The X Factor NZ: Cry me a river

There was plenty of non-soul-destroying programming across this week’s X Factor episodes so let's focus on the good parts.

Well, I don’t think anyone expected that.

There’s no use wasting words on a #hottake about the fundamental badness of what the now televisually bereaved Kills-Moon family said, because it’s obvious that what they said was terrible. I’m also not going to indulge willfully ignorant-to-the-realities-of-brand-based-television conspiracy theorists, because no one should have to explain exactly why McDonalds don’t want to align themselves with this. Honestly, for a number of reasons (probably best detailed in this fantastic Duncan Greive piece) and despite the pair’s tendency towards often-empty provocation in the past, I was blown away by what happened. However, given the fast pace of reality television, the incredible amount of largely vapid content already created about this exact topic and, uh, the fact that there were roughly 207 minutes of non-soul-destroying programming across this week’s X Factor episodes, I’m fine with focusing on the actually good parts.

Despite my incredibly cautious expectations and prior evidence to suggest that they would be absolutely otherwise, this season’s first live shows were actually kind of great. Bear in mind that I’m totally, utterly and possibly irresponsibly in favour of extreme hyperbole in all things and at all times, but I genuinely feel like Sunday’s 13 performances included at least a few that were comfortably better than anything from the entire first season. There were notable exceptions, sure – Stuss, who were eliminated in last night’s episode, remained unfortunately out of their depth, Joe was solid if slightly pitchy on a pretty boring song that was clearly outside of his wheelhouse, Nofo gave a pretty unconvincing rendition of an excellent song in a terrible arrangement and Steve Broad struggled through a 100% turgid rendition of a corny, deeply overrated Beyoncé track (OK, that’s my #hottake) – but from production and song selection to depth of feeling and the actual, general quality of the contestants, the standards seem to have clearly lifted in the show’s gap year.

Between the incredible emergence of possible early frontrunners (!) Mae Valley, standout pure vocal performances coming from the previously unassuming Stevie, Lili and Finlay, a truly bizarre and totally hypnotic vocal dub Bob Marley refix from the thoroughly individualistic Beau, solid-as-expected outings for Sarah Spicer, Fare Thee Well and Brendon Thomas and His Lads, and a half-great Nyssa performance that would’ve been whole-great without all the tacked-on ‘Uptown Funk’ stuff, there was so, so much more to enjoy than I ever could’ve dreamed. It seems unfair for such a triumphant return to be forgotten for the sake of a nonsensical three-minute rant.

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I met the X Factor’s top 12 contestants last week at an incredibly weird internet media standup on the sixth floor of the SKYCITY Grand Hotel. I’d been invited, along with a handful of my fellow reality TV pundits, to what I’d assumed was a broad Q&A session slash semi-informal press conference slash ‘Meet the Top 12’ session; turned out it was completely and entirely the latter.

Over the course of around half an hour, I talked to almost all of the contestants in varying degrees of depth. Stevie told me about singing in church, Sarah Spicer told me about her family and Nofo offered me a bubblegum-flavoured muffin (I very politely refused). All seemed happy, none seemed mad that I was obviously incredibly ill-prepared to talk seriously about anything and all seemed, more than anything else, enormously proud of each other. At the launch party proper, a few hours later, the feeling of camaraderie was even more prominent – as they danced in circles and sang at each other and tried to scam more than the maximum two drinks they were each allowed, they seemed less like competitors for a set of prizes both tangible (a car, a contract) and otherwise (fame, a career), and more like true and real friends.

The experience of a show like the X Factor is something like that of a life in microcosm; these people are birthed into the public consciousness, fast removed from their IRL routines, transplanted into unusual living situations in an unusual city and essentially forced to get along, all the while acutely aware that every week for the next three months will see either themselves or someone they’ve grown to love removed from the situation. They’re building public personas with the omnipresent guillotine of public opinion hanging inches above their necks. It’s incredibly fascinating, super bizarre stuff, and for 140 of the 150 minutes of Sunday’s show, I was very excited about getting psychotically ‘inside baseball’ about all of it. And then everything happened, and everything changed.

The X Factor producers will be desperately hoping that the show starts to settle down now; all going to plan, the art created over the course of the next few months will eventually transcend that first episode’s horrible conclusion. With the story now well and truly international, it’s going to take something pretty spectacular, so it seems like a reasonably ringing endorsement of this crop of finalists to say that I honestly think it’s possible. Also, Jackie Thomas came back, and her new song sounds like some blissful midpoint between Annie Lennox and Sinead O’Connor. If that’s not a harbinger of good things to come, I just don’t know anymore.

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Because it seems only right, I’m going to leave you with this message from New Zealand’s new favourite son, a kind and real person from a cold-ass town with wide-ass streets at the bottom of the country.

Joe loves everyone. Everyone loves Joe. The X Factor is about friendship. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.