This is American Hunger Games?

I love American Idol. There--I've said it. I've been watching it for several seasons now, but for reasons that are now extinct. I got sucked watching the auditions, where awful people were consistently shot down by Simon Cowell. Now Simon Cowell is gone and with him, it seems, are the cringe-worthy auditions. I decided to keep count after two episodes without a single baddy in the bunch, and there were a grand total of three from the whole audition process. This was only my first indication that this year, things were different.
About two weeks ago that I figured out what had changed: American Idol doesn't want us to see a simple national singing competition (perhaps international, considering the British girl keeps winning...), they want us to believe we are watching an all-out brawl in which only one teenager survives. In other words, American Idol has become our very own hunger games.