Episode Report Card Joe R: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Act Your Age, Not Your...On Second Thought, Don't Act Your Age
By Joe R | Season 6 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.15.2007
Ryan tells us our next contestant was prepared to "flirt her way" to Hollywood. Perla Meneses is pretty, with blonde curly hair, and she claims she's Colombian, so apparently she's the new Shakira. I will tell you right now, I am about 65/35 on the side of her being a big faker. The "flirting" with Ryan consists of asking him if he has a girlfriend (hee) and then asking him if he likes "Spanish girls" (see? "Spanish girls"? Are all Latin American girls "Spanish," Perla? Or should I say, Pearl?). Ryan says he does like "Spanish girls." To do what remains unsaid, but I'm sure the post-production guys must've had to be restrained by teams of wild horses from going all Blind Date with the funny captions. A pre-interviewing Perla makes a stab at Jewel-esque pathos, telling us she once had to live in her car, though she assures us it's "not a sob story, it's a survival story." The B-roll is all shots of Perla getting ready in the bathroom at the venue, which I thought was a for-sure red flag that she was going to be awful.
She enters the judging room and immediately cranks the Hispanic up to eleven. "Hey Jewel! How you dooooeeeeeeng?" Simon asks what she's doing there. "Well, See-mone," she begins. Siiiiigh. Fake. She looks like Natasha Bedingfield, if you take the curly hair away, so this whole Shakira thing is based on a curling iron and a lie. She sings Blondie's "Call Me" in irritating tones, like a 1940s seductress with Liza Minnelli's speech impediment. She obviously thinks she's very cute. When she's done, See-mone buries himself even deeper into my heart when he says, "Muchas grathias." Awesome. The judges clearly aren't sold, and they have her try out some Shakira, I think just for fun. Perla breaks into "Hips Don't Lie" and actually does a really good job with it, even knowing all the words, which I certainly didn't. So she's...a Shakira drag performer? I don't know. Randy speaks a whole lot of business about Perla being "unpredictable" and liable to jump out of her skin at any moment. Jewel calls her "in the middle" vocally. Paula slurs that she liked "Hips Don't Lie" better. Seriously, she's off her ass right now. Perla demurs that if she knew they'd react like this, she would've started off with "Hips Don't Lie," but she didn't want to be compared to Shakira. "No!" Simon mocks. He liked the Shakira song, but felt the Blondie song was too heavily accented. Simon's clearly never heard Shakira attempt "Love Is A Battlefield" in a duet with Mary J. Blige before, because THAT is heavily-accented. Anyway, Perla's on to Hollywood, where she can be cannon fodder for people with a real shot at winning this thing.