Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Programmed To Receive
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 5 | Aired on 01.30.2007
Remember when Taylor Hicks won American Idol, Ryan asks, and honestly? Just barely. I remember Prince and, I believe, David Hasselhoff, but the rest is pretty fuzzy. Anyway it was kind of a rhetorical question, I guess, because meet Phuong Pham (17, San Diego), who totally remembers when Taylor won, because one thing that Phuong Pham is not entirely clear on is how she's not Taylor Hicks. She enumerates for us all the ways that she is similar to but not necessarily congruent with Taylor Hicks: they are both self-taught vocalists who are not supported by their families. She relates a story about her mother, on hearing that Phuong wanted to try out for the show, sitting her down and trying to bring Phuong and reality together at once. "I'm not going to lie to you, they probably focus on looks a lot, and...as pretty as you are, you're not TV pretty. Let's face it, you're no Katharine McPhee." Which is really upsetting for some reason, to watch. I think it has to do with the anger. She's kind of a goober, this girl, and the "TV pretty" speech is one of the few times she focuses on anything, and it's so sad because she's totally cute, with a strange deep duckly voice and dorky ways, and it just gets worse. "Um, it did hurt a little, but she's coming around and supporting me a little bit." Later she talks about not wanting to be "perceived as a Taylor replicate" but wanting to give the impression of having "the same passion, and fire." Honey, I like you. Don't ruin it.
Inside the audition room, she dorks out over how Taylor's on the poster, which is reason enough for Simon Cowell to intentionally mispronounce her name and call her "Pong" a hundred times, which is not very cool. She tells them that she "abandoned music for awhile" to "please" her family, and because the judges don't know about the TV Pretty stuff, or the fact that she's wonderful and funny and dorky and sweet, they treat her like any other delusional auditioner. Which...she is, and that's sad too. So Simon's like "Heard it, whatever, sing your song." She sings "Dancing In The Streets," and it's terrible and awful. Her voice sounds like a lesbian foghorn, and her dancing is like Yentl in the Soul Train line. It's a huge mess from go, and it goes on forever. Paula gives a hiccupping laugh at one particularly bad note. It gets worse and worse; Randy can't even watch and holds a piece of paper up in front of his face. At the end, she closes her eyes and finally says, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," and the judges giggle sad little church giggles, and Simon tells her he's not sure which part was worse, of the singing and dancing. She nervously throws out a Taylor gimp move, collapsing sideways and going "hee!" and you start to realize that Taylor Hicks is very real for her, to the point where she took casual things he said and did and made of them catch-phrases inside her brain. "Like Taylor said, give me a chance, give me a chance!"