Linda Holmes

I was out of the house, as it happens, for most of the first half of yesterday's Louisville-Duke game, and when I got home and looked at Twitter, before I turned on the TV, there was a huge stack of stuff to read, and the first thing that caught my attention about the game was this.

Last night on American Idol was Motown Night, when we all learned that Motown songs (like "I Heard It Through The Grapevine") should all be sung as seriously as possible, wearing a scowl, with all the fun sucked out. (And that was a performance that was pretty good.) It's in keeping with this season, in which melodramatic ballads have dominated even more than usual.

On this week's show, the regular band is back together, and I am a rock. I am an island.

When you read the words of Clotaire Rapaille, a "French-born psychiatrist-turned-marketer" quoted in yesterday's interesting Slate article about the marketing of cars to women, it's hard not to read them in a voice that's sultry and French and not entirely serious, as if he's some kind of sales expert crossed with Pepe Le Pew (despite the fact that this doubtless has no basis in reality).

With the recent tragic news that this summer will not bring a new season of ABC's stupidest show, Bachelor Pad, this has been a very trying time for people who believe that Dancing With The Stars is too highbrow and lah-dee-dah for them. What are they to do? Where can they turn? Where is the solace for the stupidity enthusiast?

For the last couple of weeks, Vulture has been running a "Sitcom Smackdown," a contest between 16 sitcoms of the last 30 years to determine an eventual champion.

Last night, the 10 American Idol finalists were announced, and one thing is for sure: the five-year streak of pleasant-seeming, guitar-playing white dudes (in reverse order: Phillip Phillips, Scotty McCreery, Lee DeWyze, Kris Allen, and David Cook) is over.

The March issue of The Atlantic features an essay from Christopher Orr called "Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad?"* In it, Orr asserts that romantic comedies have been "lackluster for decades." Decades.