by  Arthur Perkins   
 
AGT4 is inherently a fine show. Televised large-scale talent competitions started with Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts in 1949. America's Got Talent has taken it to a new level. I want to summarize my thoughts about the judges, Nick Cannon and the stage technicians for your benefit. The stage technicians have the most difficult job, as they have to operate on split-second timing and make sure their setups will work as they did in rehearsals. I give them one huge thumbs up. Nick Cannon started well, but he has not done as well as the season has progressed. I am a bit tired of him. He is a comic and can be quite funny, but the demands of the host apparently do not permit him to be funny. He hasn't succeeded in getting time on each show for the type of humor that he does well. He and we are the losers. Anyone who reads my recaps regularly already knows what I think of the various AGT4 judges. Each of them has the latitude to carve our his/her own persona. I am convinced that David Hasselhoff is there for comic relief. He has the biggest hoard of cliches of anyone anytime and he insists on saying nothing meaningful with several words. I think it's time for the 57 year old Hasselhoff to be retired from AGT. Sharon Osbourne wants to be everyone's friend. Life isn't like that, Sharon. You are there to make hard decisions and you can't have it both ways. The term "bleeding heart liberal" has no greater application than to Sharon. Piers Morgan is the sanest of the judges. I consider myself to be a decent judge of musical talent in particular. At the beginning of the season my views on talent were practically synonymous with his, but that has not been the case for weeks. Piers is not off the deaep end as his colleagues are, but I think he needs the long vacation he is about to receive with the 2009 editions of Britain's Got Talent and America's Got Talent both completed.
 
On to the show. The biggest event tonight was not the announcement of who won AGT4. It was the arrival of Susan Boyle to sing live on U.S. television. She has been the darling of many since she was "discovered" and then placed 2nd in Britain's Got Talent.  Her voice is huge and accurate and pure, all very good attributes. Other live performances were by Cirque de Soleil, Leona Lewis, Shakira and Rascal Flatts. I think the second biggest event tonight was the annual mini-show of AGT's All-Stars. These are acts so bad that they had to be seen again. Maybe 15 different acts were shown with part of their original preliminary round performances and they were blended into  a diverse 5 minute act. It was hilarious. The fake goodwill performance with all ten  finalist acts, dressed in complete black, singing or doing what they do best, was totally hokey. It was the only hokey part of the entire evening.
 
Some of the news that everyone had been waiting for was delivered at the end of the first hour - which 5 teams are still alive because they were the top 5 and which 5 were eliminated because they were voted #6 to #10. The pairings here did not matter because with one exception it was obvious who would win each pairing. That exception was Voices of Glory vs. Lawrence Beaman because he lost, probably because his Barry White incarnation was judged wanting by the public. I can understand that even though I did not evaluate it that way.  Here are the top 5 in no particular order:
 
Kevin Skinner (showing that sometimes America is a poor judge of No Talent)
Barbara Padilla
Voices of Glory
Texas Tenors
Recycled Percussion
 
That means that these acts were eliminated:
Grandma Lee
Drew Stevyns
Fab 5
Hairo Torres
Lawrence Beamen
 
The only one that bothers me is the switch of Kevin Skinner for Lawrence Beamen. That was an injustice, as emotion triumphed over talent in America's vote.
 
30 minutes later, the 3 ,4 and 5 teams were identified as eliminated. They finished Voices of Glory #5, Texas Tenors #4 and Recycled Percussion #3. That left Barbara Padilla and Kevin Skinner in the competition for the $1,000,000 prize and Las Vegas show. Who will win? After the usual unnecessary drama, Kevin wins. I hope he goes out and gets $1,000,000 worth of voice lessons right away.