Australia's Got... Nothin?

I should probably get the ball rolling on this one by saying that I had never watched a full episode of the Australia’s Got Talent until recently. Maybe I can put it down to being busy whatever night it was on. Maybe I heard from a friend or co-worker that Dannii Minogue was on TV again and ran. Maybe I saw the nauseating ads and decided I’d rather listen to Bill O’Reilly and Rebecca Wilson dissect a Too $hort album then watch a nanosecond of footage. Whatever the reason, I had never watched a single episode of Australia’s Got Talent, quite an achievement given I usually give shows an episode to impress me. Even the worst show ever, or “The Wedge” as pronounced by some, got a whole episode before I cried myself to sleep.

Why then, would I spend time writing a blog about it? Fair question, even if it was pre-emptively asked by me and not you, and it comes with a fair answer. I write this blog because I think Australia’s Got Talent lets us down. Here’s Why…

First of all, Britain seems to, um, got, more talent than us. It also seems to got cooler stories about said talent than us. The British version of the same show produced Paul Potts, the technically alive but dead inside penguin man who sang his way into our hearts in 2007 by singing Nessun Dorma on the show. When this happened the images of the hot, slightly older female judge crying real tears at the mere sight of Pottsy’s performance echoed around the world as people flocked to YouTube to see a truly inspirational ‘rags to riches’ tale unfold in front of their very eyes. Potts went on to sell over 2 million debut albums worldwide and is now referred to as “International Opera Singer Paul Potts”. In Australia’s Got Talent the same year, 2nd place was given to some bloke who is only listed as a “Gum leaf musician”. No world class opera singer, no 2 million records.

Last week some old Scottish lass pretty much jacked Paul Potts’ swagger by doing the exact same shit 2 years later. The same response happened all over again, including crying hot 39 year old judge and worldwide pandemonium. She, Susan Doyle her name is, has been on Oprah and every news service except Fox News (presumably due to the aforementioned album review). Also this week, In the Australian version of “Got” (since we love shortening TV show names to the point that saying a complete word seems over the top), a kid who does tricks of a Yo-Ho Diablo made it to the grand final of Australia’s Got Talent.

Britain got world class opera singers and life-turning moments of inspiration. Australia got gum leaves and fucking yo-yo tricks. Embarrassing.

The other thing I don’t like about our version of Got is the name itself. No it’s not the fact that it’s bordering on being grammatically correct. My iPod is full of people like Eazy E, Yungun and Tech N9ne so to me that’s not a problem. I just think the name is inaccurate. Not to say we don’t have talent, more to say it is not found within this show.

Even the judges don’t got talent. Dannii Minogue is not talented. The only way you could possibly say she had talent was if she was in a pub and someone said “There’s a bit of talent in here.”, but even then, probably not. My friend said to me “Danni Minogue is the least talented person in show business”, to which I replied “what about Kim Kardashian?”. He said he thought Kim had more talent because you could watch her sex tape without being physically ill. Red Symonds is just Simon Cowell without the ideas and the millions. Tom Burlinson you could make a case for but at the end of the day he’s best known for imitating someone else. There is really not talent on this show at all, and that’s why the name is wrong. It would be like having a show called “This Room Is Full of Fish tanks”, only to discover it was a cop drama.

That about covers it. I don’t like Australia’s Got Talent. I’m pretty much over reality TV in general to perfectly honest, although Masterchef looks like it could be fun, even if isn’t the Masta Ace/Raekwon collaboration album it hints at.

Peace to all (including Dannii Minogue).