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
Tonight's featured Montage O' Suck has everyone butchering "Kiss" even worse that poor Tashawn. This is all being filmed when they're getting pre-screened, I assume, which means Jason's there and dry-eyed. The Boring Cowboy is featured a lot, which is stupid. Trista's there, Chewbacca-ing up a storm. We see a handful of effeminate boys whose dressing-downs by Simon didn't make it onto the show proper, which meant Rosie had to make up something to be pissed off about on The View, so she did. Hilariously, Perla the fake Colombian is here, because even post-production can't believe she got through. Randy pretends like he and the other judges were even in the same room as these performances and laments that "Prince will never be on this show again." God willing, dude.
Time for one more wannabe: Josh Flom is about the whitest white kid in all of Minnesota, which I would wager is saying a lot. He's clean-cut and blond and kind of disheveled in that way people were back in, like, '94, as opposed to how they are now. He's all smiley when he talks about how his father's shower-singing talents were an inspiration to him, and Dad in turn talks about how he thought Josh was going to be a professional hockey goalie, but this is damn cool too. Josh says he thinks Chris Daughtry opened the door for "rockers" to succeed on this show, so he thinks he has a good shot. You know, when I envisioned all the Daughtry-esque "rockers" that were bound to flood this year's auditions, I honestly didn't think the first one would look quite so much like Matthew Shepard.
Inside, Josh lurches in, his slacker's posture utterly at odds with the rest of his existence as the World's Politest Rocker Guy. He sings Fuel's "Bad Day," which isn't even a good song to start with, even without getting into the Chris-clone aspects of it. When I describe Josh's voice as "growly corporate rock," it sounds as if I'm saying it's the same kind of voice that got Chris all the way to fourth place and the best-selling album of the Season 5 contestants. But as much as we may want to hate on Chris, his voice had depth, and power, and didn't always sound like you were taking a sheet of sandpaper to your trachea. Josh, not so much. Fuel cover band? Depends on the size of the bar, but sure. The judges all seem to really like Josh but have no reason to put him through. Randy tries (and mostly fails) to use his words to express that Josh sounded inauthentic, more like an imitation of a style rather than his own true voice. He fucks up and calls Josh "fake rock," which draws a strenuous, if ultimately polite, objection. Simon offers Josh a scenario: he makes the finals, and suddenly it's Week 7 and it's Abba Week (by the by, I think Simon was just being hypothetical about Abba, not that it wouldn't be awesome): what does Josh do? I'm not sure how entirely valid the question is -- sure, Simon got burned by Chris's refusal to hop genres last season, but Josh isn't ever going to make finals. At best, y'all are deciding whether to give him one more chance in Hollywood because he's a nice guy. And yet, as a cautionary tale if nothing else, he asks Josh to take fifteen minutes and come back with his rendition of an Abba song. "Abba?" Josh confirms, like he's saying that word for the first time ever (in Minnesota? I can't imagine). Josh is like, "Got it. Done. Be back in fifteen." He's got a head of steam and a positive attitude. What more does he need? ("...Other door.")