Today, in my little blip before, while it happened a while back, it has been interesting to see the comments that Timothee Chalamet made on Opera and Ballet continue to catch a fire. Likely, because he hasn’t apologized, or offered clarification, so his broad statements that nobody cares about Opera and Ballet, are these truths he holds self evident. Because other than this, I work with a lot of professional performers in those realms, I’ve seen and heard reactions from across the spectrum against Chalamet. From Gustavo Dudamel, a world renown conductor set to be the director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra this year. Dudamel has been nominated for 10 Grammy Awards, and has won 8, not bad for a man in an irrelevant field. I also heard the response from composer and conductor Eric Whittaker, who is also a Grammy winner. Then came the view, and the ladies there having the opportunity to school the solo member of his own brat pack on his ego. All of this comes just days from the question of does Chalamet get the Oscar? His campaign thus far has been extremely cocky, reportedly already rubbing some the wrong way. Which has paired his campaign with a lack of wins from BAFTA and SAG. His film has run into several controversies, including Kevin O’Leary’s musings on the elimination of extras and day players, believing background talent should just be AI, to a claim from the family of the real Marty that the film is unauthorized. On top of that is a resurfaced claim from Josh Safdi’s 2017 film Good Time from a then 17 year old actress about her experience on set. Coming back to Chalamet, who has quickly believed his own hype, the question now is should he win? Will he win? Reportedly, his reaction to the backlash is that he is simply ‘bemused’. If we hand him a microphone on Sunday, is he going to double down on the death of other art forms? Or, are his publicists working overtime to teach him humility?

TV Shows Watched: American Idol: S24E7 (Disney Plus) no audio description, Hijack: S2E4 (Apple) with audio description, Malice: S1E2 (Amazon) with audio description, One Piece: S2E1 (Netflix) with audio description, St Dennis Medical: S2E? (Peacock) no audio description, The Masked Singer: S14E7 (Disney Plus) no audio description, Elzabeth: S3E9 (Paramount Plus) with audio description

American Idol- WTF. Just. WTF. I don’t know where to begin. The shitshow that was the Ohana round, where some singers still got montaged in the Top 30, so Ryan could keep talking about how this stupid round works now. Three Platinum ticket winners came from three group votes, one from the Top 30, one from their family, and one from the Tastemakers, which is just about the dumbest fucking thing this show has done. It was a hodgepodge of random people who had a social media presence, or were a Dancing With The Stars pro. From what I could tell, only three of them had music knowledge, and only one of them really has an opinion that would matter (the editor of Rolling Stone). This would have been a brilliant round to showcase past alumni, or hell even past judges. Imagine if the secret third group turned out to be like Randy, Paula, and Keith Hurban. Or something like that. They also could have paid it forward, and invited all the actual Idol experts, people who have been running blogs and sites for 24 seasons helping to prop up this show and cultivate its community. I guess Idol thinks it happens in a vacuum. What pissed me off even more, was this poor Australian kid, who is in the “Family” round, but has no family, and he got a little chocked up on stage, and lost the lyrics. Instead of showing him grace, admitting it’s weird to have 29 contestants with family, and one without, and perhaps it was weighting on him a bit, the judges voted him out. It would have been such a lovely moment for Idol, or literally any of the three groups, to look at this kid, who feels so insecure he usually performs behind masks, and said “Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind.” Hated this round, and whichever Idol producer created it should be fired. On top of the fact that in its 24th season, Idol still remains without audio description, making it one of the longest running TV shows on network TV without audio description.

Hijack- they tried to make it interesting, having Sam fall for a pretty simple trap, just so he could be forced to be in a position to explain himself. Even with Sam’s revelation, Hijack Season 2 is still beneath the first. I at least have a better idea of where they are headed, though I’m still not terribly impressed.

Malice- This got better. Something happens, and Adam is the psycho responsible, but no one knows. How he plays his hand makes the show interesting, as he seems to push people close to danger, like he’s playing with them in a long game. he does just straight up kill a cat in Episode 2 though, for anyone thinking about jumping in on this. It is getting better, and the plot is truly thickening.

One Piece- One of the new characters introduced as part of Buggy’s squad sounds like they can’t act, and they have no energy, nor do they want to be there. Other than that, this is what I thought it would be, more of the same, a continuation of adventure bringing the Straw Hats closer to the One Piece (depending on how many seasons Netflix wants). it has excellent audio description, but it is so weird that Netflix is dropping two of its biggest shows, One Piece and virgin River in the same week.

St Dennis Medical- My Peacock app is still broken. I can only hear show controls, but it never seems to show them, so I can’t turn AD back on for the iOS app. I’l continue to watch shows like St Denis Medical that I’m more familiar with, and their AD isn’t overwhelming anyway, to casually see how the progress is coming on a bug fix. Y’all should know I love this show by now.

The Masked Singer- WHO? WHO? I love how everyone at the table pretended they knew him like he was Tom cruise. Also, the best and most ironic elimination as the person eliminated on Ozzy night, with Kelly joining the judges, was an actor who had a bedroom scene with Sharon in something years ago. Ozzy is getting revenge from the grave.

Elzabeth- Jamie Pressley guests in an episode about models and a long held grudge. Y’all know Elzabeth is going to figure it out. Oddly enough, I’ve seen some keep/kill polls recently as renewals loom, and while Elzabeth has been renewed, it has a very vocal fanbase that seems to not like this season and elzabeth’s new partners, wanting her to return to her original partner from the first two seasons. I agree, though it is Elzabeth’s show, her chemistry was much better in the first two seasons. The AD here did a good job of the little clues, like picking up a wine glass, things you need to solve the mystery.