We're Sure He's Leaving, Right?

I love a good action movie, so Fox's new show Human Target looked like an enjoyable 44-minute movie for me to check out. I missed the pilot episode on Sunday, but I wanted to watch the second episode which premiered last night. I even set a guide reminder so that I wouldn't get distracted by some random 80s movie on another channel that would cause me to miss the first half of the show. Now, we'll get to Human Target in a second, but another thing popped up first. When you set a reminder through the guide, it brings you to the channel a couple minutes early. It was because of this that I watched my first-ever segment of American Idol and I have a few thoughts.

First off, I don't know why this show is so popular, as it is essentially a karaoke contest. These people don't have to play their own instruments or write their own songs. Really, it's just a singing competition. But, I accept the fact that it's huge because even though I've never seen a full episode (a point of pride with me) I can still name several of the people who competed on this show. But, that brings me to the second reason I can not understand the popularity of this show - the most talented people don't win. What is the point of calling it a "talent show" if the talented people are voted off? Seems to me that the most successful people who ever appeared on the show are the ones that didn't win. Meanwhile the winners are only around until the next competition, at which point we forget the previous season ever happened. Frankly, I find the whole process pointless. If we were actually finding people who would go on to have lasting music careers that would be one thing, but that is not what is happening. Right now I would say American Idol is 2 for 9.

But, the good news is that the foundation is starting to crack. Paula Abdul has already left (though, when Paula Abdul makes up your foundation, you were on shaky ground to begin with) and now Simon Cowell is on the was out the door. Now, I've never watched more than 5 minutes of this monstrosity, but even I know Simon is the straw that stirs the drink. I can only hope his departure means that soon he will be off on some other show I won't have to watch and Idol will go away. I only ask that he get a show on a cable channel, so he stops taking over a major cable network 4 nights a week. There must be something better we can put on.

-However, I don't know is Human Target is in that "much better" category. I know it's supposed to be an action-filled show, but that doesn't mean the plot should be paper-thin with large holes in it. If I can tell within 4 minutes that one character is going to turn out to be a bad guy and we're only two episodes into a season, that doesn't leave me with much hope for future episodes. You should have at least a few solid scripts to start a season before falling back to the predictable plotlines we've all seen before. Also, the "gifted computer wizard who comes up with an answer, but we're not really going to explain how" character is too dumbed-down for today's audience. But, hey, they've got a grown up Kelly Leak, so it can't be all bad.