All season long, Grantland Idol experts Mark Lisanti and Jay Caspian Kang will answer five very important questions after each performance episode. Soon they shall toss a ring into a magic volcano and their journey will be complete.

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What did you think of last night's "One for the judges, one for themselves, and one for Jimmy" format, mixed in with the hometown concerts? Did it momentarily breathe life into the show, or was it just a different kind of two-hour trudge through the karaoke killing fields?

Lisanti: Do I dare say I enjoyed it overall? If you're going to make us sit through two hours of this thing — and they've never taken the two-hour boot off our throats all season — it was nice to get three actual performances in there. Even the hometown concerts seemed to have a little more energy than those of recent years. Maybe that had something to do with the high quality of two of the three finalists, or maybe Chula Vista doesn't usually see that much action, or maybe the Idol producers gave every kid in attendance a Four Loko the size of an oil barrel on the way into the arena while whispering, "Phillip just broke up with his girlfriend and he says he likes you the most" in their ears.

Upfronts week is a propagandist’s dream, a nonstop cavalcade of lofty promises, shining stars, and room-temperature mock-maki. In lavish ballrooms extending from midtown Manhattan to the other side of midtown Manhattan, the broadcast networks trot out talent and psyche themselves up in an attempt to sell advertisers, and an increasingly attentive public, on their latest bill of goods (or at least mediocres). So why does it more often sound like they’re selling themselves too? “Why just watch when you can feel?” enthused emo ABC chief Paul Lee at the Alphabet’s shindig. It was a well-constructed bit of hokum that could be repurposed for nearly any of Lee’s rivals (CBS: “Why just watch when you can doze?"; The CW: “Why just watch when you can [SKRILLEX BASS DROP]?" NBC: “Why watch?”). ABC may be peddling a brand strategy that attempts to draw bright lassos of linkage between its tradition of heart-tugging Body Washes (you know: like soaps, but classier) and head-scratching array of newcomers, but the truth is that none of the networks have any real idea what they’re doing. In an atmosphere where an afterthought could redefine a company and a heavily hyped investment could cost everyone onstage their jobs, can those in charge really be blamed for playing it safe? Any of their new shows could fail, a very few could succeed. But anyone who tells you they know which is which before Labor Day is lying. On Tuesday, ABC led their clip package with the words, “When we share great stories, they touch our hearts and feed our souls.” Last year, the same people were touting the soul-nourishing properties of Work It. La plus ça change, la plus c’est la meme merde.

The upfronts — that strange, delirious time of the year when the major networks unleash their upcoming schedules — has been upon us since last week, and has churned out no shortage of interesting tidbits. Check back later in the week, when Andy Greenwald will be dropping knowledge over the entire annual TV-nerd-info treasure trove. For now, here’s a quick look at some of the stuff that popped off over the weekend.

What Is Going On in Greendale?

NBC already announced that Community will return for a fourth season (albeit a shortened one, at 13 episodes), which was a great relief to its millions (er, hundreds of thousands?) of fanatical viewers. And then NBC promptly crapped all over the goodwill it had just generated. Not only will Community be buried on Friday nights, its showrunner and creator Dan Harmon may not return.

Every May, the network fat-cats kennel their white tigers and head to New York City for the advertising pep rally/celebrity burlesque review known as the upfronts. Initially conceived as an industry event, a chance for the broadcast nets to unveil their fall schedules to assembled advertisers who, in turn, will shell out enough dollars to keep Burbank flush with development cash for another year, the upfronts have morphed into genuine public spectacle, a breathlessly reported-upon State of the Union for the Big Four. Buoyed by canapés and perhaps a monologue from Jimmy Fallon, the audience of beat reporters, unwashed bloggers and shampoo reps are encouraged to buy in to the scripted optimism on display. What’s funny – certainly funnier than Jimmy Fallon’s monologue – is that the same speeches will be made at first place Fox and last place NBC: an annual promise that these new shows with their pedigreed casts and gauzy gag reels are destined to become great big shining hits. In the bright lights of a midtown hotel ballroom, it’s more than possible to believe that stinkers like Pan Am will take flight or that disasterpieces like Work It just might work out. After all, it’s springtime. Anything is possible.

So, Fox is spoofing The Voice with a dating show called The Choice. There will be celebrities — well, “celebrities” — in spinning chairs and everything. Today, the list of the beautiful people has been announced, and it is highlighted by Pauly D, Tyson Beckford, Joe Jonas, Dean Cain, Rob Kardashian, Rocco DiSpirito, Warren Sapp, Finesse Mitchell, Romeo, Ndamukong Suh, Taylor Hicks, Rob Gronkowski, The Situation, and, of course, Carmen Electra.

Fox has confirmed that Prometheus will carry an R rating from the MPAA, a huge relief to anyone afraid that the studio might compromise the film's artistic integrity in pursuit of the box office-friendlier PG-13. Anticipating the news, last night Prometheus co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof took to Twitter to immediately address the throbbingly insistent question hanging over the production like a fleshy, engorged Sword of Dongocles: How will this impact Michael Fassbender's enormous penis? But Lindelof's tweet is nothing more than a cagey dodge, shaming the curious for their innocent interest while prompting more questions: Freed from the limitations of the PG-13, will they in fact increase the presence of Fassbender's space-suit-straining robo-junk? And what does "deliver on more Fassbender dong" actually mean?

All season long, Grantland Idol ultramarathoners Mark Lisanti and Jay Caspian Kang will answer five very important questions after each performance show. Welcome to Week 380! They haven't quite broken yet, but they will. They will.

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I’m going to restate my question from last week. Don’t you think Skylar Laine is going to win?

Kang: Before I answer this fantastic question, I wanted to share something I noticed about Skylar. She looks like a Bush. Like if George W. put on a big red Judd wig and put on some eyeliner.

All season, Grantland Idol experts Jay Caspian Kang and Mark Lisanti will answer five very important questions after each performance episode. Yes, "all season." That's a really long time, right? It didn't feel quite that long when they agreed to this.

One

We're down to the "Top" 10. (R.I.P., Shannon Magrane.) Who was the best of this sorry-ass lot on Billy Joel night?

Lisanti: Before I get to the unsavory task of selecting a favorite, I feel compelled to mention that this was one of the more miserable two-hour experiences I've had sitting in front of a television, and this is coming from somebody who live-blogged Human Centipede on VOD. Watching a Teutonic madman (rubber-glove-pound, Dieter Laser, you my junge!) lovingly sew anuses to mouths and then chase his shuffling abomination around a swimming pool like some kind of Mengelized Benny Hill at least made me feel something. Even the DVR skip button didn't help things; I somehow caught up to the live broadcast and then had to slog through the last half-hour in real time, 28 minutes of which was comprised of Coke Zero commercials.

Grantland Idol experts Mark Lisanti and Jay Caspian Kang promised — well, maybe they just hoped a crazy, misguided hope — that they'd leave the results show alone. But here they are, with opinions. You can't ask a dove not to fly, a salmon not to swim upstream, a depressed armadillo resigned to its fate not to waddle into the middle of Route 66 to meet its Mack-truck maker. So here we go.

Lisanti: Let's start here: Did the judges make the right decision in acing melodic teddy bear Jeremy Rosado? (Keep in mind you basically called him a Dead Fatty Walking on Wednesday.)

When it picked up the sitcom New Girl, Fox made a risky gamble: It pinned the success of a freshman series on the polarizing cultural figure known as Zooey Deschanel. A member of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Club since her star turn in (500) Days Of Summer, Deschanel has a very specific celebrity brand: She's a ModCloth-wearing, signature bangs-rocking, ukulele-playing quirk factory — not that there's anything wrong with that. And Fox's marketing campaign played up Deschanel's appeal by promoting New Girl with a made-up word: "adorkable."

There’s been enough hand-wringing about the fate of The Office around these parts of late to make the Scranton Strangler blush. Could the show break out of its paralyzing stasis? (Probably not.) Is spinning-off characters into ill-advised new sitcoms the only way to keep the fat and happy cast fat and happy? (Perhaps.) Would anyone ever follow Steve Carell’s lead and escape the sinkhole of ambition, hope, and Herr’s potato chips that is Dunder-Mifflin? As of yesterday, the answer to the latter question appears to be “yes.”

“Galaxies, plants, seashells ... these patterns never lie.” So goes the opening monologue of Fox’s Touch, a sensitive sci-fi series that sneak-previewed last night. (New episodes begin airing in March.) The same might be said of ambitious network television pilots that tend to be nothing if not predictable. To wit: If there are characters introduced on opposite ends of the globe you can bet they’ll be united before long; if you’ve got someone as gorgeous as Gugu Mbatha-Raw cast as an adversarial skeptic chances are her doubts will melt faster than an ice cube in a blast furnace; and if a kid doesn’t like contact at the start, you just know we’re on an expressway ride to Hug Town. These familiar iterations may lack the numeric poetry of the Fibonacci sequence, but calling attention to them shouldn’t detract from the striving pleasures of Touch, a show that wisely (for its own sake) asks us to believe that everything on Earth is greater than the sum of its parts.

For those who don't know, Prometheus is a new sci-fi thriller directed by Ridley Scott. Since it first went into development, the film has been touted as Scott's return to "the genre he redefined" with films like Blade Runner and Alien. (That would be, well, Sci-Fi). The film has also been rumored to be a prequel to Scott's own Alien film. Up to this point, fans have been given very little ­ a few leaked photos, some official photos, a poster, and lots and lots of speaking through the media (by Scott, the writer Damon Lindelof, and Fox studios).

And now, with the release of the teaser trailer, we finally get a glimpse of the actual film.

Stereohogz

I’m going to suspend my disbelief and accept that there are boot camps somewhere in Los Angeles where Nicole Scherzinger, Paula Abdul, Simon and L.A. Reid tend to their new protégés in complete privacy and that when the acts take the stage that nobody but their mentor has seen them perform.

If we put that much faith in the X Factor, then it’s not really fair to have Paula Abdul around, especially in a contest that apparently has an unlimited budget to hire back-up dancers. The Stereohogz performance was exciting and fun, but mostly because of Paula’s choreography and orchestration, not because of any great vocal performances. During his Idol years, Simon would always insist, “This is a singing competition.” The X Factor isn’t a singing competition — it’s more a contest to see which act can best wear the show’s heavily produced, full-bore theatrics.

It might be a more “realistic” way to conduct the show, but some of the intimacy of Idol has been lost.