Warning: spoilers ahead for the first night of America's Got Talent's Season 20 quarterfinals results on August 20, available streaming next day with a Peacock subscription.
America's Got Talent has entered the live portion of Season 20 in the 2025 TV schedule, and the first live results episode eliminated seven acts who had made it past the auditions round, with three others voted into the semifinals. The night opened with a live performance of "Pour Some Sugar On Me" by Def Leppard, and the first half hour of the episode was pretty standard for an AGT results episode, but it wouldn't stay that way.
Dance group Loco Pop Familia and singing trio CitiLimitz were brought onto stage with the expectation that one of them would be announced as staying in the competition. Host Terry Crews said "Let's find out who's staying in the competition!" before 28 seconds of silence. (Yes, I timed it.) Then, the host pulled the rug out from under the performers with the worst kind of AGT news: none of them were in the Top 5 with a shot at the grand prize.
Now, it's of course normal for AGT to ramp up the suspense before announcing an elimination, and I really only had a complaint about it in the Season 19 finale when Richard Goodall barely had time to celebrate his win. But when Simon Cowell openly said that the trick was just "mean," I immediately agreed with him, and it seemed that everybody else in the venue did as well. Here's what Cowell said in response to the double elimination:
That was very mean. That was mean, producers. Very mean. I feel bad for both of you. Boo.
Off camera, Mel B said "I feel bad," and Sofia Vergara could be heard asking, "What happened?" The audience started booing, and I think that might be the first time this season that the crowd has booed that hard to agree with Simon Cowell. I do appreciate that he specifically noted that the producers were the "very mean" ones in the scenario. Terry Crews may have dropped the news as host of the show, but it surely wasn't his call to format the episode this way.
I'm not sure how much of Simon Cowell's commentary actually reached the contestants, as the members of Loco Pop Familia and CitiLimitz all looked shell-shocked and on the verge of tears. Normally, I would have just felt bad for performers who have their devastation broadcast on live TV, but I was glad for the live production this time.
There was no time for producers to potentially edit out Simon Cowell's reaction or mute out the reactions from Mel B and Sofia Vergara, which were loud enough to be heard off-screen. The boos from the audience were pretty booming as well. I don't know that AGT would have cut the sequence down to look a little less mean, but I do know that it couldn't happen for a live broadcast.
I can't speak for anybody else, but seeing this pretty dirty trick halfway through the episode really took me out of the festivities for the second half. I'd been having fun watching the first 30 minutes or so, with some great performers learning they'd made the Top 5 and Def Leppard's performance proving to me that I've been singing along to the wrong lyrics for "Pour Some Sugar On Me" for many, many years. (Don't ask me what I'd always thought Def Leppard was singing in the "little miss innocent" line, because I wasn't even close.)
Whatever the goal was with the bait and switch on Loco Pop Familia and CitiLimitz, I hope that Simon Cowell's reaction as well as a room full of booing audience members will be enough to dissuade producers from pulling this trick again in future live results shows.
The competition certainly still has a ways to go before America votes in the next winner of the $1 million and Las Vegas stage show grand prize. The semifinalists from Week 1 are LightWire, Sirca Marea, and Jourdan Blue, as well as Steve Ray Ladson after he got the golden buzzer from Sofia Vergara the previous night. New episodes of America's Got Talent will continue airing on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET, followed by results shows on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET, all on NBC. .
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