I MADE THE MISTAKE OF WATCHING THE VOICE

I'd never seen The Voice until last night. In truth, I haven't watched any tv other than the news and TCM in decades. But I was shocked by what a moronic show it is. I was with a Cher fan who had taped the episode on which she appeared. Despite the fact that Cher changed wigs from black to reddish blond in the 2 short, lackluster, clips she appeared in, you then kept watching the 2 hour fiasco hoping for more. You got none. What you did get was the insanely dull host Carson Daly, who is clearly so bored that he can't even pretend to be interested or excited or even crack a smile. He used to have a little charm before he lost weight, didn't he? The lighting is frightful. The rules difficult to understand. Barely introduced not famous hosts occasionally appear--one red haired guy was brought in for 1 line of mentoring? What's the point? But the craziest thing is show itself. We love competition to such an unhealthy degree that every single show has to be a one. Who can lose the most weight, model, sew, cook, shove bugs in their mouth or compete for the love of Flavor Flav. This obsession with contests in lieu of a plot (which would require writers!) would explain why The Voice was created to copycat American Idol and X Factor. But it one ups them. The judges actually compete as well as the contestants! How pathetic! Is no one noticing or caring that with every two contestants, the judges are evenly split? So that the last vote is always to decision-maker? Each time they say how hard the decision is or how making this decision makes them hate their jobs. And both contestants are always praised out the wazoo. Can't they ever just say "You can't sing as well as her--you're gone"? Is that too cruel for America to digest? And if it's close enough but they still must choose one, they can resurrect the loser by "stealing" them. I have a very hard time believing that these judges give a hoot about any of the contestants and their answers seem totally pre-planned out every time. And what a stupid idea to have two people sing one song at one time. Of course, producers don't want to pay clearance rights for any more songs than they have to. So doubling up the singers on one song is cheaper and it allows them to focus more on the contestants' back stories and the horrible build-up with meaningless thoughts from mentors--in 2 painful hours there's hardly any singing compared to judging, walking down aisles with game faces on and Carson's painful emceeing. If The Voice is giving America what it wants then America really loves sh(t.