Voice’s final trio duke it out
Say what you will about Christina Aguilera’s wardrobe choices; The Voice is still going out on a high note. With about 12 million U.S. viewers (and about 1.5 million Canadian viewers) tuning in to see Xtina and co. per week, the seemingly silly spinning-chair show no one thought would hold up next to American Idol is, well, holding up.
Season 3 of the NBC reality TV singoff will wrap with tonight’s final results episode, where either Nicholas David Mrozinski of St. Paul, Minn., Cassadee Pope of West Palm Beach, Fla., or Scotland-born Terry McDermott will receive the $100,000 payout, a record deal with Universal Republic Records and instant fame (or at least 15 minutes worth).
What’s refreshing for a show of this sort is that none of the last three standing are glossy high-schoolers with crying stage moms. Rather, Team Cee Lo Green’s Mrozinski, 32, is a soulful family man who looks like a member of The Sheepdogs. Team Blake Shelton’s Pope, 23, is a poppunk powerhouse who’s toured with Fall Out Boy. And Team Blake’s fellow husband and father McDermott, 35, has more in common with Rod Stewart than, say, Phillip Phillips.
With all of their contestants out of the game, judges and mentors Aguilera and Adam Levine are left to watch Green and Shelton’s final entries duke it out. But given Levine’s brash etude and Xtina’s hot-pink highlights, the panel’s noisier residents likely won’t go unnoticed in the final hours.
The Voice’s elimination process began Sept. 10, and the show has managed to get from the blind auditions to the grand moment of victory in just three short months — two months less than it takes us to find out who wins Fox’s American Idol. The time commitment per episode is also less; The Voice typically airs 60-minute episodes as opposed to Idol’s twohour epics (tonight’s finale being an exception).
This sort of Idol Lite (despite that it airs twice a year) combined with ego-driven mentors and gimmicky rotating thrones, make The Voice more like Idol’s quirky cousin than its direct opponent. Idol is still the ratings monster, maintaining an average of 15 to 20 million viewers per episode (The X Factor draws in about half that amount. And a constantly revolving judging panel isn’t going to drastically change that number any time soon.) Meantime, Quirky Cousin has signed on for a fourth season, set to air in late March — about the time we start getting bored with Idol. (CTV — 9 p.m., NBC — 10 p.m.)