Andy DehnartOf America’s Got Talent‘s final four, three of them didn’t show up to the auditions: two were recruited by the show’s producers, who found the performers online, while one came from the YouTube auditions.
Only Michael Grimm stood in line to audition, having been rejected last year. Fighting Gravity “was discovered virally, after five original group members performed at a campus talent show”; Prince Poppycock, aka John Quale, was discovered after “AGT producers found a Poppycock performance on the Internet and encouraged him to audition”; and Jackie Evancho was one of “12 performers selected for an August show based on YouTube video submissions,” USA TODAY reports.
As to tonight’s finale, Prince Poppycock, who’s been a favorite of mine, really blew it with his performance. He sang opera and did basically nothing else, though his set had a woman chained up. So it looks like it’s between young opera singer Jackie Evancho and Virginia Tech students Fighting Gravity. They put on a great performance, though it wasn’t perfect and a screw-up near the end revealed some of how they do what they do. Hopefully, despite that, their decision to give up a semester of college will be rewarded by viewers tonight with $1 million (or, actually, $375,000), and the show will be stay true to its claim that it’s about finding a Las Vegas-style act.