Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT James Franco in the Mouth Area
By Jacob Clifton | Season 10 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.19.2011
Whatever, he sings fine. Steven can't handle him getting any attention whatsoever so he just bangs on the table and screeches at weird moments and claps along and it's so, so sad and so, so what I was hoping would happen.
Fifteen-year-old Kenzie Palmer (West Middlesex, PA) does musical theatre, when she's not sending herself mean text messages; she has a pretty awesome voice, but she is fifteen, so what's even the point? (Is this just to fuck with The X-Factor?) The song is not really appropriate for little Kenzie, but what love song would be?
Steven liked her lovely voice, but feels she has no "pizazz." Randy agrees with him, because he is sexist, and J. Lo is just frustrated for real by this, and they talk about how she doesn't have enough energy, so she promises to have lots of energy one of these days, and Randy volunteers, as though it is a public service, to vote first. Then it's unanimous and there's "Teenage Dream" playing and J. Lo yelling at the guys and whatever, a bunch of people going through.
Ryan is wearing the cutest plaid shirt that is the least-fitted thing he's ever worn. Maybe he was feeling fat this morning. Or maybe he was feeling like a lumberjack.
Achille Lovle (25, Bronx) was sent through as a mean joke, a mean joke possibly about Grace Jones, and I don't feel like doing that this year. Or watching J. Lo be put on the spot for having to turn down somebody who never should have gone before them in the first place. And then be disingenuous about how hard and heartbreaking it all is, while laughing with a giant Julia Roberts maw.
Switch to handheld while Ryan has a little meeting with the Judgery about that poor girl, to make it all feel more like a reality show and not... Whatever this actually is.
Because this season, I don't know how they're doing it, but it really does feel very different. Like watching Merchant-Ivory films -- as I've been doing all the winter, with my jasmine tea and perfectly coordinated Pierre Cardin casual separates and occasional use of salvia for my personal spiritual development -- and then switching to The Expendables. It's got a... blockbuster vibe, somehow, that I guess suits the star power of the régime nouveau but mostly just makes me extremely, awfully, terrifically nervous. Like maybe this is the year they start shooting them in the head when we vote them off.
Oh, how delightfully relevant. A Jersey Shore primer-slash-competitor. I don't know much about those people, I haven't seen their culture as documented on our cable screens. I figure, if I wouldn't want them in my house, why invite them in through the television? I'm sure there are wonderful people in and from New Jersey, I've even met them, but there is nothing okay about the Jersey Thing. Miley Cyrus, Sarah Palin, Snooki: Regional flourishes on an old, old nightmare. As long as there have been dumb people, they've been calling it a choice. Doesn't make them smart, just makes it even harder to indulge the conversation.