Ellen Gray: Asking a few 'Idol' questions

AMERICAN IDOL. 8 tonight, Fox29.

THE THING that's upset me most about Fox's "American Idol" lately turns out to have nothing to do with the judges, the contestants or even Ryan Seacrest.

Nope, it's the schedule.

As happy as I am to be watching "Glee," I can't get used to Tuesdays without "Idol."

Or Thursdays with it.

Yes, it's ridiculous to talk about schedules in the age of the DVR, but "reality" doesn't lend itself to reheating. Or would you rather watch this week's apparently cringe-worthy "Bachelor" finale three days from now, when the bloom truly is off that rose?

That I'm even bothering to try to accommodate a schedule change in "Idol's" Season 10, years after having kicked a serious "Survivor" addiction, suggests there's something more than habit at work here.

Not just for me: The ratings may have declined, the audience may have aged - advertisers can't be happy, but for the rest of us, it beats dying - and recent winners may be utterly forgettable, but it's 2011 and "American Idol" is somehow still No. 1.

So maybe it's time to stop asking if this show can be saved and ask instead: What's it going to take to kill the sucker?

And while we're at it, some other "Idol" questions:

Simon Who? I've heard from some of you who still mourn the loss of Simon Cowell - are those promos for "The X Factor" not enough? - but I'm wondering which Simon you miss.

Is it the fearless and funny bloke from the show's earlier seasons who tried to teach America's pampered princes and princesses that self-esteem wasn't the same as talent?

Or is it the increasingly moody guy of the past few, who was recycling his put-downs and seemed less interested in deflating contestants' egos than in cutting Ryan's down to size? (Not that that couldn't be a full-time job in itself.)

Who let the Dawg out? Guess it's only natural that sole survivor judge Randy Jackson would be trying to fill Simon's shoes (though, blessedly, not his T-shirts). But when I heard him say last week, "If I'm being honest . . . " I thought he'd taken the transformation as far as he could.

Throw in a couple of Magic Mountain references and a Madonna-like British accent, and he might as well hire himself out as a Simon impersonator. Perhaps on a cruise ship to nowhere.

Could "Idol" production values be peaking too soon? Before Adam Lambert came along, I'm not even sure the show had a budget for dry ice, but now if it's not fog, it's gospel choirs accompanying singers whose voices - and names - we're still getting to know.

I appreciate what the addition of uber-mentor Jimmy Iovine might mean to producing a successful recording artist from this final group, but I hope he and producers appreciate how much of the "Idol" experience is about letting viewers feel, at least, as if they're discovering someone. Which means turning up the heat (or the fog) slowly.

Is the "Idol" juggernaut too taxing? For people in what should be the healthiest phase of their lives, "Idol" wannabes have a fairly high rate of hospitalizations during competition, starting in Season 1.

Crystal Bowersox's diabetes problems last year and Casey Abrams' ulcerative colitis, which flared up last week, landing him in the hospital, weren't new to them, of course, but both are conditions whose symptoms can be exacerbated by stress.

Stardom, too, can be stressful - but perhaps real stars sometimes choose sleep over filming weekly car commercials and attendance at other people's red-carpet events?

Do people really still care about Aerosmith? As happily surprised as I've been by Steven Tyler's emergence as a force of nature in what had become a too-predictable show, I was surprised to see CNN, during its Japan disaster coverage, repeatedly running a crawl with the report (relayed by producer Nigel Lythgoe to xfinitytv.com) that Tyler's band and fellow judge Jennifer Lopez would both perform on "Idol" this season.

Think that's going to lower the show's median age? Dream on.

In an interview a couple of months ago, Natalie Zea hinted that Winona, the woman she plays in "Justified" (10 tonight, FX), might go off the rails this season.

"She does something that's very much out of character. I don't know how it's going to play," Zea said. "I had the best time doing it. It could go either way, but it was really fun to explore it and to know that I really kind of had no idea of what I was doing."

At the time, I had no idea myself, but having seen tonight's and next week's episodes, I now know what Zea was referring to, and all I can say is that it introduces a delicious new wrinkle into the relationship between Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and his ex (Zea).

And that, as always, if I told you any more, I'd have to have Raylan shoot you. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.