Posted by ed on Tue, 13 Jan 2009
American Idol returned to our screens with two two-hour programs showing auditions from Phoenix, Arizona in the Southwest and Kansas City, Missouri (not Kansas, just to confuse those of us this side of the pond) in the Midwest (central US).
10,000 hopefuls attended the first round of auditions in Arizona. The sob stories and weird comments were out in force, but there was plenty of Ryan Seacrest to keep us happy (though we’d be happier if he didn’t stand quite so close to the Grand Canyon… let’s hope it was chroma key!). Ryan was looking hot in dark trousers and a dark blue check long-sleeved shirt over a dark teeshirt. That’s a very good look on him. Really good. The “this is American Idol” montage at the start was great and we loved the season preview clips, particularly the one where Ryan and Simon are laughing and pointing at something and giving off the ‘naughty schoolboys at the back of class’ vibe.

What a tease — we want to know what they’re looking at! We may have been hallucinating by this point, having realised we have Ryan on our screens every week for the next few months, but it looked like Simon was picked right off his feet for a hug by a giant pink Easter bunny. Bet he loved that!