Episode Report Card Joe R: B- | 25 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Don't Cry Out Loud
By Joe R | Season 6 | Episode 3 | Aired on 01.22.2007
After the commercial, Ryan tells us that "over 16,000 people" showed up to audition in Memphis, and to stand out from the crowd, he says, "a contestant must have enthusiasm, energy, and personality." Oh. So this next one's gonna be a boring lump, then. Great. There's one of these in every episode, and Lord knows I turn on my TV so I can watch really boring people, but I wonder how many other people do as well. So our deadpan diva this week is Timika Sims, who is generally uninteresting except for her bug-eye and the fact that she just kind of stares incessantly into the camera. One of the members of my viewing party actually screamed, "Blink, dammit!" Timika also doesn't really open her mouth when she talks, so when she tells Simon, "I think I'm pretty good, I could be a Mya," he (and I) have no idea what she's saying. First of all, she says it like "myer," so Simon's like, "A model?" No, a "Myer." "A mayor?" This goes on for a bit until Randy intervenes and reminds us that "Mya is a singer." Well. "Singer." Half a verse of "Lady Marmalade" and her love being like "wo" don't entirely qualify her, but whatever. Timika sings some Ashanti song and it's whiny and unintelligible, and Simon has to go to the "can't understand a word" place, but it's true. There's no enunciation. She begs to sing another song, and they tell her no, not that it stops her from breaking into "Secret Lovers." Finally, Simon's forced to tell her that she cannot sing. Maybe she really should be a mayor. Though her flipping the bird like she just did won't exactly appeal to the older voters.
Next up, Ryan tells us, is Chris Rivira, who looks very country/surfer: mop of floppy blonde hair, puka and bead necklaces, plaid earth-tone button-down with the open collar, blue jeans with this bizarre fringe stripe roping around them like a snake. If the Mississippi had waves, he'd be riding them. He's eighteen, and even his speaking voice is weird and squeaky, so you know we're in for something strange. He sings "Superstition" in the Bucky Covington manner, but his voice...his voice: okay, remember tape recorders? And how when the batteries would start to get low, they would play the tapes at an inconsistent speed, sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing down, so they sounded all high-pitched and warbly? That's Chris Rivira's voice. I have no idea how he does it. It's not of this earth, I fear. Once again, Simon can't decipher the speech patterns of the Memphis community, and we don't even have to see the judges say it to know it's a "no." "Did not make it," Chris says, outside. "Pretty depressing." And then he goes back to his alien-made helium chamber to prepare for his next audition.
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