America’s Got Talent review: Pompeyo Family, Tony & Jordan, & audition show #3

We’re heading into America’s Got Talent audition show #3 tonight, and by and large we’d call the show shows incredibly entertaining. While there may not have been all that much in the way of true undiscovered talent, that doesn’t quite matter so much to us. There are so many entertainment avenues these days that the bulk of the audience isn’t going to be familiar with the people that the meet on this show.

Just like the first two episodes, we’re going to be covering the show LIVE. Be sure to check back throughout the night for the take on the various acts, with some grades to go along with it.

Oscar Hernandez – About the point he came on stage and it was clear that he was wearing shorts, we knew that he wasn’t going to be some dude coming out onstage to sing. He BROKE IT DOWN.

Sure he wasn’t the best dancer in history, but he could do the splits! This was cheeky fun. It’s not winning anything, but it’s a fine start to this show. Grade: B-.

Elena and Sacha – Not only was what Sasha did both fairly risky and fairly terrifying, but we also kind of love that she was one of the snarkiest contestants to ever audition, talking about why she was there for the money and the “free sandwiches.” These sort of acts never have much of a chance to win, and it’s unfortunate since the amount of training that probably went into this is exponentially greater than almost anything else you’ll see this season. Stunning. Grade: A-.

Shemika Charles – This is the first time that we’ve ever seen a competitive limbo dancer make an appearance on ANY talent show. With that, this was exciting! What she was able to do in terms of doing the limbo under various objects was pretty fantastic. More than being great at this, though, she understood the importance of having great showmanship. She did the limbo under several bars, and then even a car! Grade: B+.

Kechi Okwuchi – The plane crash survivor was featured in a lot of promo leading up to this episode airing, and for good reason given that her voice is all sorts of outstanding. Not only does have a great voice and a powerful story, but we also absolutely love the song choice of “Thinking Out Loud.” She didn’t do some old, dreary song nobody cares about in 2017, which so many ballad singers do. Grade: A-.

Big Benji – Okay, this was terrible, and honestly the most uncomfortable we’ve been three episodes into the show. Why throw up this poor old woman up on stage to have this silly exchange just so that she can proclaim her love for Simon Cowell? If this was the first time we’d ever seen the “woman crushing on Simon” archetype on television, maybe we’d feel different. Grade: F.

Tony & Jordan – These two are twin magicians and visual-artist experts from France. There isn’t anyone on the show quite like them in terms of combining a number of different dimensions into it. It’s creative, fun, and their use of the whole twin gimmick was super-smart. These guys, if they can replicate this again, have a long life still to come this season. Grade: A-.

In the Stairwell – It’s been a while since we had an acapella group on AGT or a show like it — add to that the fact that these guys are from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. What’s so awesome about them beyond their swagger is that they bring a human face to the military beyond just people fighting overseas. We would say that the backing vocals were a little muddy, but the performance was fun enough for this not to be too big an issue — for now. Grade: B.

The bombing comedian – It’s hard to do comedy on the show. REALLY hard. We didn’t catch the guy’s name, but it just didn’t work. He was too nervous, and he needs more time on stage to workshop material. Grade: D-.

Daniel Ferguson – We won’t lie — we’ve seen something super-similar to this on Britain’s Got Talent in the past, but his Simon Cowell impression was all sorts of excellent. He had some unique impressions, and he did actually make a little bit of effort to correlate to the different voices to appropriate parts of the song. A very fun audition. Grade: B.

Pompeyo Family – Easily the best dog act on the show ever since the Olate Dogs many years ago. Their dogs were all very well-trained, and they did some things with the jump rope that we’ve never seen before. It probably wasn’t as crazy as the Olate Dogs act, but for a first audition you have to admire the energy that they had and the wide array of different dogs that they used. They apparently have far more than were on the stage, so there could be more cool things to come. Grade: B+.

Dancing Pumpkin Man – Gloriously dumb. There was no reason whatsoever why this was good, and it really wasn’t, but it was surprisingly fun and watchable for one outing. The problem is that unless he finds some dancing pumpkin family or does something equally surprising and stupid, there is almost a zero percent change this will be anything other than terrible the second time it’s on the show. What was funny about this was that Mel B was so desperate to send him through that she refused to leave the stage until Simon changed his vote. Grade: C.

Christian Guardino – We’ve got a full piece about Howie’s Golden Buzzer pick over here. Enjoy!

What do you think about some of the acts on tonight’s America’s Got Talent episode? Be sure to share now in the attached comments!

Meanwhile, be sure to head over to this link in the event you want to get some additional news when it comes to the show. (Photo: NBC.)