Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bo Bice is the New Clay Aiken, Part III
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 3 | Aired on 01.30.2006
Shivery. A woman who looks like a corpse with braces, like a crazy person who has been outdoors so long they've turned the color of pavement, is wearing an assortment of crazy garments, including a pink jacket apparently made of Vellux, big metal heart earrings, a head thing like they wear in Amish country, a ruffly top, a gold necklace, more braces on the teeth than you can comprehend, an afghan, a giant charm bracelet that is a belt -- and deep, deep madness in her eyes. She yells at Seacrest in a very methed-up way about how "they call me Fashion Genius" and we watch her belly-dance horrifically in a bathroom somewhere as she tells him about how everybody calls her this; for example, her modeling teacher -- who has been in the business for a while -- told her "it fits, it just barely fits." She looks like ... Farscape. I dunno. There's a close-up in slo-mo of her bad skin, crazy teeth, and methed-out eyes, and I've thought and thought about what to say about her, because I don't want to be so hyperbolic that it becomes worthless...but I think that I can tell you this: she scares me worse than anything I've ever seen in my life. She scares me so bad that it makes me angry, like all the adrenaline fight/flight stuff gets all mixed up because intellectually I know I'm safe in my living room, so there's feedback which freaks the brain out and I just want to, like, punch her or something. She's scarier than in Saw when the thing comes out on the tricycle and it's squeaking and there are pigtails, which is the only really scary part of that very terrific film. That's about...sixty percent as scary as this. Or Blair Witch when he stands in the corner and before you even remember the standing in the corner thing, you get creeped out. That's what she's like. Like a horrible pink zombie that has been possessed by Björk and is belly-dancing right at you. On the upside, my paralyzing fear of clowns has completely disappeared. ["Oh, come on. 'They float down here, Jacob! They all float!'" -- Joe R] ["Not fucking funny." -- Jacob]
Her name is Paula Goodspeed (27, L.A.), and I have a handy mnemonic device for remembering her last name that I will tell you for the price of an eightball and a Big Mac down the street. She loves Paula Abdul, which is the only thing we will ever have in common, and she makes life-sized drawings of Paula, which is a thing that we do not have in common. Some of them look like the Francesco Clemente stuff in Great Expectations, which I loved until just now, and the rest look like those big-head drawings where you're playing basketball or whatever. They're all scary. She's creepy and schizoid with the judges, and Simon notes a resemblance beyond the names, and lies that it's a compliment. She sings like Liza Minnelli on a snifter full of downers and her foot in a bear trap; she shouts and screams and smiles horrifically and wiggles like a show-tune Debbie Reynolds on Will & Grace. When she's done for the moment, Simon says, "Paula?" And the auditioneer goes, "Oh, I thought you meant me, oh my God," but the real Paula is just "speechless." Randy's like, "Terrible. What was that?" It's a unanimous no. Simon gets stuck on the braces ("You have so much metal in your mouth") and Randy's trying to explain that here in America, there's this thing called "orthodontics," but Simon's British and he's not getting it. She's just so fucked-up-looking and weird and has dead eyes and she's so...she's like the Carver. She's so, so troubling; I can't even... "Peace out," she says, and wanders out into the city to make her way in this world.