‘America’s Got Talent’ finalist spotlight: Tape Face

From the moment he first stepped out on the “America’s Got Talent” stage, Tape Face proved himself to be something weird and wonderful. Admittedly, we were worried he’d be a joke act when he first went out there, but his audition ended up being right behind Grace VanderWaal as the most-viewed one across many social-media platforms. Since that time, he’s been good … but has he allowed for the competition to slip through his fingers? That’s something we do have to debate here.

Before we dive any further into this, we’ll give some full disclosure in saying that Tape Face is probably our personal favorite of the remaining acts. That is probably why we’ll root for him so much, but also be a little harsher when there are things that could be done better.

Path to finale – After the memorable audition Tape Face and his magic miming breezed through the Judge Cuts before eventually making it to the live shows and getting sent right through to the next round. From there, however, he faced the first bump in the road as he needed the Dunkin’ Save to make it into the finale.

Strengths – There are no comedians in the finale, so in many ways Tape Face picks up that baton. He’s insanely creative (and also quite possibly insane period), and has a wicked sense of humor when it comes to visual sight-gags. He’s probably able to make something out of nothing better than any other act, even the magicians who make things appear and disappear all of the time. In general, he may be one of the most original acts we’ve seen on here through multiple seasons, and that is no small order.

Weaknesses – The past two appearances from him in the live show have been good-but-not-great. We actually think he is better when he doesn’t bring people in from the judging panel or the audience, since getting them up there takes up a whole lot of time away from what he has to work with. We’d rather see two or three little gags as opposed to one where he has a lengthy setup. He’ll have to find a way to get all of the original magic back, and also get a good placement from producers in the show so that he’s memorable.

Winner odds – He’s an underdog, but we’re not writing him off completely. The biggest thing he’s got going for him is that we can easily see many of the singers splitting the vote, and that could help someone as unique as he is take the top spot. If he can deliver something more in line with his first audition, which was more about humor than audience participation, we can see the voters responding in a big way.

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