Can You Duet?

I'll come clean, I went through a reality TV phase a few years ago. Nothing all that serious, but when I first got my DVR, 3 of the 4 shows I had set to record every week were The Apprentice, The Amazing Race, and Survivor. That phase has pretty much gone now, with the last holdover, Survivor, not getting programmed into the DVR for Season 18, after I'd watched disinterestedly the last 2 or 3 seasons. I will say that I never got into any kind of reality shows that weren't some sort of game or competition. While the term "reality TV" is generally always a misnomer to some degree, for most of the genre, it's a total misnomer. Sticking cameras in someone's house and just letting them roll, with their full knowledge, is not conducive to recording "reality".

Anyhow, one reality show that I had interest in at the beginning but quickly cooled on was American Idol. I followed the first season pretty closely, and even a good bit of the second, but by season 3, I had totally soured on it and moved on. The fact that show introduced Carrie Underwood to the world is the only thing that has prevented me from openly mocking the show in recent years. My eternal gratitude to the show for that contribution to society aside, it's been years since I've even thought of turning on an episode. And the truth is that in a lot of ways, Underwood's country success is one of the few real claims the show has to continued relevance. The last two seasons have failed to even produce a platinum debut album for the winner, and Underwood joins first season winner Kelly Clarkson and 2nd season runner-up Clay Aiken as the only AI alums to produce more than one platinum selling album. Even Clarkson and Aiken seem to be losing some steam with their most recent releases.

So I tell you all of that to tell you this: The American Idol producers have gone country. Several weeks ago, CMT launched Can You Duet, the search for the next great country duo. As has been well documented on this blog, I am a devotee of country music, so I decided to check it out, and I have to admit, I've greatly enjoyed what I've seen so far.

Given it's shared producers, the show, of course, borrows a lot from American Idol, starting with its three judge panel: Country icon Naomi Judd, decorated country songwriter Aimee Mayo, and noted vocal coach Brett Manning. The show began with 2 audition shows, which were used to select (I think) 25 duos, both from established pairs and singles who were split up from their partners at audition time, to advance to the next round. After "workshop week", which consisted of one on one sessions with the judges and a couple performances followed by cuts, the field was narrowed down to 8 duos, who are now competing in live stage performances to win a recording contract from Sony BMG Nashville. However, unlike American Idol, where audience voting takes over once the final competition begins, the judges are still calling the shots in Can You Duet, making the calls on who goes home each week.

So, why do I like this show and despise American Idol? Well, I'm sure some of it has to do with my bias toward country music as a genre, and I do greatly enjoy watching these final contestants give some fresh takes on a lot of great songs I love. However, there are other reasons as well. First of all, less is more, in my opinion. Can You Duet runs for one hour once a week, while American Idol generally chews up 2, 3, and I think sometimes even 4 hours with it's two weekly shows. And yet Can You Duet contains roughly the same amount of actual competition content, which means there is all kinds of useless fluff in the American Idol broadcasts. One of things notably absent from the CMT show is all the crazy melodrama and the taking of 15+ minutes and multiple commercial breaks to reveal the final decision. Now, that's not to say that I wouldn't expect efforts to use more time if Can You Duet was to become a massive hit, but on it's face, it takes much more of a cut to the chase approach. There's certainly the use of artificially created drama, it's just not as much.

Secondly, I love this panel of judges, for a number of reasons. First, each one of them is highly credentialed and knows a thing or two about what they are watching. There's no Paula in this group, and no Simon, and they all are capable of offering both insightful and intelligent praise, as well as worthwhile and constructive criticism of performances - both of which were usually notably absent from the comments of the Idol judges. While it's clear at points that they are doing some show for the cameras, it's also equally clear to me that they are very invested in these performers and interested in helping them grow and improve throughout the course of the competition, and you've clearly seen that take place. I find that to be highly appealing.

Finally, I can't tell you how much I enjoy the fact that this show isn't audience participation when it comes to choosing the winner. The AI phone voting system, where you can vote over and over again if you can get through, is a total joke, and always has been. It's also highly detrimental to keeping all of the best talent around until late in the game. I don't watch anymore, but it's hard not to get wind of the various "controversial" votes that occur each season, along with the inevitable suggestions that Idol is rigged. I've never bought into that, I just think that the voting system lends itself to wacky results. As cute and as novel an idea as letting the public decide this sort of thing is, I'd just as soon let the people who really know music make those calls.

I'm also quite interested to see how this pans out for the eventual winners. I do find a couple of the duos to be exceedingly talented, and think they would be capable of sustained success. However, while they will get a recording contract, they aren't going to have the benefit of the massive built-in fan base that Idol alums have due to the much more limited audience of the show. I think they'll still have an uphill climb to meet with any kind of real success. The fact that American Idol's original country cousin, Nashville Star, which has only aired on USA going into the upcoming season which will be on NBC, has yet to produce a winner that had any consistent success, seems to back me up in that regard.