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When Season 10 of American Idol started, I didn’t miss Simon Cowell at all. As I’ve repeatedly stated on the radio show, I felt like he had checked out of the show back in Season 8. He simply didn’t look like he cared while sitting at the judges’ table. He saw The X Factor light at the end of the tunnel, and he was more than ready to go. And just like Simon, I was ready for him to go.

While I did see an occasional comment during the audition rounds about how Simon would have never allowed so-and-so to make it through to Hollywood, most people I talked to didn’t miss Simon at all. Gone was Simon’s narrow view of what constitutes music, his crude jokes about auditioners’ weight, and his seeming inability to see the potential for talent despite a less than stellar audition.

Yes, Simon being gone did result in a Hollywood Week pool that started with 327 contestants, nearly double the average number of people who made it through in past years. But having a larger pool to choose from isn’t a bad thing. Half the people were sent home after the first round, and in the end the judges still picked 24 contestants. The larger pool simply gave the people who were on the fence one more chance.

Now American Idol is in the live performance portion of the season. This is the time when the contestants sing for America’s votes. This is also the time they are supposed to be getting critiqued by the judges, critiques that the contestants should use to improve their performances should they be given another week.

Yet the critiques are lacking.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t miss Simon’s “are you drunk” type questions he would ask after certain performances or his “I felt like I was at a funeral” comments he would give after other performances. His narrow definition of what music is really came in play during these weeks. But despite Simon’s flaws, at least he was critical when he heard a performance he didn’t like. He wasn’t going to tell a contestant that he liked a performance that was, in his words, “simply dreadful.”

The new judges’ panel, however, isn’t doing that. They are gushing over performances that should, by an act of Congress, never be performed again. When Casey Abrams butchered the first Nirvana song ever to be performed on the American Idol stage, the judges nearly gave him a standing ovation for his risk taking. They barely mentioned the fact that he was off-key through much of the song or that his screeching, screaming, growling chorus was more talking than singing.

And that’s when I realized that I almost miss Simon. He wouldn’t have stood for that performance. While it’s likely that I wouldn’t have liked how Simon phrased his objections to it, at least he would have objected to it. He wouldn’t have spent three times as much time praising the risk-taking Casey did over the overall poor showing.

I’m not sure it’s Simon that I am missing as much as it’s not having someone at the judges’ table who will call a bad performance for what it is. This is one of the few things, I think, that American Idol is truly missing this season.

What I can’t decide, however, is whether I would want that missing element to be filled by Simon. Is filling that missing element worth putting up with all of Simon’s flaws as a judge? Is American Idol suffering without Simon Cowell?

Let me know what you think. Vote in the poll at the beginning of this entry and leave your thoughts in the comments below.