Four Popular Acts Were Missing In Action During ‘AGT’ Judge Cuts
NBC Reading Time: 2 minutes
America’s Got Talent is known for showcasing a variety of performing arts, many of which aren’t represented on other mainstream television shows. When they shine during auditions, many fans are excited to see more from them, but sometimes these acts just…don’t come back.
Several fan-favorite variety acts from Season 13’s audition round – daredevil Annaliese Nock, video projection group Front Pictures, comedian French Accent, and motorcycle stunt performer Kenny Thomas – never returned for Judge Cuts, and many viewers are confused as to why.
One aspect of the current format of AGT‘s competition that isn’t actually discussed on the televised show is that a “passed” audition isn’t an automatic ticket to Judge Cuts. In between the two rounds, producers whittle down the acts who were given at least three “yeses” from the judges to a set number (72 for Season 13; 80 for most of the other recent seasons) who officially advance to the next round. And as singer Glennis Grace discussed nearly doing on this week’s episode, some acts choose to withdraw from the competition after auditions for various reasons. So the four aforementioned acts most likely fall into one of these two categories.
However, that leaves us with another question: What was the purpose of AGT carving out precious time in the two-hour episodes to show us these acts’ auditions in full, while relegating acts who did participate in Judge Cuts to brief montage segments? I sort of get why Annaliese would be shown, since her father competed last season, but in most other cases it seems so pointless to get the audience excited for acts they wouldn’t see again, especially since a frequent complaint with the Judge Cuts round is the television audience not being familiar with all of the acts competing.
One other thing worth mentioning is that there’s been an interesting trend with this: for the past few seasons, an act who didn’t compete in Judge Cuts being brought back as one of the three wildcards in the quarter-finals. In Season 11 it was projection dance duo Sila Sveta and in Season 12 it was video projection artists Oskar & Gaspar. This strange pattern of video acts skipping Judge Cuts but appearing in the live shows led some AGT fans to not only speculate it was due to the set-up of the performances not being suitable for the Jude Cuts format, but predict Front Pictures would be one of Season 13’s wildcards…a prediction that proved to be correct, as AGT has announced Front Pictures will be returning for the quarter-finals!
