Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Watergate Still Kind Of Bothers Me
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 4 | Aired on 01.29.2007
Ryan, with a queasy robotic awesome grin, to the camera: "I like Alabama. Do you?"
I like Chris Sligh (28, Greenville SC), who says he's usually compared lookswise to Jack Osbourne or -- more of a stretch -- Jack Black, but that really it's Xtina that he sees in the mirror. He does a funny dance and lays out some well-rehearsed bavardage that's not important but is charming, and as he comes lumbering in Simon calls him Justin Guarini, because he's got a great big bully of a whiteboy afro happening, and they ask why he's there, and he says he wants to make David Hasselhoff cry, and they laugh hysterically for a while before admitting that they have no idea what the joke is, so then he explains it to them, and we have to remember Taylor Hicks exists, but it's okay, and then...he sings. Awesome. He sings awesomely, and nobody can handle it, and he has a little bit of the Harriet/Seth almost-lisp thing happening, and he is very wonderful, and I love him so much I would totally be nice about Jesus around him. One very nice part, Paula Abdul actually loses control of her body and wriggles all over; when he's done, she screams. He's so clearly through (although I have doubts about how far he goes after that), and when he leaves, Paula talks about how likeable he was. "Dry," says Simon, and I'm not sure she understands that he means Chris has a dry wit, but how dumb would you have to be? Outside, he tells us how "Paula crumbled in my chubby little hands," and then proceeds out of the building, where the entire world cheers for him.
For Day One of Birmingham, then, fifteen people total made it through, including: a Normal Black Girl, a Crazy Black Girl, a Screaming Black Man, and a Thick Blonde Girl. Or maybe I made that up too.
Day Two, Simon and Randy were on their own, because Paula was back to Hollywood for a "family obligation." (Yeah, the barbiturate family! Hey-o! But it's okay!)
Meet Victoria Watson (18, Gainesville FL) who is at least as cute as Leslie Van Houton, and whose six-feet long home-schooled hair causes the Addams Family theme to begin playing of its own accord. "Without heels," she tells us, her stupid cult hair drags four inches on the ground. Her mom also has the crazy hair, which she started growing at the age of 29. I imagine that inner monologue went something like this: "Is this really as interesting as I'm ever going to get? Have I given up so completely that this boring lot is all I can claim for my own? I really desperately need attention, and have weird sexual issues, but am so boring that I have no way of working either of those things out. How will I distract people from my incredible blandness and lack of personal characteristics?" and then a lightbulb went off over her head, which was bad news because electricity is the Devil's work, and Goody Watson only barely escaped being tossed in a lake, so she grew the hair to both seem interesting and to distract from any further lightbulbs going off under the watchful eye of God's chosen children.