Dateline Pasadena: Simon Cowell tries to convince us _he's_ the crazy one; plus, the real NCIS speaks

PASADENA, Calif. -- Simon Cowell gets paid a reported $36 million a year to do “American Idol.” That includes appearing on the show, enduring countless atrocious auditions and helping whittle the field of several thousand self-styled music artists down to the two dozen semifinalists you see on TV.

  However, it seems that Cowell's job description has grown to include a less publicized but far more essential task. Increasingly he is called on to act as a one-man heat shield for a program that sometimes looks like it will be crushed under the intense pressure of its own mad success.

  Twice during a session with TV critics here Saturday, Cowell fell on his sword, manfully taking the blame for show-related embarrassments that probably weren't his doing. The first happened when a critic asked why the press conference, on a day jam-packed with presentations, had started 40 minutes late.

  “It was my fault,” Cowell said. “I flew in late from London, so I apologize.”

  Nobody, and I mean nobody in the assemblage of critics was buying that. Suspicion fell, instead, on fellow “Idol” judge Paula Abdul, whose wacky behavior has become such a given that Defamer recently celebrated the show's return with the headline, "America Cheers as Paula Abdul Climbs Back on the Crazy Train."

  Just last week, the show was in another damage-control tizzy after the former Laker Girl did a live remote with a Seattle TV station. The video, which immediately made its way to YouTube, shows Abdul swaying in and out of the picture and giving the camera an odd come-hither look. People debated whether she was drunk or high.

  Neither, according to Abdul. Explaining that she was hearing audio feeds from two different cities in her earpiece, she said, “I was holding on, waiting, and I'm in a swivel chair and I'm swiveling and I'm very animated with my hands … and I was waiting for the glitch to get better.”

  Once again, her unlikely knight in charcoal T-shirt came to Abdul's defense. “The whole thing was overblown,” declared Cowell. “I've done it so many times, these public interviews. By about the end, I'm talking complete and utter rubbish. … If anyone had put the same clip as me on YouTube or anything else, it would have been even worse.”

  An informal poll of critics after the press conference found none who accepted this interpretation. But since it had the imprimatur of the man known as “Idol's” straight shooter, the matter died quietly on the Pasadena Ritz-Carlton's ballroom floor.

  While he was at it, Cowell apologized for making Abdul look like a fool last year, when she blabbered on the air about a Chinese proverb that went, in her version at least, “The moth who finds the melon finds the corn flake always finds the melon.” (He claimed that he fed her the wise old saying.)

  Cowell also defended his comments at the Seattle auditions, which were broadcast last week as the show recorded its highest opening numbers yet. Some 57 million viewers watched “Idol,” according to Fox entertainment chief Peter Liguori. (The tryouts continue this week at 7 p.m. tonight and Wednesday on Fox 4.)

  The incident most critics honed in on was Cowell's treatment of Kenneth Briggs, an unfortunate contestant whom he dubbed a “bush baby” for his “massive eyes.” After Briggs left the auditioning room, viewers watched as Abdul and third judge Randy Jackson erupted in laughter.

  Another contestant who was ridiculed by Cowell, the New York Times reported, had taken part in the Special Olympics, the inference being that “American Idol” had stooped to picking on the mentally challenged.

  Asked about these auditions, Cowell shrugged.

  “There are times -- trust me -- when I watch it back and I just think, 'God, I wish I hadn't have said that and why do they put it in the show?'” he said. “But it's something we all sign up for …

  “Truthfully, on auditions or anything you do like this, bad things do happen, and I think that's why the audience trusts us, that we will show the good things as well as the bad things.”

  ***

  Up against the shortened “Idol” tonight -- the four networks are simulcasting the President's State of the Union address at 8 -- is “NCIS.” It's considered one of television's few “Idol-proof” series, meaning that CBS can air it against TV's biggest show without hearing that giant sucking sound of millions of viewers being pulled away to Fox.

  I visited the set with other TV critics last week. “NCIS” is filmed in what looks, from the outside, like a low-slung office park, in studios located in the remote L.A. suburb of Valencia -- yes, the same city that took a nuke last week on “24.”

  The big discovery I made on my set visit is that there is an actual Naval Criminal Investigative Service, with offices at nearby Camp Pendleton as well as dozens of other outposts worldwide.

  But much of the work the real NCIS does bears little resemblance to what you see on TV: counter-intelligence and protecting American property abroad. Pete Rozman, an NCIS agent CBS brought to the set, noted that his colleagues were among the first to the scene in 2000 when al-Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in Yemen.

  If you're a fan, you've probably noticed a favorite theme of the show is NCIS agent Gibbs (Mark Harmon) butting heads with outside agencies over jurisdiction of criminal cases. Rozman said, “99 percent of the time, it's not like that. It's a little exaggerated.” In fact, he added, in the post-9/11 world NCIS coordinates with other law enforcement groups more than ever.

  Leon Carroll, a retired NCIS who's now a full-time consultant to the show, said there was some debate when the producer of “JAG,” Don Bellasario, approached NCIS about doing a spinoff that focused on the agency. But the feedback he gets is all good now.

  Not surprisingly, the show has given a huge PR boost to the agency that Carroll said used to think of itself as “the Rodney Dangerfield of federal law enforcement.”

  Recognition has led to respect and another word that begins with R.

 

“My last few years with NCIS, I did recruiting,” said Carroll. “And I can tell you that in that department, it has really, really helped immensely.”