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
Up first of all in the whole season is a very sweaty man named Derek Dupree (25, Chicago), who gets weird in front of the camera and talks about "I'm so passionate that I just can't stand it, because I often get turned on by myself...oh, look at all this passion running through his veins! It's wonderful!" I already hate him and his very unhelpful antiperspirant. He says he's "confident to the point [that] it hurts," and that this confidence "cuts off the circulation." He strides into the judges' room and acts weird and Paula asks if in fact he really can sing "any pitch" and he puts his no-doubt extensive musical training to work: "Not any pitch, three different pitches. Bass, medium and semi-high." Paula: "Semi-high?" See, this is funny because that's what they both are, rimshot. He then warns them he's going to "break out an original medley," the contents of which he wants to keep under wraps. He starts low and unimpressive, then pulls out some money and wipes his brow with it. I'm so over this tool; let's wrap it up. The following takes place between 8 PM and 8 million PM: He continues singing awfully and acting like a jackass, they finally tell him to get lost, Randy asks him to respect that he is not very good, he asks if he can come back in an hour, for no good reason they say yes, he leaves, Paula points out that he is easily 43 years of age.
The somewhat irritating but very pretty Katrina Yaukey (28, NYC) starts in with "The Humpty Dance," and the tragic thing here, besides the obvious, is that at the end you can hear that she has a good voice, but Simon cuts her off right at this place, throwing her whole strategy off. They ask for another song, and she immediately forgets all the songs in this world. I feel bad for her, but dude. Paula tells her the lesson is that you have to come prepared, and after she leaves they talk about how nice she was. Then comes the very happy, very deluded and rosy-cheeked Justin Whocares, who sings two lines from "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)," the title of which gives me hives of mystery and confusion, and then about three words of "Beyond The Sea," both times stopped by Simon, and they stare at each other for a while, and he leaves. Randy laughs about how Simon is being pretty cool right now, and Paula shakes her head. I like it: why draw this shit out? They know immediately if you suck or not, and if they don't stop you after a single line, you know you're either the best or the worst, like in Project Runway. There's no middle ground.
Ryan sits with the Brittenum twins, who are...hmm. They have big, weird beards that are like goatees with a little extra coming out the bottom, and they have strange voices like the D-Squared guys. They explain to Ryan that the twin gimmick always falls through, not because it is a stupid gimmick, but because the twins usually suck, and because they depend on each other too much. This is all very interesting, but it would be more interesting if they weren't jailed as identity thieves the day after this aired, rendering the whole thing moot in addition to being a missing the train of colossal proportions. And then we don't even see their auditions yet, but we do dispatch a weird girl, a hipster, a gay homeboy with Muppet eyebrows, a confused girl, a girl who wants them to suck her dick, a guy in a big shirt who apparently "riffed too much," a pretty girl with a fauxhawk, and a man in a dress and blonde Pippi Longstocking braids, who thinks that his legs were simply too hairy for America. I personally feel that the problem was more likely the jackass in the dress that was attached to those shapely legs, but I guess we'll never know.
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