American Idol and other TV Mysteries

I don't even have cable any more. All I like is 30 Rock. But yesterday I happened upon the American Idol finale and decided to stick it out.
It was excrutiating.
Crystal Bowersox should have won. That girl is not only immensely talented, but spunky and charming and actually has a personality. She is already a star. I was very impressed by her command of the stage and her lovely self-confidence and charisma, her true joy of being there, totally at ease with Joe Cocker. I sincerely hope she will do extremely well and if I was a big macher in the music business I would sign her up right now. I hope she makes it like Jennifer Hudson. Talent is talent.
Not so the winner, who looks like a human diaper (without the load inside). Bland, shapeless, utterly uninteresting. But that's what happens when you let the people vote. Since when do people know anything? His performance with Chicago was horrible, in all fairness mostly due to Chicago, who look like they could use some lubricating oil, they were so rusty.
Most of the famous who showed up were from the land of Has Been. Michael McDonald? Chicago? They reminded me of the Randy Newman song "I'm dead but I don't know it".  But not Hall & Oates. Hall & Oates can never do wrong in my book. Aguilera should have not sung a ballad, and Janet Jackson... I don't know. Weird. All these people made me pine for Justin Timberlake. I like him.
Is it me, or everything sounded rather unrehearsed and sometimes out of key?
The show was too long. I don't give a fuck about Simon Cowell (there are more likable pricks elsewhere), and I think Paula Abdul is a strange little creature, like a Pia Zadora, but with more talent and more problems. But I am intrigued by the terrible time Ellen is having on the show. She looks like she is in deep internal pain. And she is usually so sunny! She steadfastly refused to even smile when they brought out Dane Cook. I applaud her for this stand to defend the honor of comedians everywhere. But she seems to be suffering the torments of hell sitting in that chair. If you don't like it lady, collect your millions and leave. Just don't look so pinched. It doesn't become you.

I must confess I also watched the finale of The Biggest Loser the other day. Morbidly obese people compete to lose weight and win 250 grand if they lose the most pounds. The lightest of them weigh more than 200 pounds. The winner was almost 500 pounds when he started. He shed more than 250 pounds. The personal trainers run them ragged and I'm sure they starve them to death. Everybody cries buckets of tears, which I find unseemly. Me, on the other hand, can't lose 6 miserable pounds because I refuse to deprive myself from pasta and soup dumplings and shrimp tempura rolls. Or the occassional family size bag of Cheetos. After dinner.
But my point is that these shows could last half an hour if they were not dragging them so artificially and pointlessly way past their natural conclusions. It's unendurable.
I also noticed, stranger to TV that I am, that advertising in the big networks has gotten more in the mold of Sábado Gigante and now brands are hawking themselves inside the programs. I find all of this extremely distasteful and annoying and overkill.
Also, if you really want to know what the hell is happening in the world, you have to tune in to BBC World News, because there is no chance in hell you are going to get that from the nightly news stateside. They report on things like the winner of American Idol.