Last night, a karaoke leviathan reemerged from the depths of the Pacific to terrorize the TV landscape, its destructive appetite unsated until a virginal white-soul prodigy (preferably Mormon) is sacrificed at its easy-listening feet.

Which is to say, the eighth season of American Idol debuted—a fact you were likely well aware of thanks to Fox's aggressive marketing campaign, which included the shrink-wrapping of every surface in Los Angeles in Idol-branded promotional materials. (You have not experienced fear until you stare up at a Fox Tower-sized Randy Jackson, its blinding, blue-white smile blamed for a number of recent small-plane collisions and accidental bird deaths.)

We approached the two-hour premiere with guarded optimism, as the announced changes to the format—fewer bad singers, a new judge, a one-cup-size-larger Simon, and more audition-room births—could have easily spelled disaster. Consider us relieved, then, when the first five minutes of the show were devoted to a Vietfro'd Michael Jackson impersonator. Clearly, Idol 8 was not going to shock its audience of millions—30.1 million to be exact—into televised-trainwreck-withdrawal.

There were, of course, moments of true uplift. The blind contestant with the voice of an all-seeing angel managed to thaw even Simon's cryovaced heart, though the celebration over his golden ticket grew slightly awkward by Ryan Seacrest's attempt at a high-five. Realizing he'd be left hanging for several hours at least, Seacrest quickly slapped both palms together and shook them on either side of his head in a meek victory gesture. A smooth save, and precisely why the host commands the mogulsexual big-bucks.

But it was Bikini Girl's audition—the comely, cocoa-buttered contestant we first introduced you to last month—who licked the first flames of AI controversy, as new panel addition Kara DioGuardi challenged the pitchy-implant-haver to a vicious "Vision of Love"-off that left one production assistant partially deaf. Somewhere, world's foremost Mariah Carey interpretist Dong was scoffing. [AI]