The Voice – A Whole Lotta Nothing Going On
Oh hey, what are you doing here? It’s Wednesday. At 8 p.m. Shouldn’t we all be watching repeats of The Mentalist? It’s kind of ballsy of the powers that be that devise the NBC schedule to assume that we would be free to watch this episode. What is this show doing on at 8 o’clock? It’s waltzing all over the schedule like it’s a competitor on So You Think You Can Dance. If we all took a “Rules” approach to television watching, The Voice would have had to ask us last Sunday whether we were free on Wednesday. This whole spring-it-on-us thing just seems rude.
Anyway, welcome back to The Voice. Things are getting off a little late because the President of the United States of the America chose to spring an address on us. Carson Daly puts him in his place by noting, “If The Voice is going to be delayed by someone, it should be the President.” Is that treason? Can Carson go to Gitmo now? Carson harrumphs at the President and then reminds us why we are all here: To whittle down the eight semi-finalists to just four finalists. Then we get a montage of everyone singing in two-second bursts. My recap is slightly more illuminating. Slightly.
You know how this show keeps pretending that it is really, really different from That Other Singing Show That Shall Not Be Named? Well, based on what they just made the eight semi-finalists do… well, it wasn’t a Ford commercial, but it was a George Michael medley and it was pretty cruel and unusual punishment for a group of semi-professional singers. The contestants all took turns singing and Nakia got a lot of camera time, which was nice because he can handle it with panache. Vicci got her chance to wail on a few notes, Javier got a quick solo, but overall it was very reliant on Nakia’s stage presence. Luckily he has some to spare, because some of these people are more than a little awkward on stage. Obviously I’m mostly talking about Team Blake, because as much as I love Dia, she’s not meant to be doing George Michael covers in a show choir setting. As the song (thankfully, blissfully) ends, Carson reminds us what happened just last night, you know, just in case you had to block everything out in a self-preservation technique to pretend that the Maroon 5 performance never ever happened. I chose a regimen of sniffing Wite-Out and light pithing to remove it from my memory.
