‘America’s Got Talent’ review: Meet Miguel Dakota, Aerial Animation, Julia Goodwin

For the second episode of “America’s Got Talent,” the show started to make us a little cynical. There were so many acts that were good, but not great; yet, the judges sold them to us like they were the greatest thing since sliced bread.

We’re going to do with this review the same thing that we’ve done with many other shows lately, and rank the acts on the night in order from worst to first. One disclaimer: We’re not including most of the acts that either didn’t make it through, or we barely got to see.

The Willis Clan – We understand having the kids be a part of the act helps to really mix things up, but we’re pretty sure that at least two of the younger ones just stood there. We’d cut out about three of them; while picking something from “The Sound of Music” was hokey, at least they did a new arrangement of it.

David and Leeman – One of the coolest performances that we’ve seen almost the entire season, mostly because we haven’t seen anything quite like it. Was it a “magic trick”? Maybe. We have no idea how they turned Howie Mandel into an illiterate human being. Even still, we enjoyed every second of this.

Julia Goodwin – Is this one of the best singers we’ve heard on the show … ever? She may at least be the best since Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr. She’s distinct, has nice range, and actually did “New York State of Mind” justice. The only thing that we worry about is that someome needs to tell her to use a little less vibrato when she sings.

Sean and Luke – A fun little dance act, but we have to agree with Howard here when we say that there was not necessarily anything that special about the routine itself. They were just good-looking kids moving around.

Real Encounter – Why are so many daredevils extremely religious? Are they all constantly afraid that they are going to die at any moment, and figure it best to get in good now with the man upstairs? (Just a joke; relax, people.) They are very good at motorcross stunts, but at the same time we’ve seen this same act before.

Slam – This is a recurring theme tonight. They are a very good basketball act, but we’ve seen so many other ones on the show over the years.

Dom the Bom’s Triple Threat – Hey, it’s a kid act that we genuinely like for a change! He’s a card-thrower, and some of the things that he does legitimately took a lot of skill and were not just subpar and masked by his age.

Miguel Dakota – Really, the major issue that we have with Miguel is that he actually sounds so much like Alex Clare that “Too Close” was a predictable song choice. He was very good, but there was nothing in here that popped more than what we’ve seen elsewhere.

Aerial Animation – There was a part of this that really reminded us of Kenichi Ebina from last year, with the exception being that she is an aerialist rather than a dance. Hopefully, the show can provide her with some more budget to create better animations behind her.

John & Andrew – We’ve seen so many ballroom kids on this show, it’s nice to have a pair of trained adults on the show for a change. The most entertaining part of this was admittedly Howie Mandel and Howard Stern dancing with them after the fact, and that somehow Howie Mandel managed to actually got that long while touching someone else.

Who was your favorite from the show tonight? Let us know below.