Over and Out - Jesse L. Martin, American Idol, and Raul Esparza

Jesse L. Martin is leaving Law & Order. What's most shocking about this news is that he is leaving after nine years on the show. NINE. 9. NINE???

ALREADY??? Jesse L. Martin was on for THAT long? Really? Where has the time gone?

The good news is that he's moving on to things that will showcase his AMAZING singing voice again (next up, playing Marvin Gaye in a movie). Yay! The bad news: we may never get that musical episode of Law & Order they clearly should have done when Jerry Orbach was still alive. I mean, every guest star is already a Broadway star, so it's not like they didn't have the talent? They could have rectified the mistakes of Cop Rock!

Meanwhile, I tried watching the girls (try to) sing on American Idol Wednesday night but after the first tedious hour, I ended up turning to where the REAL talent was, on Great Performances showing of Company even though I was taping it on PVR AND VCR (I take no chances) and I had already seen it live 3 times before. There was the real showcase for amazing talent, where the cast sang AND played the instruments while acting. Serious talent!

Except, the camera angle edits threw me off a bit. I guess that happens when I'm used to seeing a show live.

Either way, Raul Esparza, live or not, was STILL mesmerizing and even though I've been told he's a bit of an asshole in real life (not to mention having a messy private life with his wife and gay lover?!?), the Tony Award was stolen from him last year.

Also while I'm swearing, what the hell. I can't believe PBS censored bleeped out (or actually, just muted) some of the words in the MUSICAL. Really? Must we really alter art? (Yes. It's art).

So "Christ" was not allowed. "Bitch", "Ass" and "Jesus" was fine. "F#%k" of course was not. Really? "Christ"?

Anyways, in the lackluster season (or week 1 of the usually good part I should really say), 4 people got voted off Idol this week and I could barely tell you who they were at this point (the big black girl who was NO Mandisa, Colton my-name-sounds-like-a-gay-porn-star Berry, and 2 other people that were sadly not Chikezie) at this point since everyone blended together except for my current stand out favorite, David Archuleta (above). (Michael was good too but just watch David's performance after the jump. ADORABLE). I'm still not sure it's enough to convince me to watch again this year but maybe I'll tape the episodes and just fast forward until David A. performs.