Still trying with American Idol

I have been hanging in there with “American Idol,” even though it has failed to grab me this season.  The announcers keep hyping, breathlessly, that “this is the best talent ever!” but I have seen nothing to make me think so.  In fact, now that the show has winnowed the herd to the top 24, I was struck by how many I hadn’t even seen before!  (I think I missed one audition show, so maybe they were all on that. But I also should have seen them on subsequent shows, hearing them try out on “Hollywood Week.”  Or maybe I did see them, but they left absolutely no impression.)  If this is the case, that some of the top contestants were edited out of the auditions, presumably because the producers didn’t think them interesting, that is a serious production fault.  (I wonder how far ahead these shows are taped.  You would think that if a contestant made it through another level of elimination, the producers could edit his or her performance into the previous week’s episode.)  Of the ones I’ve heard, the Aussie guy should be hard to beat.