Certainly Pia Douwes is the highlight of the jury - she is just a great actress and even greater person. I still remember the times I met her during my times as journalist very fondly. Alas, the overall set-up of the jury is IMHO missing someone a bit more “entertaining”. Pia DOuwes is to sincere and to human to be that part as it requires a certain amount of cruelity - at least during the audition phase. That is also why I hope for a turn to the better coming Friday. And yes, I’ll try to over a write-up again for the third episode as well

On the first episode:

I actually didn’t see anything wrong with the editing, though that might be partially because I understand very, very little German. Because of that, I also can’t say much on the comments of the jury or the Commentator. However, I can say I wasn’t bored by the show. I generally found the auditions they chose to show entertaining (good or bad). I particularly liked their selection of background songs to accompany points between the audition songs. Several times the lyrics and the actual screen action combined hilariously.

…Well actually, I suppose this could be considered an editing flaw: I didn’t like the way they frequently switched to shots of the contestant talking during their audition.

On the second episode:

As a show, I don’t think I enjoyed this one as much as the first, but I think that’s mostly because I had to watch it in the short video segments supplied by sat1 since I couldn’t get the full show to play. However, based off of isolated incidents, I ended up being happier with this episode then the first. Again, I enjoyed the selective use of background songs, particularly the use of “Männer” by Pia Douwes. Also, there was a very entertaining audition by a fellow who jumped both on the piano, and the judges’ table, as well as an audition by a second Pia Douwes fan that ended much in the same was as it had for the first fan. The short clips they showed from the musical, “Elisabeth” was also a nice surprise.

On the editing, I didn’t like they were they crammed a several different auditions together so that the voice that was play didn’t always match the singer… which kinda destroyed the whole point of televising a casting… However, they were trying to cram in the auditions from both Hamburg and Essen into one show so I suppose it’s understandable.

All in all, truth be told, my account of the show is very bias. Honestly, most of my amusement and entertainment is drawn for the fact that Pia Douwes is a member of the jury. If it wasn’t for her I doubt I’d bother to watch the show. But since she’s there, and since I’m hoping they’ll start plugging more advertisement for “Elisabeth,” I’ll probably watch the season through.

I’m hoping next week they’ll have moved on to the academy/workshops. I’m curious to see them learning to swing on the vines… and sing (better).

Anyhow, here’s a long rambling comment for you to chew on. I’D love to read what you think about Episode 2. Consider watching it.