‘America’s Got Talent’ postmortem: Why Julia Scotti, The Passing Zone, and Ronee Martin were eliminated

Last night, “America’s Got Talent” held what may be one of their most polarizing results shows of the season so far. After all, we saw a combination of only singers and magic acts advance without the need of the judges and America’s saves, and even with those, we still only have one act that is slightly out of the ordinary in a dance / performance group. At this point, we’re relying heavily on acts like Tape Face, Deadly Games, and Sofie Dossi to carry more of the variety torch for the season.

So why were some of the eliminated acts sent packing? In the latest edition of our postmortem series, we’re going to go through some of what may have happened.

The Passing Zone – Given that they were near the end of the show, and they even included the judges in their act, we assumed that the odds were fairly high that they would get a chance to advance. However, they were probably heard by a few different things. First, the amount of actual juggling was lower than previous acts. Also, maybe we underestimated the number of people who remembered them from season 1 and felt they already had a chance. Finally, it probably didn’t help that they did more or less the same act they did a good decade ago in the performance show.

Ronee Martin – Ronee actually fared better than we thought she would. While she has a good voice, the show saddled her with a tough performance spot and the judges were always going to choose Linkin’ Bridge over her. They’re something that stands out more against the rest of the season. Ultimately, her loss is one of timing and circumstance.

Julia Scotti – This one probably bums us out the most, given that she was one of our favorites the entire season. This one perplexes us slightly, but it’s probably twofold (and we’re prepared for some backlash over this one). First, her humor is probably too crass and cranky for some viewers; comedy is subjective, and her brand is not necessarily mass-market. Also, we do imagine that being transgender is its own uphill battle, since we’ve unfortunately seen over the past few years that not everyone in America is accepting. We wish that it wasn’t a factor, but concede it probably was with voters in the heartland.

Alla and Daniel – No disrespect to the two, but this one is fairly easy to call: They were a little boring beyond the cute aesthetic. Howie Mandel even buzzed them, which is something he had not done during this season’s live shows. (We have no problem with him doing so, given that it’s his job to be harsh. He shouldn’t practice more restraint just because he is judging a kid.)

Vello Vaher – Similarly, Vello was buzzed by Simon, and his act was a little lacking. There was more potential here than was shown in this act; he probably made an error in trying to make something that is comedic a little more of a spectacle with the pirate ship.

If you do want to read our review for Wednesday’s episode, you can do so over at the link here! Also, sign up over here to score some other TV news on everything we cover via our official newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)