While you were out

‘American Idol’

This week’s set of eight might have been lacking in talent, but the entertainment value was certainly there. Two thumbs up go to Joshua Gracin, who was the only contestant to pull a truly fabulous performance. The other seven just weren’t up to par. A comical moment came after Ashley Hartman’s performance. It was pretty low-scale, so the judges kept telling her how gorgeous she was and sort of slid in the comment that she didn’t really have any talent. The real highlight of the show was Juanita Barber’s performance. She did a mediocre rendition of a song and the judges told her so. She engaged in a heated argument, in which she told all of the judges that they didn’t know what good singing was. Makes sense, right? Why would the owner of a record company and a couple of world famous singers know about good singing?

‘NYPD Blue’

Detective Clark’s father committed suicide. The best scene of the episode was Clark watching the video that his father left him. Julian, a man that the precinct is familiar with, was shot by a guy set up by Julian’s wife and the man that she was cheating with. Medavoy, Sipowicz and Jones got Julian to pose for pictures as if he was dead; Sipowicz then showed them to her and tricked her into admitting what she had done. The other storyline involved a case where a woman was tricked out of $100 by a college-aged girl. Connie and Rita were handling the case and became frustrated at how serious the woman took the breach of trust. Once they found out that her child was killed by a drunk driver soon before she was conned, they gathered $100 and got Julian to pretend to be the conwoman’s husband. The scene in which Julian and the woman interacted was wonderfully done because while Julian was supposed to be acting, he ended up breaking down and crying about his actual wife’s breach of trust.

As more series come to an end, we need your input more than ever. E-mail us and let us know what shows you would like to see fill the gap left by “Joe Millionaire” and “The Bachelorette.” We do listen to you “NYPD Blue” was a request from one of our readers and we were happy to oblige.