I thought Adam and Christina seemed to be having fun, but I swear Blake was reading the lyrics off a teleprompter somewhere.

My very favorite thing on the Voice is when they don't pick someone on his or her voice and then wish they had been able to pick on the face.

EXACTLY! I think it's great, because on any other similar show he would have been able to skate based on his looks. But I have no doubt he'll be able to use his privilege to get where he wants to go, so I'm not worried for him.

I think so far the non-traditional looking vocalists have also not been great ones, but I am wondering about a couple of factors for that. I wonder if, since the judges can see the audience, who can see the vocalists, they're not picking up something off their traditionally prejudiced reactions? I mean, I think so far they've been right about who they haven't chosen, and central casting has not picked a lot of unpretty people. Some of those people suffer from not having the calm and expertise of having been on the stage in small clubs, night after night, and they may have been denied that expertise based on their appearance.

I thought the Prince medly wasn't bad, albeit a slightly weird choice for the vocalists in question, but overall I'm just happy to have judges who know their shit.

I was kind of tickled that mid-show, one of the "pretty enough to make it if only they could see her" girls was singing a song with lyrics about being "on my way out" while the woman who immediately followed her started getting chairs turned around right as she got to "tell me something good".

"tell me something good"

The woman who did that song was AWESOME.

I haven't seen the ep yet, but I'm also wondering how "blinded" the process is for getting on the stage in the first place, y'know? Are they picking many/any people who are "weird" looking? I mean, I loved Beverly and Nakia the first season, and neither of them are terribly conventionally attractive.

And where are the queer people this year??

Interview with a Full Metal Jousting contestant.

Video bios of the contestants.

Full Metal Jousting starts this Sunday on the History Channel.

Don't forget that we may see some of the rejected people again. If by the end of the blind auditions, all the judges don't have 12 people each, they bring back a bunch of the rejected ones. I would bet that the Yale guy gets in then. He had an okay voice, but he would be a total teen magnet.

I kind of loved/hated Alicia Key's backup singer. He's so fricking sexy and sounded great, but damn... tone down the cockiness just a bit!

I forgot how fun and addictive this show can be (I wasn't planning on watching until so many people were talking about it!)

He didn't come off that way to me. I really liked him, although I may have been blinded by the sexy. He just came off as really knowing his business, which worked for me.

If by the end of the blind auditions, all the judges don't have 12 people each, they bring back a bunch of the rejected ones.

Ooh, okay, so how does the format work then? How long are the blind auditions? After that, when it's teams, how does that work?

well, last year, they wanted each judge to have the same number of people.

so they brought some of the ousted back to sing again.

then when each judge has their team, there will be a sing off between members of the team - 2 people on each team sing the same song together.

their judge has to choose which one to keep.

these rounds continued until it was down to the final 4. that's when the public votes for the winner.