Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bo Bice Is The New Clay Aiken, Part I
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.16.2006
Christine Davis (17, St. Peters MO) comes in wearing a frothy wedding dress, and there's a whole boring conversation with Paula and Simon about how American kids dress for prom and it's dumb, and then she sings "My Heart Will Go On" -- why? -- and generally I like her voice, although there are some bum notes for no reason. Simon is unimpressed and smirking, and after one particularly easy note that she biffs super-bad, even Randy has had it. Paula says she has a nice voice, but lacks experience, and Simon says that he hated everything about the audition, the dress, everything, and calls her version of the song "mediocre." Paula asks her to pursue voice lessons, and reminds her she's only 16. The girl says she'll be seeing them in the next city, and not unkindly, Simon tells her to save the airfare. Again they fight about how mean Simon is being, and I still don't see it. Seacrest makes a dumb joke about how "Any time Simon sees a wedding dress you have lost him." Trust me.
More tourists laugh at Derek's awful singing, and then Blake Boshnack (20, Hewlett Neck NY) comes in dressed as the damned Statue of Liberty and only gets two words into "Start Spreading The News" before Simon dismisses him. That's what I'm talking about. Blake can't believe it and Simon has to tell him to leave about eight times before he does, visibly stunned and very pissed. Derek finally returns to the building. Why is Ryan even giving this dude the time of...oh, Ryan rolls his eyes at the camera. Ryan hates this storyline as much as I do. Good. Paula laughs out loud when Derek walks back in, and the judges are all clearly not feeling it. He sings this creepy song about "Susan in the bathroom stall" and "Constance on the make" which if you Google it, it's just bloggers talking about how creepy Derek Dupree is. He admits that he does not know the name of his awful song, making them laugh, and Simon floats the theory that Derek has been possessed by a six-year-old. In the interview booth, Derek admits the possibility that he is not "the music type," and then fills us in at length about how he is trying not to cry. I hate it when actual crazy people get through. It makes me feel like an ancient Roman or something.
Oh boy. Here we go. Meet Erik Lawhon (18, Maitland MO), the poster boy for all "American Idol is evil and homophobic" rhetoric until 24 hours from now, when a whole other mess of problems walks into the door. He's got red hair, pretty skin, and a slightly google-eyed gender ambivalence. Erik's grandmother and mom talk about how he has a great voice and how his music teacher, a reckless individual indeed, has said that he will "go a long ways." The grandmother talks about how she will, if necessary, "pull Simon out of here" and will "hurt his body." Which is funny, but not as funny as the sproing sound of Ryan's giant boner hitting denim just then.
"There's something about that that's exciting to me…" he begins, then trails off, trying desperately to back up time just five seconds and self-edit, "…in a way where, uh, I mean, like, in a way where he would have...um, bruises?" She asks if he'd like to help her "hurt Simon's body" and he actually chokes on the mouthwatering thought: "God, you don't know how badly." He says this last not unlike Pat O'Brien might on your voicemail, weird and accidentally salacious and aggressive and awesome. It's so, so rough when you read this much of your own press that you have to remember that you're you, and not the thoughts of people that don't know you. Like, he was just having his day, talking to people, said something innocuous, realized it was the first thing marked for the final edit the second he said it, then just dug himself into a weirder and weirder hole trying to cover his bases. It bums me out because he is a nice guy and the last thing he needs is to have to live simultaneously inside his head, my head, and the heads of a thousand fan-fic writers at once. There's not enough to Ryan Seacrest, to spread it that thinly.
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