor case of it is somehow cursed with loving Thomas The Tank Engine well into his 50s. I kind of thought I was on the spectrum before a team of doctors concluded that I just medically cannot stop touching myself in public.

The Lads - This was a pretty good act. The one handed handstand on the other guy's head reminded me of just how hard I have to press the pomade against my crown to give the illusion that I have a Norwood 5. On a more serious note, I'd like to know why all of these artistic types feel the need to litter their body in crappy tattoos, just like the guys who feel the need to tattoo knives on the side of their face just because they are a chef, it seems idiotic.

Penny Starr Sr. - What does it say about the health of the current dating market when a crowd is eagerly cheering to pay a million dollars to see an old woman naked? Not a real act.

Somewhere in the middle of the show, Howie probably tried to outrun the specks of dust in the air and left.

Mr. Moo Shakes - This might have been a good act if it wasn't done to this song which is another one everyone pretends to like.

Bay Turner - As for his tumors, I was wondering why instead of surgery he didn't consider an expensive lifelong twice a day pill that at best did nothing and at worse would fatally injure him. Song was alright.

Waffle - I am confused why Double Dutch featured five Japanese unless like what most of what I say, the correlation is flimsy at best. It was a fun little act and can only get better due to assuming the four guys are all willing to cripple themselves in the quest to outdo each other to win the girl's attention. With how dense Japan is, I'm wondering where they even found the 2 square meters to practice.

Unreal Crew - This was a good act. They won an Indian dance contest, which I find interesting because of the high population, some of those shows probably get like 100 million viewers yet you never hear of it, possibly because of the disparity in societal advancement where cable is irrelevant in America and running water in India probably has its own talk show.

Camille K - She looks so mature, I don't get how there isn't a collective gasp in the audience when she said her age, meanwhile everyone who is old gets applause just for still breathing. I thought both performances were boring.

The Nerveless Nocks - The guy being named Michelangelo sounds really douchey, though it's hard to know what to make of it when he was born in an age where ruining your kid's life with a quirky name wasn't done for the fleeting high of Facebook likes. The premise of the act is good, but I just thought it was boring. Michelangelo called AGT the greatest stage on Earth, possibly unaware that the production set for the moon landing was somewhere in California.

//

It's hard to write these posts with any enthusiasm when the show has already turned into pure suffering. The new formatting for the next round is kind of confusing - why say yes to acts when half of them aren't going to go on any further? I can't imagine what the executive was thinking if his idea for shaking things up was ripping off the format of American Idol, whose ratings are even more in the dump than this one.

Edited August 3, 2022 by InternetToughGuy

[Vermicious Knid]

I agree with Sophia. The first act was done well, but I don't know what you'd do with it. Really it's a party trick. Not the first elderly stripper they've had on. And we got 22 minutes worth of filler with the Golden Buzzer winners that I actually would have rather spent watching dopey auditions.

[Mr. Sparkle]

Like I already said, that was particularly boring. I was tired, and it's hot AF here, so no one got a pass from me. I also thought last week was the final week of auditions. That means next week we get two days of this crap. Another 5 weeks to the semi-finals! 

Alright, let's go:

• Emily Bland - @Vermicious Knid said it, party trick, not an act. 
• Mentalists - honestly, I spaced out and barely watched the trick. These are all the same to me. 
• Aubrey Burchell - I didn't love her voice, but good song choice and presentation. She has a chance to get to the semis. 
• The Lads - I agree with Simon and Howie, we've seen it a million times, and it's been done better. Sleepy performance. 
• Penny Starr - nah. 
• Cow Drummer - I've seen pail drummers a million times in the subway, but not with a cow head. I thought he was a good drummer, but this act isn't going anywhere. 
• Bay Turner - I thought this obviously professional singer would already have a career and 6 CDs out, but he doesn't have much. Very good singer, a lock for the semis. 
• Waffle - entertaining enough to watch. 
• Unreal Crew - like I said above, I liked them a lot. Reminded me of that Japanese guy who won a few years back. (Kenichi Ebina, 2008)
• Camille K - I remember a young woman singing, but I can't remember a thing about her performance. 
• Can't have AGT without the Nock family. 

[Chit Chat]

13 hours ago, ams1001 said:

So hand balancers aren't good enough but a stripping great-granny and a drumming cow are.

I was just in Florida visiting family and saw the dancer's story in the local paper.  She's from Palm Bay.  She said that it's supposed to be a burlesque show, but they wouldn't let her use the word 'burlesque' or use the music she usually dances to.   She said something along the lines of 'how do you dance to the music they chose?'  

[rr2911]

Ok, so I'm reading that the format changed.  I have two questions....

1.  What was the format in the past?

2.  What is the format now?

[Tango64]

Bay Turner has a wooden sign in his apartment that says "Live, Laugh, Love." Guaranteed.

[InternetToughGuy]

1 hour ago, rr2911 said:

Ok, so I'm reading that the format changed.  I have two questions....

1.  What was the format in the past?

2.  What is the format now?

The old one was every act that got a yes in the auditions would get to perform again, even though the majority of them would get eliminated after that. The new one makes it so half of the acts that got a yes are getting eliminated without being seen again and also the acts in the semi (?) finals will have performed 3 times instead of 4.

[Chit Chat]

7 hours ago, InternetToughGuy said:

The new one makes it so half of the acts that got a yes are getting eliminated without being seen again and also the acts in the semi (?) finals will have performed 3 times instead of 4.

There are some acts that I'd like to get a second look at, but it's also good to see the acts in the finals have an extra chance to shine!

I've only been watching AGT for about 5 years, but it's getting easier to predict which acts are going to be a one-hit wonder and won't make it to the finals.  There have been several acts I liked over the years, but after seeing some of them perform twice before getting cut, I could see how the novelty of their acts wore off after 2 auditions! So many of them are good but looking through the lens of a potential Las Vegas show, you can usually see where some of them just don't cut the mustard for that big of a stage!

[rr2911]

7 hours ago, InternetToughGuy said:

The old one was every act that got a yes in the auditions would get to perform again, even though the majority of them would get eliminated after that. The new one makes it so half of the acts that got a yes are getting eliminated without being seen again and also the acts in the semi (?) finals will have performed 3 times instead of 4.

Oh ok.  I remember now.

[rr2911]

I don't have anything to say about last nights show only to say that I'm happy it's cutting time and off to the live shows.  I do have a question about Chapel Hart, the all female group that has a hard time making it because no one in the country music world looks like them.  With their sudden popularity sky rocketing everyday, are they going to decide to "bow out" so that they can continue to pursue their newfound success?  Dolly Pardon, Lorretta Lynn and Darius Rucker have all shown interest in creating music with them.  Let other talented acts have a chance for the top prize.  I think it's the right thing to do.

[PBnJay]

22 hours ago, rr2911 said:

I do have a question about Chapel Hart, the all female group that has a hard time making it because no one in the country music world looks like them.  With their sudden popularity sky rocketing everyday, are they going to decide to "bow out" so that they can continue to pursue their newfound success? 

My prediction: They will make it to the end but not win. Then they can go on to fame and fortune in Nashville but with a contract that says all promos must state they were "discovered" and became famous on AGT *coughsimoncough*.

[Lonesome Rhodes]

A new low?  Wasting all the time rehashing the GBs just might be the nadir.

I guess it was EWF night.  That, worked for me.

I have to hand it to the lip syncing non-ventriloquism act.  It is arguably the most confusing act evah, yet it got a Yes from the Cowell.  

It says quite a lot that the 4 acts chosen for the vote were so random and mediocre.  Simon said his picks would be very different from the others.  In this, he was really not kidding.  That mess was a perfect example of AGT-think.

I was happily surprised that plain old piano man got through.  I'll be stunned if he is among the Sammy Hagar subset.

No Sonic moment.  Dunkin must have bailed completely, because there is no way Sonic is paying anything close to what Dunkin was. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Lonesome Rhodes