American Idol's reward for being TV's dullest, dumbest, most predictable show? Huge ratings, of course. All across the dial, TV has gotten preposterously complex. Lost requires a user manual, 24 an iron bladder. I'm pretty sure I can identify more Bush cabinet members by name than I can characters on HBO's The Wire, and The Wire is one of my favorite shows. These days, only Idol honors the first rule of the idiot box: Keep it Stupid, Stupid.
Imagine how few people ever saw Mozart play one of his piano concertos. Imagine how many millions see amiable cowdude Bucky Covington on American Idol each week, flashing his Gomer Pyle grin as he gently smothers pop classics. Surely this is some sort of crime against humanity, but so what? Does TV always have to challenge us, or edify, or even entertain? Sometimes, you just want a bright, familiar noise in the room. Most of the time, in fact. Whatever happened to shows you can watch without actually paying any attention to them?
In its fifth season, American Idol is the most reliable antidote to TV's dismal renaissance. Surprise and nuance have been airbrushed out of it; it's as easy to follow as a knock-knock joke. Contestants routinely deliver good performances, but rarely is their artistry so arresting that you absolutely must take notice. There's always plenty of time to pay your bills or make a beer run while watching Idol.
This year's script goes like this: Taylor rules the stage like a rooster with irritable-bowel syndrome. Chris stays wallet-chained to 1997 as he does his generic take on Scott Stapp's generic take on Kurt Cobain. Elliot locks up the hearing-impaired vote by acting out his lyrics with hand gestures. Kellie pretends she doesn't understand all them newfangled word thingamajigs they use in Hollywood, then apologizes for being dumber than Dolly Parton's wig.
Even more than the contestants, though, it's the judges who are truly one-note wonders. If Randy goes five seconds without saying "aight" or "dawg," he must get fined by his producers. It's as if John Ashcroft has taught Al Roker to talk "street," it's pure comedy gold, and Randy's not letting go of it, ever. Paula's as sweet and messy as a melted ice cream cone—every sentence she utters turns into a jigsaw puzzle she can't quite solve. Simon delivers a few half-hearted British-nanny bitch-slaps, then host Ryan Seacrest takes charge, gamely going for a sense of off-the-cuff spontaneity—but in the end, he's still Ryan Seacrest, the guy who makes Carson Daly look Johnny Carson.
Halfway through the season, we inevitably get thrown for a loop when an apparent front-runner gets the hook earlier than expected. This time around it was Mandisa. She was beautiful, she was engaging, she could sing Paula's doctor's prescriptions and make them shine. But here's the shocking twist: It turns out that if the Olsen Twins can fit inside your jeans, with room to spare for Nicole Richie, you're not going to win American Idol.
Eventually, the crown will go to one of the show's remaining Southerners, just like it always does. Already in this season's competition only two blue-state candidates remain—Katharine and Ace—and odds are Bucky's cowboy hat will finish higher than either one. (In fact, if Bucky's cowboy hat ditches Bucky and goes solo, it just might win the whole damn thing.)
There are countless ways Idol's producers could enhance the show. What would happen, for example, if they made Randy drink from Paula's glass every time he mentioned some superstar he was in the studio with yesterday? Or ordered clearly smitten sparring partners Simon and Ryan to skip the pigtail-pulling and go straight into the inevitable Sam-and-Diane clinch? Of course, the true genius of Idol is its Kevlar-belted indifference to self-improvement. No one ever went broke underestimating the American public, H.L. Mencken famously quipped, and with so many small-screen Shakespeares forsaking this advice, the rewards for those who adhere to it are sweeter than ever.