From the weeks and weeks of promotion for this, ABC's "The One" was supposed to be "The Real World" meets "American Idol." We were to watch these singers perform, compete and see how they lived together in a house as well. The Drama! The Tension!
Where does one begin with this atrocity? Let's start with the "judges" who were known as "Music Experts" on this program. "Experts" implies they have expertise. Andre Harrell at least had a pedigree. He was in charge of Motown Records for a time. The other two... eh. Kate Hudson's uncle, who could have been labeled Mr. Weird Beard. He dyed his facial hair three distinctly different florescent colors. I wonder how scary he would have been with a black light! And The Paula Abdul wannabe, who did something I didn't think could happen: she was even more gushing and cloying than Paula! She then over corrected and became harshly critical after the first episode. The farce of "critiques" that these three offered was a true joke and an insult, not only to the process of finding the best singer, but to the audience that is now quite savvy, already having done this numerous times on Fox.
There was the host. George Stroumboulopoulos was no Ryan Seacrest. In fact, he was as lackluster as can be. He actually sucked what little energy there was in the program, dry. How he got that job was the second biggest mystery of the show.
The first was how did they pick the 11 competitors for this program? This was literally a talent-free talent show. OK. Perhaps that's an exaggeration. And granted, the performers all have to be relatively close in ability, because if they were not, there wouldn't be a "contest." If only one person was "good," there would be no "suspense." So, I get that they all needed to be comparable. But they all should have had *some* chops! Additionally, the judges were running a "Singing Academy," so the program was part "Fame," as well. Clearly these performers desperately needed those lessons. But you need some extremely talented people to teach those with little talent to be talented. And that definitely wasn't what was happening here.
It seemed in casting the show, the priority was on the "homelife" elements, as all of the players were very attractive to look at, in equal parts to how badly they vocalized. But the filmed segments in their house were so chopped and sliced, you couldn't get into the stories that were starting to happen, so the show didn't capture the events there, either.
As badly devised as all of that was, "The One" had an incredible, unbelievable, fatal design flaw built into the results that made it completely laughable.
The audience phoned in their votes for who they liked the best, just like on "AI." But then, after the audience vote was revealed, the bottom three contestants were forced to sing a final song. The "music experts," based on that performance, chose one person from the three to save for the following week. And THEN, the contestants who were safe got to vote for who they wanted to keep from the remaining two, sending the remaining contestant home.
The "design flaw" was that the contestants had the final say. I mean, if you were in a music competition and you wanted to get as far along the path as you could, would you vote to KEEP the better singer, or would you try to get rid of your toughest rival? Any first season viewer of CBS's "Survivor" could answer that one! And that's exactly what happened on the program. The person who had the better potential was lost, and the contestants voted back "the one" who had no talent at all! On top of that, the contestant who was just saved from the bottom by the "experts" was also allowed to vote against the remaining two! It was a complete farce!
Maybe if they let the contestants vote first, at least the "experts" would save the better of two evils to finish. But this just confirms how not ready this show was for broadcast, how unsatisfying the whole process was to view and how misguided the producers were in attempting it.
