As has been hyped for weeks now, on this season of Nashville Star the contestants will be mentored by the show's three judges--Jewel, John Rich, and Jeffrey Steele--who will bring their combined 50 or so years of music biz experience and expertise to the proverbial table.
On paper, this seems like a fine and dandy idea. Nashville Star's panelists pride themselves on having a kinder, gentler approach than Simon Cowell and cutthroat critics on other TV talent shows, after all--so it makes sense that they'd want to go out of their way help the contestants, and make their constructive criticism especially constructive.
But it will be interesting to see how this practice works in real life.
See, each of the judges is going to be assigned three or four finalists to mentor personally. But will this arrangement bias them in any way? Will the judges be able to critique one of their own protégés as honestly and impartially as they would any other contestant on the show? And more importantly, if the judges lambast their own apprentices and say they stink...well, isn't that akin to saying they themselves stink as mentors? That they failed to teach their students properly?
And what'll happen if one individual judge's pupils all get voted off first, one after the other? That'll sure be an ego blow, not to mention the fact that the contestant-less judge will then have a whole lot of idle time on his/her hands by episode 4.
Yes, this entire clash-of-the-egos scenario could make for some awesome TV, I predict. Bring on the interjudge squabbling!
Anyway, we'll all have to wait until tonight for the catfighting to commence, but for those of you who simply cannot wait to see which judge got paired with which contestant...well, you don't have to wait for that. Watch the spoiler video preview here: