Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bo Bice is the New Clay Aiken, Part III
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 3 | Aired on 01.30.2006
This thick black guy in a cowboy hat comes in named Kevin Mitchell (27, Longview TX), whom Simon calls "Randy on a diet" despite the fact that he A) is no smaller and in fact slightly bigger than Randy and B) bears no more than a passing resemblance to Randy Jackson. Why do they all think he looks like Randy? Is it because he's large and black? Some white producer told them to have this conversation. Kevin plays along. Randy stands next to him, and the obvious lack of any similarity is highlighted for the cheap seats. He sings "I Can't Dance," a song I can't stand, but I do love it here. His voice has a scratchy, awesome quality. Simon calls him "slightly forgettable," Paula takes a pass, and Randy loves the performance but says that "vocally it just wasn't there." I think what Kevin and Heather can teach us is that in addition to wearing weird costumes, you should also try to be a black person, and sing songs that are not only not by black artists, but by the most aggressively white artists you can find. I really applaud this strategy, and the last thing tells me why: because the white producers have just demonstrated that they think all black people look the same. So if you "look like" Usher by being black, go ahead and sing something by like Prussian Blue, or Hootie and the Blowfish, and you'll blow their minds and get through.
Allison from Final Destination is back. Whatever happened to that one guy from that movie, the Chili-esque best friend? Chad Donella. He played an albino in something else, Disturbing Behavior, and I saw him in a Taco Bell commercial once. I think that Christian Bale is having his career for him. I love that guy. Anyway, she's back singing again, even worse than the original audition, and this time it's "Proud Mary." Simon looks pained, Paula looks troubled, Randy tells her it was about the same. They give her very kind votes of no. Randy hopes she had fun; she says she did. Except, I imagine, for the almost dying. Although even that she seems to think was pretty awesome, and in any case she's going to get some syphilis from R.J. in about ten minutes, so that'll be good.
Oh, William Makar. Like Paris and Lisa Tucker, he's 16. He is awesome. He is Seth Cohen incarnate. He's from the Woodlands and he would like to sing for you "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" with a huge smile and a mellow, deepish voice. Now that I have a seven-month-old in my life and my day and all of my suddenly-deadly crap, I feel much less creepy with the youngsters than I did last year, because nothing will slap you out of a "what if I'm a deviant molester and I didn't even know it" A-Fed fugue faster than changing a naked infant with their legs up in the air doing their best to simultaneously catapult into a mid-flight arabesque and pull the pad over on itself, creating a giant big shit burrito. Or -- and Anna concurs, and you might remember she went through her own A-Fed related trouble last year -- parenting hands you the difference between wanting to make out with a grownup and just wanting to eat a baby's entire face. I want to eat William Makar's entire face and I can finally accept that this does not mean I deserve to be caught on Dateline.