September 26th
Despite the pandemic, Heidi Klum being absent and Simon Cowell being absent because of an electric bike accident, AGT still went on in 2020 with its 15th season. A new judge also joined, Modern Family's Sofia Vergara! This season made history with the first ever spoken word poet, Brandon Leake and he won! I was concerned how they were going to pull this show off this year, but luckily they did and I'm glad.
They recorded some of the auditions before being affected by the virus. After that, they recorded some episodes without an audience. Then they had a vertical audience. Some auditions had to submit their acts online over Zoom. ACT posted these acts early on YouTube before the show began and I saw them all.
Now the family and I liked Modern Family and when that ended in April, we never expected to see anyone from that show for a while. So we were shocked that NBC announced Sofia was going to judge AGT this year. We thought it would be interesting and were all pumped to see her. She didn't disappoint. She was a pretty good judge, despite not too keen on being involved with a danger act, but who would blame her? If I was a judge, I wouldn't want to really be in a danger act either. Her costar, Eric Stronestreet were also in a couple episodes as a guest judge, replacing Heidi Klum.
Unfortunately, Heidi wasn't the only one who was absent. Simon Cowell also was forced to leave the live shows due to a back injury. He was hospitalized and they had to do it without him. For a couple of them, he was also replaced. The first week of the live shows, they had singer Kelly Clarkson and for the second, actor and comedian: Kenan Thompson. We thought he would make a cameo, be it vertically or in a wheelchair for the finals, but he never did. Oh well. Thankfully he is recovering so we should see him next year. Luckily, Heidi recovered and was able to continue.
As always, there were a lot of good acts this year. There was aerialist Alan Silva (His brother was a performer in the show four years ago in 2016. So that was interesting), Indian Salsa duo: Bad Salsa (who was anything but bad), kid singers Daneliya Tuleshova, Kenaldi Dodds, Roberta Battaglia and more. There was also someone else, but she dropped out due to being pregnant and not being able to travel due to Covid.
And like every year, we were disappointed with some of the results, especially the finals. We were rooting for singers Christina Rae or Archie Williams. They were both amazing singers. But Christina got third place and Archie made the finals but not in the top five. Country Band Broken Roots got second, They were good, but not second place good. I don't think they should've made finals or past the top five. To me, they sounded like your average everyday country band. Brandon beat them and we were really proud that he did. All of his stories were moving and deep. He told about his past troubles like him being an African American and his baby sister dying when he was really young. So congrats again for winning, Brandon! But we'd never forget about you Christina, Archie and all of the other amazing acts. You guys deserved better and though you guys might not have won, you were all winners in our hearts!
Hopefully next year, AGT will run smoothly without any troubles in its way and be better. Hopefully next year there will be no COVID-19 and we can all go back to normal like it was prior 2020. AGT, thank you for showing us these amazing acts during these difficult times. Fingers crossed (or I guess in my case, fins crossed)! As always, despite disappointments, we look forward to next year and hopefully many more beyond.