The powerhouse singer/songwriter who won the first season of Shine, Emmy Bodner, returned to the show on Sunday night.
As seen above, Bodner did return in Season 2 to help nurture contestants as a mentor, where country music singer Dakota Hayden joined her in the winners circle. But this season, she returned to the Shine platform to fill a guest judge position during the first challenge.
Bodner was a front runner early in her season, and handled the challenges with great precision. She auditioned in Cincinnati, Ohio where her rendition of "Holding out for a Hero" remains a fan-favorite to date. The judges had her pegged as the potential winner from the day they met, but the game has changed quite a bit since her run at the title. The competition demands longer hours, more weeks of training and twice the challenges. Now early front runners find themselves having to top their last performance, putting them at a slight disadvantage when judges measure their growth on the show.
Sources close to the show say that "It's brutal on everyone. The music is great, but exhaustion kicks in by the end of filming." This season the selected contestants are put through a week of tests, lessons and activities.
Producer, Joel Parent, spoke with BTV Insider on the reason the show continues evolving. During Bodner's season, much of the drama was left out of the episodes, but now the cameras don't stop rolling.
"I'm grateful for the relationships I made during my season," Bodner says during Sunday nights episode. She talks to the contestants before their first challenge, in an effort to encourage them to take their best shot. "Remember it's a competition," she warns them. Many during her season were tossed from the competition amid poor song choices and time management.
In the episode, she is seen teasing "there will be eliminations" before a commercial break. So now we have questions. Does this mean she will be the one having to make the difficult cuts? Or will she work alongside the judges to do so? One thing we do know, the judges keep us on our toes every season. The minute you think you know how a challenge is going to go, they give it a twist.
Catch new episodes of Shine every Sunday, only on BTV.
Commentaires