After every episode, we assess how American Idol’s guest judges have fared. Towards the end, we’ll see if they did Paula Abdul‘s old slot justice. Or the show justice. Or Simon Cowell’s soon-to-be-vacated slot justice. You get the idea.
Name: Kristin Chenoweth
Best known as: Award-winning stage and television performer
Audition city: Orlando
How did she judge? I’ll get this out of the way first: it’s unfortunate we didn’t see much of her. She was only there for half the episode, leaving for New York on the second day. From what I’ve gathered, though, she’s more on the encouraging track than the critical track–although it must be Kristin’s adorable nature. She’s doting, but she’s no Shania Twain.
Did she get along with the judges? Judging from how well she got along with her new BFF, Kara DioGuardi? No question about it. It would be interesting, though, to see what would happen if Kristin got the gig permanently. Imagine: a contestant hits a high note, Kara and Kristin try to hit that note (the latter would be more successful, of course) and Simon would cover his ears… before announcing his departure from Idol for The X Factor. Of course, I kid.
Nasty or nice? Nice, more or less. Again, we didn’t really see much of her guest judge stint, but you have the feeling she’d go “aww shucks” on you. She’s just that adorable. What else can I do? I give up!
The Paula Abdul rating: 8/10
The Simon Cowell rating: 6/10
Anything else? Kristin was gone for the second day of the Orlando auditions, which forced us to think about the three-judge set-up again. What if the nationwide auditions had only three judges, and Ellen entered only on Hollywood week? What if there were just three judges this season? It would’ve made things easier, but with the recent string of relatively unimpressive episodes, it would’ve made things worse.
The report cards so far:
Victoria Beckham
Mary J. Blige
Shania Twain
(Image courtesy of Fox)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
