By Lisa de Moraes
Thursday, May 8, 2008
America's prepubescent chick-hood is prostrate with grief after Jason Castro got booted off "American Idol" last night, but he is relieved, telling show host Ryan Seacrest it saves him the bother of trying to learn three whole songs next week.
Tuesday night, performing two tunes he already knew proved too much for our pretty blue-eyed boy with the pettable hair. First he mauled Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," after which he mangled the lyrics to Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."
"I picked two songs I knew and even that I screwed up," he chuckles while chatting with Seacrest last night before his unveiling as this week's official hook-getter.
"Somebody told me that I shot the Tambourine Man. . . . I thought that was pretty funny," he guffaws.
During a taped infomercial for the Cirque du Soleil Beatles show "Love," Jason is seen calling a grab-and-kiss from a chick fan "scary" -- after which he's seen kissing a dolphin that appears to harbor the same dark thoughts about being kissed by Jason. On the way to Las Vegas, via private jet, to catch "Love," Jason is deeply impressed with a bed in the plane. "Sleepin' in the sky -- ooooh, cool!" he says.
Not surprisingly, during the Phone Company Presents Actual Phone Calls product-placement bit on the results show, Jason tells a caller the biggest challenge he's had to overcome as an Idolette is his brain being dead. That may be the most honest answer ever given to any question on "Idol."
For his got-the-hook tune, the show has Jason re-mangle "I Shot the Sheriff," which surprises the heck out of him. Apparently they did not feel he could learn that flubbed line of "Tambourine Man" in just 24 hours.
We are now one week closer to the inevitable showdown between the Two Davids -- Archuleta and Cook. Which means next week, I Am Syesha Mercado! has got to go.
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In its third to last week, "Idol" clocked its smallest Tuesday audience this season when the four remaining Idolettes got to sing from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of 500 influential hits. "Hungry Like the Wolf" influential? Really?
With the competition down to the Two Davids, Syesha and Jason, more than 3 million viewers bailed out of the show compared with the previous Tuesday, leaving 21.8 million still hanging in.
During the broadcast, Jason succumbed to the rampant lyric-forgetting virus that killed the clear-winner status of David "Baby Elmo" Archuleta weeks ago during a Beatles tune, and obviously was brought into the Idolette camp by carrier Nanny Brooke.
This was the smallest audience for a Tuesday "Idol" broadcast since its very first "in-season" season, the first quarter of 2003. ("Idol" debuted as a summer series in 2002 and became part of Fox's in-season programming slate the following January.)
Among the 18-to-49-year-olds and 18-to-34-year-olds Fox covets, Tuesday's ragged episode scored the smallest ratings ever for an in-season "Idol."
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AMC has renewed its drama series "Breaking Bad" for a second season of 13 episodes. A suit at producer Sony Pictures Television said in a prepared statement the pickup was a validation of the company's belief that viewers would embrace the show.
Since it premiered on AMC in January, an average of 1.3 million people watched the show in its Sunday 10 p.m. premiere telecasts. AMC chose to focus on the fact that across all its plays in multiple time slots, about 20 million people have sampled the show -- which is to say, watched as little as six minutes. Imagine watching six minutes of a flick and then walking out, and the studio clocking you as part of their flick's ginormous audience -- it's kind of like that.
The cable network also noted the show's first season delivered 641,000 25-to-54-year-olds, 36 percent better than AMC's 2007 prime-time performance in that age group. The show's appeal was "immense" among 18-to-34-year-old men, AMC said in its announcement, explaining it "tripled AMC's prime-time average by 116 [percent]."
In case you've missed it so far, "Breaking Bad" stars Bryan Cranston of "Malcolm in the Middle" fame as a mild-mannered chemistry teacher from New Mexico, whose son has cerebral palsy and who is given a cancer diagnosis and two years to live, after which he decides to secure his family's financial security by whipping up batches of meth to sell, for which he apparently has a flair, becoming a kingpin of the drug trade.
AMC noted the announcement comes on the heels -- four-month-old heels -- of the network's first Golden Globe wins for its original drama series "Mad Men," including the award for best drama series.
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Oxygen's sex-talking granny Sue Johanson has run out of things to explain and is calling it a day after six seasons, the network has announced.
Having now fully brought U.S. viewers up to speed on the subject, her "Talk Sex With Sue Johanson" series will telecast its final show on Sunday. That final show will count down the year's top 10 sex toys -- you won't want to miss it.
"I figured if we haven't got it right by now, we're not going to get it," she told the Associated Press.
The 77-year-old said she's going to miss doing her show "terribly." That is, she will miss her show terribly, not that she does her show terribly.
But sex talk never really ends at Oxygen. Material from Johanson's show will continue to be available on the cable network's Web site, and on demand.
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