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
Amanda Rabideau (25, Hoffman Estates IL) enters hilariously with her goofiness all on shout, screaming her greetings, and then she and Simon have a contretemps about what is and is not interesting about her, and she talks about selling furniture and showing cattle, and it's boring but she's so cute and awkward and funny. She sings "Something To Talk About" and her voice is not bad, it's like if your mom was singing at first, but then it all goes to hell, just goes haywire painful and out of control in a nervous kind of way. Simon starts in immediately with hurting her feelings, and it's the way she keeps smiling that makes me like her, because she's clearly slapped by all this. Paula and I applaud her "passion" and Paula simply says she's "not right for the competition." Simon tries to force her to say "no," and even Randy's like, let it go, dude. "Simon I just want to squeeze your neck and pop it off your head," Paula says, then stares into space. Randy tells Amanda to name one of her cows after Simon, and Paula suggests she call it "Mad Cowell." I've never in recent memory wanted anything so badly as for that to have happened off the cuff, as edited, but I doubt that highly. Good on Paula either way. Amanda leaves, gracious and sweet as ever, and the other judges turn on Simon for being a dick. Amanda cries in the interview booth, and it's sad, and meanwhile Paula calls the "yes or no" thing that Simon just pulled "the weirdest thing you do" and says it drives her insane. And yeah, it's a dick move, because Paula cannot get to the point, ever, and making her do it is like asking Seacrest to kiss his sister. Or any girl at all.
The violently boring Deputy Brandon Groves (25, Wheeling WV) doesn't get Seacrest's stupid CHiPs joke, doesn't get the judges' banter, doesn't get the point of singing, doesn't know the words to "I Shot The Sheriff," doesn't care -- upfront he says this -- to sing any words but what he calls the chorus. Which amounts to him singing "I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy" seventeen times in a row without stopping or varying his tone in the slightest except to fuck it up, and every time you think he's done, he goes back for one or two more. Repeat eight cycles of this stopping, then starting again. The judges, unsurprisingly, are as bored as I am, but the real question is: why isn't Deputy Brandon yet bored with himself? Paula: "Oh Brandon, no." He leaves and she whispers to the producers: "Oh my God. For real. For real? For real!" It's like the most authentic she's ever been on the show. The most "for real," rather. I guess.
There's an unfunny and unending thing with Ryan and Derek Dupree, the guy on one-hour reprieve, begging strangers to let him sing for them. Nobody will, and we go around and around with this for a long time, and finally there are people around who don't care either, and this guy tells Ryan he likes his show, and it is super-cool how fast he flips to his other persona, production schmooze guy, all, "Would you like to be on it?" and with the eye contact, and poise, and just general demeanor, whom we won't be seeing for weeks and weeks, and without whom this show is nothing to me. The guy's like, "Not necessarily, no." Ryan drops his interest in this guy immediately. "Thanks anyway!"
Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24Next