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Still Crazy After All These Years: Simon & Paula's Disjointed X Factor Reunion

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FOX

It has been too long since I’ve seen Simon Cowell be mean to people on a TV screen. But here he was at the TCA TV critics’ press tour session for The X Factor, appearing via satellite from what looked like a fancy hotel lounge in a geographically nondescript location. His first line, after materializing, supervillain-like, on the giant screen: “I don’t hear the applause.”

Cowell took questions on Fox’s new fall singing competition solo for fifteen minutes before being joined by the rest of the show’s producers and judges. But the many questions boiled down to an obvious but major one: how would The X Factor be different enough from American Idol and The Voice?

The many answers boiled down to: it’s more. More categories (four of them, broken down by age and gender). More cash thrown at production (Simon didn’t mention figures but said there would be grand staging and lots of hidden cameras). More cash for the winner ($5 million, guaranteed).

And, for all you fans of Simon-and-Paula-era Idol, more awkward weirdness among the judges. Paula Abdul, L.A. Reid and Nicole Scherzinger joined Cowell on stage, where, oddly, they felt more like they were hobbled by a satellite delay than Simon did. There was a strange sapped energy in the room: Nicole sounded etherized, L.A. was mostly out of the discussion and Paula was, well, Paula, gamely playing along with Simon’s attempts to engage in some crowd-pleasing sniping.

The panel did not exactly show off the stellar dynamics of the judges, though Simon did his best to stir the drink, hindered as his timing was by the satellite delay. Addressing rumors that Cheryl Cole left the show, he said, “If it was a question of not getting on with Paula, then *I* wouldn’t be on the show”; later, talking about the possibility of having contestants with previous recording contracts, he quipped, “As Paula knows, I’m all for giving people comebacks. … Everybody deserves a third chance.”

I’m willing to give X Factor a second chance to impress, if only because (1) I miss Cowell’s presence on TV and (2) it will all depend on how well the judges do together in a room. (Not to mention, of course, the talent of the contestants–still an X-factor, so to speak, though we got the usual lines about all the “stars” the show has already discovered.) There’s also the question of new host Steve Jones, who was not much of a presence on the panel other than delivering some canned jokes in his introduction.

And frankly, on the old Simon-and-Paula version of Idol, the panel’s roughness could be part of its appeal. The new American Idol panel has distinguished itself not just by being nicer–probably to a fault–but by seeming to be a much smoother operation. A bit of difficulty and unpredictability on The X Factor may not be a bad thing. (There’s also the possibility that, with Nicole, the show has found someone to out-Paula Paula; at one point, Paula laughed openly at an especially incoherent answer from her fellow judge.)

“It’s nice to be back in a demented relationship,” Paula remarked on her reunion with Simon. Let’s hope it’s as nice for those of us who watch it.