Are ‘American Idol’ singers too similar?

Sparks played into her youth with a couple of treacly numbers from kids’ movies — one from “Mulan” and one from “The Land Before Time” — but she blasted her way out of that theme-park schmaltz with a goosebump-raising performance of “I Who Have Nothing” during British Invasion week. She’s now playing in the same big-lunged field as Doolittle, and she’s probably singing better right now than Jones, the early favorite who has seemed less exciting by the week as she repeatedly performs iconic songs in precisely the way icons performed them.

So while there’s plenty of good singing, there isn’t a healthy competition between a good variety of types. What’s also missing is a realistic possibility of any of the favorites really tanking. Not only is there a yawning chasm between these four performers and everyone else in terms of talent, but there’s one in terms of consistency, too, and that hasn’t always been the case.

Taylor Hicks may have been a favorite from the start, but he was unpredictable, and he certainly seemed capable of making an enormous misstep on any given night. Katharine McPhee’s style carried such a strong odor of cheese that any performance could easily cross the line into low-grade karaoke, no matter how much pure vocal ability she possessed.

It simply doesn’t seem likely that Doolittle is going to walk out on stage and suddenly be bad. It doesn’t feel suspenseful when she walks out on stage, because you know what’s going to happen.

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Right now, the same is true of Sparks, and to a lesser degree, of Jones and Lewis. You know what you’re going to get. Simon Cowell may accuse Jones of seeming “old” on this night or that, or the judges may think one of Lewis’s experimental arrangements was a little too experimental. But this upper tier of contestants is not just good but dependably good. They seem highly unlikely to crash, which further detracts from the interest in following the competition week to week.

It’s ironic that by bringing to the show a top group of singers who are remarkably consistent and talented, the show has shot itself in the foot a little. But it has entered a phase that feels flat, in part because every week you tune in, and every week the same people are good. Some performers, particularly Richardson and Stacey, are better in some weeks than other weeks, but they’re always far off the lead.

In the end, it isn’t that this season’s top ten are bad, as it seemed like it might be early on, and it isn’t that they’re too good, exactly. It’s that it doesn’t feel like every contestant does the same death-defying stunt of risking elimination every week. If the six apparently doomed performers meet their appropriate fate, there’s no suspense, and if they don’t, there’s no justice. Who knew this show relied on either?

Linda Holmes is a writer in Bloomington, Minn.

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