By Joe R
Tuesday
This is the seventh audition episode. Kee-rist.
Anyway, Boston.
The Good: Ayla Brown (17, Wrentham MA) is overstuffed with back-story, but her performance (really good) and subsequent judging (she's branded mediocre, though she gets through) throw my intuition completely off track. Rebecca O'Donahue (25, Dobbs Ferry NY) and her twin sister live in Maxim, and consequently Simon and Randy turn into the tools from Entourage. Lucky for Rebecca, it's a Pills Paula week, and she squeaks in during a manic moment. Tatiana Ward (22, Hatfield PA) blows right past "adorable" and into "kind of annoying," but that could just be due to nervous overload. Seriously, though, she lays it on thick. Kevin Covais (16, Levittown NY) looks about six kinds of peculiar -- mostly because he was just born this minute -- and is the dozenth person to sing "You Raise Me Up" really, really well. Paula and Randy dig his underdog appeal, though Simon ends up agreeing with President Bush that harvesting stem cells for the purpose of a talent competition is just plain wrong.
The Bad: Irada Jafarova (22, Bethesda MD) has a whole lot of Mail-Order Minnie Driver going on, and makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. Kenneth Maccarone (21, Providence RI) sings Cher but is NOT a female impersonator, you bigots. He also sings Judy Garland, but you can shove that cocktail dress up your ass, mister. He and Simon engage in a spirited debate on the subject of disingenuousness and how sportcoats are really butch. And I hope GLAAD sends him a letter bomb addressed to "thanks for ruining everything!" Michael Sandecki (20, Washington D.C.) reminds me of a gay(er) version of someone I can't quite put my finger on. He's neither as awful nor as entertaining as I was expecting, but Simon fucks with him regardless because of some reason or another. Something tells me I'll figure this all out in time for the recap.
The Montages: The usual stupidly themed video packages (Subject: Girls! Subject: People who suck!) are joined by: a decently cool presentation of prospective Idols working their day jobs; "Three Dog Night (of the Living Freaks)"; "Vangelis Cashes a Royalty Check"; and finally, a mondo package of everything we've seen in the last nine hours of programming. Making said nine hours virtually pointless. Awesome.
Tomorrow: Hollywood! And I am appropriately ashamed at being more than a little excited for that.
Wednesday
Hollywood is going to be awesome, but this episode breezes by way too quickly to be interesting or suspenseful. The people you think will move on? Move on. The 175 Hollywoodites have only twelve songs to choose from this round, so it helps if you really like "We'll Never Love This Way Again." They're herded into groups of eight, perform (solo -- Jacob gets the group performances), and are pruned from there.
The Good: We haven't seen Patrick Hall (27, Gravette AR) before, but he's cute and a pretty great singer. Simon calls him a "likeable Clay Aiken," but I think he's way better than that. Paris Bennett sings "Can't Fight the Moonlight," continuing to diversify and refusing to let herself be put in a box. Taylor "Silver Foxx" Hicks fucks up a lyric on "The First Cut is the Deepest," but Simon has now upgraded him to "interesting." He still looks like he's fighting a losing battle with the Joe Cocker affectation, but who am I kidding, this dude is final five, so I'd best make my peace with it. Kellie Pickler and Lisa Tucker are both "Hopelessly Devoted" to that song from Grease, and both move on. Hot Chris Daughtry rocks the hell out of "The First Cut Is the Deepest," and I like his singing way better than I did in Denver. Katharine McPhee will "Never Love This Way Again," and is awesome.
The Bad: Joshua and Jarrett Simmons are deemed "forgettable" (the former) and too small for his song (the latter), and are finished. Crazy Dave Hoover promises to be more focused this time, then hits the stage and loses his mind. Aaaagain. He launches an aerial assault on the judges before he is euthanized.
The Bad, Yet Enjoyable: R.J. Norman and Sgt. Steven David, Jr. are grouped together, and they both get bounced, which leads to Sgt. Steven being really bitter and R.J. actually crying. It's all crazy satisfying.
The Jerky, But Fortunate: Megan Zieger (25, Rochester NY) goes through two days of being sick drama, sort of loses some of her voice, sings shittily, and then browbeats the judges into passing her into the round. The Brittenum twins seem to have stolen the identities of a couple of assholes. They sport some oversized egos, hate on Carrie Underwood, pull some wheedling bullshit on the judges, and still get passed on, because they're gonna be gold week.
The Pretty Bad, But Aw: Garet Johnson is amazed by each and everything he sees in California. He also cries a lot. He doesn't sing that well, and I'm pretty much going to be sick of him after another episode of this same thing, but for nowâ¦aw.
Tuesday
Seven episodes of auditions. Seven episodes of the good singers not even mattering (and half of them not even showing up on TV). Seven episodes of the exact same thing happening except in different cities (or, you know, not different cities, depending on how much San Fran can get faked up to look like Austin). I understand how the ratings aren't exactly complaining, but seven episodes is a long time to go without forward motion in the plot. Which makes me think that the perfect meta-commentary would be an AI audition round on Mystery Friggin' Island.
So Ryan's Boston VO starts out with some cops dishing about American Idol (as they are no doubt wont to do). Round Cop theorizes that the Idol will have to come out of Boston, because they've got the World Champion Red Sox (only not so much anymore), and the World Champion Patriots (again: not really, no). So that's 0 for 2. But I'm sure if they had asked Curt Schilling he'd have told them something awesome about himself they could have used. Anyway, a jump cut to the upcoming Clay Gayken audition serves to prove that cops don't know anything about this show and takes us into the credits.
Boston, like every other damn city we've been to, consists of road signs and stadiums full of screaming idiots. It's the usual drill of landmarks and yahoos, which in Boston's case means, like, Paul Revere and "wicked awesome!" Oh, and rain. Can't hit up the northeast without reminding everyone how we get actual weather from time to time. Vegas. Simon actually debases himself enough to make a Boston Tea Party joke, like he's an actual British person and not a permanent resident of the Federated States of Whoever Signs My Cheques.
Okay, so we're taking a moment to address what the judges are wearing today. Simon has on the usual: black ribbed tee, long sleeves scrunched up, not as vacuum-sealed tight as in past years because his body isn't quite cooperating like it used to, and jeans. Everybody's wearing jeans, that's so not the point. Randy is swimming in a sea of argyle, the likes of which Duncan Kane has only dreamed. It's almost hypnotic. As for Paula…words fail me. After dropping the ball terribly last week when asked to describe the sartorial bliss that was Mecca Madison, I knew enough to ask for help this time. So here's Jacob with a recap of how Paula was dressed in Boston: "She is wearing a teal ribbed sweater with bandoleros that looks like it would fit Randy. Maybe they are not for ammo, but in fact inflatable in some way. For safety. Her hair looks very, very cute, though. Like that girl who was on Life Goes On, when she did that show where she went to the country like Dr. Quinn. Then she was on ER but got stabbed all to hell."So it would seem that the entire New England Patriots organization evaporated, condensed, and then fell as rain all over James Yokley, Jr. (23, Lynn MA). And it was an acid rain, too, or else how do you explain the jeans he's wearing? James has nicknamed himself "Ghost," even though the chyron will eventually disagree. Ghost is thugged-out and patriotic, and also a whiter shade of pale, which I don't even think is all that notable anymore in 2006, since there are officially more thugged-out white kids than thugged-out black kids in America. Which is why this whole Kanye West trend of popped collars and fratty "I just discovered Ray Charles and he was awesome on In Living Color" trend is so fantastic, to me. Anyway. For as hard as Ghost projects, he's actually really meek when he gets up in front of the judges. He marble-mouths a lot, but what he says boils down to, "I know you guys don't go for rap music, but I think it's beautiful, and I'd like an opportunity to show you that." And he can't say "melodic." So, of course, he raps this one line over and over again about "them soldiers from the U.S.A.," and at one point Paula turns to Simon and places her hand over her heart, which was probably a nod to the patriotism of it all, but could also be read as affection for this poor clueless kid. The judges like him enough to let him try actually singing "Lean on Me," and as Paula notes, it's not as horrific as you'd expect it to be. But it's still bad. Bye, Ghost! You're everything that usually annoys me, but I liked you!
So, obviously, because this show never met an obvious musical cue it didn't like, we get the Chariots of Fire theme music as Gayken hauls ass to the ladies'. How quickly do you think Vangelis agreed to grant the rights to this music? Did he fumble around with the phone in nervous excitement, screaming into the floor-bound receiver, "I said yes! Don't hang up!"? So when Gayken gets back, Simon's like, "Do not talk, do not explain, do not even inhale longer than you have to in order to give me three notes that are supposedly better than the ones you sang before." And, of course, Michael sucks some more, and Simon dismisses him. It's really too bad Simon can't tell black people apart, or else we could've had this kind of fun with a Reuben doppelganger, too.Twenty-eight auditioners from Boston made it to Hollywood, and finally our nightmare is over and the audition rounds are finished. One hundred seventy-five made it to Hollywood overall. But just in case you're like me and hate the auditions, yet unlike me you don't get paid to watch them, AI now provides a handy synopsis of each and every good and bad audition we've seen in the past three and a half weeks. So, good thing Jacob and I watched all that shit for nothing. It's set to that "You Had a Bad Day" song with Samaire Armstrong in the video, which is one of those songs I intellectually know is awful, but I sing along with it anyway. Which isn't even getting into the part where the "bad day" lyric runs completely counter to the fact that 90% of the clips are of the ones who made it to Hollywood. Brilliant.
I'm not recapping everyone they show, but some of these people emerged during Jacob's episodes, and I may never see them again, so I'd better commemorate now: Oksana Fur-Collar, crying; Lisa Tucker, being awesome; Crystal Paris Hilton, who still thinks she looks good; Kellie "Pick" Pickler; Halicia "Fuck the Children" Thompson; GWAR; Marcus Behling, smashing the Paula and Randy DVD; Just Mandisa; Jacob's orthodontia nightmare; Chonna Clepper, noting Ryan's shortness; the Incredible Hulk's Wife; Erik Lawhon's awesome grandma; hot Chris Daughtry and his weepy wife; Flawless and the Michael Rapaport-looking floating-coaster inventor guy; Ryan hugging cowboy Garet's baby brother (aw); Paris Bennet losing her shit; Gayken; poor Zachary Travis, before he knew what he was in for; April Walsh and her escalator gymnastics; Rhonetta wanting us bitches to "bow down"; Garet Johnson jumping all around and making me literally so happy I want to cry, just in case you were wondering who has the "Eeeee!" in my house; Paula just encouraging Crazy David Hoover; the Brittenums, rushing to steal some identities. You guys, I am so the target demo of the pop song montage. I watched that whole thing and was actually nostalgic for the crappy, boring audition rounds. So sick.
We recall Simon telling Lisa Tucker how she was "the best sixteen-year-old" they've ever had on this show. She sings "Hopelessly Devoted to You," and it's interesting because, for a sixteen-year-old, this song should fit like a glove, emotionally. Lisa, however, already seems over it. Yeah, she's hopelessly devoted to him, but somehow we suspect she'll be pulling herself together any second. And on the one hand, it's a disconnect between song and singer, which isn't great, but on the other hand, it's tough to see Lisa as only sixteen when she sings. Compare her with Kellie Pickler singing the same song and it's night and day. Oh, Lisa gets through. No word on her invisible group-mates.
Now we see a run on contestants singing "Hopelessly," which is kind of a cheat on the part of the show. You give them a list of twelve songs, this is what's gonna happen. No points for degree of difficulty in coming up with this montage, is what I'm saying. A handful of women sing the song well, if unremarkably. Then we get the utter hilarity of Matthew Buckstein (24, Burbank CA) with his cowboy hat and country twang. A boy singing a girl song? Now I've seen everything.
The Walk of Fame. Handprints in cement. Taking photos. It's riveting, let me tell you.
A trio of bad performances makes me wonder how some of these contestants even got through to Hollywood while Holly from yesterday and the Ventriloquism for Dummies (haw) guy didn't. Randy takes a moment to scold some random line-up of eight: "We're looking for stars, we're looking for winners." He thinks they're not taking this seriously enough. He wants them to "bring it." This rejected girl with a lip ring tells the audience of yet-to-audition folks to learn from the performances they're seeing and appreciate where they are and get better. For an "all eyes on me" moment, that was kind of cool.
Remember when Paris Bennet sang Billie Holiday two weeks ago? She's back, and she's wearing a scarf that is bigger than she is. She tells the judges no one in the world is as loud as she is. She sings "Can't Fight the Moonlight," and she sings it well, as we've already come to expect. She's so far sung three songs for our consideration, one country with a side of pop (the Dixie Chicks song), one jazz (Billie Holiday), and now a straight-up pop song, albeit one popularized by a country singer. She's not allowing herself to be put in a box, and I love that. Because once the judges can peg you as a certain "type," that's when they start to fuck with your head, one week saying "step out of your genre," the saying "where's the Paris we know and love?" It's a nasty game, that. So if Paris can keep bobbing and weaving stylistically like this, more better for her. Two things that slightly bugged me about her otherwise excellent performance: 1) it seemed a shade too casual, like she was singing a sound check. This could have been a byproduct of the fact that she sang with a jacket and scarf on, like she was just passing through. 2) She name-checks Simon as the song winds down. You've got to build up an awful lot of goodwill to do that with impunity, and Paris isn't quite there yet.
So here's Megan Zieger (25, Rochester NY) singing "I Believe in You and Me," and sounding rough. And it's because of the illness, you can tell. Paula cuts her off, and Megan apologizes. Paula asks what went wrong, and Megan explains how she has "a little bit of laryngitis." "More than a little," says Simon. She says she tried to go a key lower than she normally goes, but "the key wasn't low enough." Which sounds like she's blaming the piano player, so Simon's like, "Right." Without any prompting that we can see, Megan goes for that lower key a cappella, and she does sound a bit better. The judges cut her off, though, and here's where Megan loses me. "Randy, I can sing, come on now, gimme that, dude. Look at me, I'm sick as a dog but I'm still here smiling, singing." I can feel how she might be desperate, scared as hell that she might lose out on her chance because her throat turned on her. But what does she want the judges to do? They can only go by what they've heard. Randy basically says this, and comforts her that they'll judge based on her audition, too. Then Paula calls her Sarah, I think. Awesome. Sarah, Megan, whoever she is, the browbeating works, because she earns herself another shot. Ryan's VO now leads us on a journey that seems, against all odds, to be both thematically and chronologically consistent. I know, right? It seems that after Megan's "I'm sick" excuses earned her a pass into the round, everybody sort of hopped on that train. One girl is "hoarse," some guy is "verklempt," or would be if he could pronounce it, but he can't, so he just says "stuffed up." Laryngitis, swollen glands, et cetera. Nobody's making excuses! Except for the fact that they are. How does that work, exactly? "I'm not making excuses, but here's my excuse." "Feel free to judge me harshly, but if you do it's unfair." Also at fault: the piano, the microphones, the amps. It's not that I don't sympathize a little, but everyone's playing on the same field. There's such a thing as "tough luck," and when you try to talk your way out of that, it makes you look bad.
More Walk of Fame nonsense. Paris Bennet has a good laugh at the fact that Seacrest has a star on the Walk but Simon doesn't. And again, like the name-checking, it's just too familiar too soon for our Paris. That'll be cute come finals. Save it for then.
Remember the Brittenum twins? Remember how they defied the logic that twins were a losing gimmick? Remember when you got that credit card bill and totally didn't remember buying all those identical silk shirts and cravats? Well, here they are, doing that "us against the world" thing that's so appealing to the rest of us. Derrell sings "I'll Never Love This Way Again," and it's okay, but not that great. Simon tells him he can sing, but he's not an American Idol. So Derrell leaves and on comes Terrell, wagging the mic at Simon and saying his brother "sang that song very well for a dude in the key of Dionne Warwick." Well, I should hope fucking so, since he chose the song himself. Then Derrell comes back on stage with a mic stand for his brother. I find them so annoying, you guys. They're very vaudeville, and Ryan goes there, too. Which is an uncomfortable comparison to make, because of history, but I don't mean blackface. I mean I keep expecting one to ride in on a unicycle. They're so overly mannered all the time. So Terrell sings "The First Cut Is the Deepest," and I think he's awful. Again, too mannered, too many self-conscious key changes. As Nina Garcia might say, it's aesthetically not pleasing, and that's my third Project Runway reference, so I should probably stop now. Paula thinks Terrell was better because he showed a "range of colors," and as she says this she waves her hand across her face, which no doubt caused her to see a whole other range of colors. Both brothers get passed on to the round, but they're not having any of that "graceful" shit. In their on-the-fly interview, they bitch about "not being happy" with Paula and Simon's critiques. They hate the song list they had to choose from, and it's a shitty and limited selection of songs, true, but everyone has to work off the same list. It helps the judges make better comparisons. You're on their show, not vice versa. God. Then, these delusional idiots start going off on Carrie Underwood. Bo would've been a better Idol. Constantine would've been a better Idol. Anybody but Carrie, whose talent was "average" in their estimation. Which…let's go on a mental journey, shall we, and review how the Brittenums just took themselves out of the competition. For one, they just bitched out every single aspect of the show. It's pretty clear after four seasons that to really succeed, you have to have the producers and judges like you, at least a little. But no, the Brittenums have so much talent that they either don't need the producers or judges to like them. They're just that good. Also, recall that Carrie won because the most people voted for her to win. So insulting that rather large bloc of voting AI fans right off the bat is sure to pay off.
The tourists go to a magic shop/museum/emporium of some sort. Watching a magic show with your finger on the pause button takes a lot of the wonderment away, I will tell you that.
Back at the theater, Garet Johnson continues to be amazed by things like airplanes, chandeliers, and Ryan Seacrest ("we don't have hair that color back home"). And he's crying some more. He sings "Can't Fight the Moonlight," and is pretty uneven. He tosses his cowboy hat out into the adoring crowd. He then says to the judges, "Butcher me now," which: defensive. ["Or just really young." -- Sars] The judges, Simon especially, are kinder to him than they usually are to anyone else, and he squeaks on through to the round. And he does his jumping frog thing out in the hallway when it's over. Yeah, one more round of this will about do it, but I'm still liking him as of this very second.
Back to the damn Brittenums again, who are now talking a mess about undeserving contestants who got passed through to the round. At one point Ryan, heretofore off camera, has to ask them to clarify their position, with this perfect "is that the road you want to take?" tone. I am so sick of looking at the one Brittenum twin, so to have to see him twice at the same time? You feel my pain.
Let me level with you about Chris Daughtry. Did not like him when he auditioned in Denver. WAY too overwrought, the song kind of drowned in rocker affectations, the sob story about marrying the single mom was too in-my-face, pretty much the whole thing didn't work for me. But here? When he brings the house down with "The First Cut Is the Deepest"? Absolutely phenomenal. I'm sold. They fake up a clip of Paula telling him he's on to the round, since we already saw him advance back in Ace Young's group. Because they can never be apart. I'm probably going to have to make up a Brokeback Mountain pun for those two, huh? Also getting through on minimal screen time this week is Just Mandisa, who Gina Glocksen assures us is "great." She is. And Katharine McPhee advances as well, giving a strong, controlled "I'll Never Love This Way Again." Remember how Dave Hoover was crazy, and Paula passed him on because she's crazy, too? Good times. He prepares to audition by standing on his head and meditating. He promises to bring more "focus" to this performance. Then he walks out onstage and bugs out ridiculously. He calls the judges "overlords" and speaks gibberish. And then he sings Meatloaf, which is a whole other kind of gibberish. He mumbles half the words and forgets the other half. It's a shame, because we're missing the lyrics about men in the shadows with guns in their eyes. He's jumpy and dramatic and not singing, and Paula's an idiot so she's got her arms up in the air cheering him along. So Dave is finishing up, and Paula turns around to say something to someone, and in the interim, Dave leaps from the stage to the judges' table, scaring the bejeezus out of Paula in the process. This show is so dumb. Every angle they showed that leap from in the previews was better than the one they used on the actual show. Simon's so annoyed by Dave. So thank god, Dave gets bounced and we don't have to deal with the constant threat of grievous bodily injury anymore.