The Lego Sing-Off panel, from left: Lego Ben Folds, Lego Sara Bareilles and Lego Shawn Stockman.
The most important show on television, The Sing-Off, ends its first regular-season outing—and, if I’m to guess from the ratings, possibly its last—tonight with a live finale. As I wrote earlier, together with Top Chef it’s one of the only primetime shows we watch as a family with the Tuned In Jrs.; from it, they’ve learned about harmonies and dynamics and, I fear soon, the painful adult lesson of what happens when not enough other people watch your favorite show.
If The Sing-Off isn’t back next fall, I’m hoping it returns again as a short-run holiday special, which is maybe how it works better. Having succumbed to the too-common Reality TV Bloat Syndrome, it runs a looooong two hours, and may just be too music-nerdy for a wide audience. But I’m glad it does what it does: its critiques focus more on the music itself than the marketability of the performers—this is still a cappella we’re talking about—and I would argue that it’s actually more musically current than, say, American Idol, with more contemporary genres like hip-hop and less devotion to the diva pantheon of Celine, Mariah, &c.
The Tuned In household favorite, Afro-Blue, was sent packing last week, so we’ll be backing our backup house favorite, Pentatonix. Then we’ll wait to see what NBC does with the show in the future. But as one last tribute, this weekend the Tuned In Jrs. immortalized the show with their highest tribute: by creating a Lego Sing-Off Judges’ Panel set, above. (Lego Ben Folds, left, utilizes Harry Potter’s head; Lego Shawn Stockman, Mace Windu.)
We’ll be watching on DVR delay, because the show runs past the Jrs.’ bedtime. In the meantime, have any Tuned Inlanders stuck with the show?