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Why Julia Lostby David Bloomberg -- 03/27/2003
View Printable version of this article It’s funny – on Survivor last night we had a person voted off who left people wondering not so much why he lost but rather how he stuck around so long. With Julia DeMato, who left on the same night, on American Idol we have much the same question. Julia was in the bottom three every week for three weeks running (including this one, of course). What caused her to get fewer votes than almost everybody else and, indeed, all of the other top 10 this week? As always, we’ll take a look back at What American Idol 2 Contestants Need to Know to see what we can figure out. The first rule is to have some singing talent. Julia did have some talent, and that’s what enabled her to get to the Top 12 (well, that and the backstory, but we’ll get to that in a minute). But she did not have as much talent as many of the others. In fact, I would go so far as to say she did not have as much talent as Vanessa, who was the first one to go, and probably less than Charles as well, though that one is debatable. But while singing talent is good, the ability to perform with that talent is also important. As Julia said herself, she had never performed before. She didn’t look comfortable on the stage at all. In fact, what many people (including myself for one week) thought was ego, I believe was actually just her being uncomfortable on the stage and overcompensating. When you watched her perform, you often felt like you were driving down a rural road at night and suddenly saw a deer staring into your headlights. When she was uncomfortable, we were uncomfortable, and that translates into fewer votes. Ironically, she probably had her best night this week, but by that time the damage had been done and others also did well, making it that much more difficult to stick around. The next item is song choice. She didn’t do too well in this regard. For example, last week she chose the Flashdance theme, which should have been performed with gusto, dancing around the stage. She couldn’t do it. If she was just going to stand there and look nervous, she would have been better off with a ballad. She needed to suit the song to her personality and she had a hard time doing that. Again, though, much of it comes back to nerves and being uncomfortable on the stage. Third is to be different. In this regard, Julia didn’t really stand out either. Early on, she kind of reminded me of a Kelly wannabe, which of course is the worst thing a contestant could do this time around. In a way, however, she was different from the others because the others were all so different from the previous contestants, with a few exceptions. Still, she had little to make her stand out. Fourth is to be memorable. Here she actually succeeded early on, but that gave her both pros and cons, and it wasn’t even necessarily of her own doing. Julia was remembered as “that girl who fought with the blonde and was abandoned during group practice.” Yes, the Julia – Kimberly C. catfight. It may have been what pushed her into the finals, but then it was either forgotten or largely ignored. Yes, she had a core group of fans, in part because of that, and I suspect that is what kept her around for the first two weeks. But as we got to know Julia more and also got to know Kimberly and the others, that faded into distant memory. The rest of her backstory was okay – being a cosmetologist trying for fame – but it was not terribly different from others. It came down to her being remembered for her fighting with Kim – which certainly seems to have ended long ago considering Kim’s tearful reaction. The next rule is “No Karaoke!” In this, I think Julia did fine. She was not really criticized for sounding like the original singer. In part I think this is because she wasn’t as good as the original, but we’ll leave it at that. Finally, we have the rule against arguing with Simon. Julia blew that one week one of the finals. At the time most viewers thought it was rather snotty on her part and, had it not been for the “trained monkey” joke that Vanessa was told to utter, Julia’s actions might have doomed her right from the start. Julia jumped on Simon for a joke about her clothes and then argued with him regarding his thoughts on her performance. She came off as egotistical, though as I said above, I now think it was mostly nerves on her part. Still, that’s not a way to endear herself to fans. I think her actions from that week have continued to haunt her, eventually being one of the reasons she was voted off this week. It was not directly responsible, but it kept people from voting for her, and she gave them no reason to change their minds through her performances. It was not a terrible surprise that Julia left this week – I thought after Tuesday’s performances that she should go, though I had predicted her core group of fans would keep her around in favor of Corey. It may be that her core eventually tired of keeping her barely afloat, or perhaps as the numbers got whittled down, other effects came into play. She did may have had her best performance of the finals this week, but even so it was not as good as the other top 10. She was nervous and it showed in her lack of stage presence. And her argument with Simon from a couple weeks back still hung over her head. You put all of this together and you understand why Julia lost. David Bloomberg is the Editor of Foxes On Idol, and can be reached at rno@pobox.com. Be sure to sign up for the RealityNewsOnline/FoxesOnIdol e-mail update so you can stay informed about new articles on both sites! For all of the RealityNewsOnline articles about this show, check out the American Idol page. For more news about reality TV, be sure to check SirLinksALot! View Printable version of this article
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