Cute blonde dude has, per Simon, the "stage presence of a flea." More people get cut, but not really, because TWO! FULL! HOURS! Alisha (Manahawkin NJ) howls the song from The Hills that I love so much in a way that is truly disgusting, while strumming her guitar kind of horribly as well. Simon has to use those arm movements you learn in Boy Scouts to shut her up. I think he's semaphoring that the rest, though still unwritten, has kind of a downer ending. She apologizes. Micheal [sic] (South Barrington IL) plays random chords while somebody else plays the piano, and sings the beloved old-timey Leo Sayer love ballad "When I Need You" in a shouty fashion, with moppish blonde hipster hair. He is 19 but looks like a gawky 15-year-old, and even though his voice is unpleasant, he has a certain thing going for him. It's a neat arrangement and Randy likes it, but Simon hates the guitar thing.
Tamblyn-esque Alyssa (Penfield NY) plays the piano with her knuckles or possibly her toes, while whimpering through three words of some song with that Britney/PCD voice we're suddenly allowing to happen. On the upside, she is 16 and this is not a piano-playing competition; on the downside, she's awful. Hollywood, please get to the social dynamics part soon. If even Hollywood is going to be about really bad things happening with occasional goodness garnish, I'm going to throw a huge fit. Cute ginger Shaun Barrows (Spanish Fork UT) is charming as hell, and okay with the piano -- which is already obviously a shitty idea -- but does let himself get distracted from the singing part of the song to an extent that it's pretty painful. Simon calls him on it. I hope he sticks around; he's the only likeable person I have seen on the show.
Jake (Sand Lake MI) will be drumming whilst singing, and thank goodness because this is what he does, in several bands. He sings "Hooked On A Feeling" seated behind a "kit" which is where he is most "comfortable." Less awesomely, he does this in a nervous throat-voice that reminds me of Froggy from Our Gang, while looking considerably less than twenty years of age. There's a student government thing happening with his face that is too bad, because one day he will be a likeable and not-tooly man. Simon signals to us that today is not that day; Randy likes the novelty of it all but pronounces it "just okay" and karaoke. Paula also hates it, and he slouches, and everybody is sad. Simon calls it "horrible, horrible" several times and beats the kid's face into the ground some more before they finally let him go. Leo is disinterested in this discussion and Simon mumbles that this was all terribly unnecessary.
Danny Noriega continues to be a strong black woman or whatever the freaking hell he thinks he's doing; Ramiele has some kind of crazy vibrato but a good range and some fun control, trickiness and attitude without being gross; Carly Smithson continues to be the less off-putting Amanda, transfixing even Simon with her passionate performance of "When I Need You" and causing a spontaneous "WOO!" from Paula. Michael Johns does his whole boring/sexy Rufus Humphrey throwback thing, and causes Randy to embarrassingly harmonize with his last note. All of them, of course, get through to Thursday. Where's my fighting? Where are the team performances? I'm dyin' here.
One of those scary broken blonde girls is worried; boring old reddish-mohawk David Cook sings the Robin Hood song and, needless to say, everything he does? He does it for cred. He's from Missouri, for Pete's sake. He's quite passionate with his guitar, which is strange because he is super-squinty and looks like an infant, with mushmouth (and a blue tongue!) and that receding-hairline babies sometimes have. Especially when he sings, he looks like a baby who got startled out of its nap, just before it starts screaming. A baby with a soul patch. Simon tells him he's going to look "vulnerable" without his guitar, on that giant stage; I think he would look vulnerable without, like, a bazooka, due to his total infancy, and Ryan is reminded of how much Simon and all right-thinking individuals hated DAUGHTRY. David, of course, assumes it's the hair, because it's the only thing he's got. "Simon just hates my hair." "You're just dating me because of my hair." "It doesn't matter what I wear, say, think or do, because my hair is completely interesting."
Speaking of interesting, and hair, there seems to be a homeless person onstage. Robbie Carrico (Melbourne FL) is 26 and...sometimes you just write a person off the second you see them, because they're yucky or because there's nothing going on behind their eyes, or whatever. And maybe you're wrong. I'm willing to admit, weeks down the road, that Robbie Carrico is not the braindead pothead loser he seems to be. I won't have to, but I will say that I am willing to do that, in this hypothetical future which will never happen. Song choice? You know it: everything Robbie does, he does it for kind bud. Or a ride to Burning Man. Everything Jessica Brown (Longview TX) does, she does it for scary eyeshadow. Perrie Cataldo? For unearned vocal ornamentation. Syesha Mercado does it for the neck strength to hold up her enormous scarf, and because she knows she's good at it. Colton Berry does it to be the Blake Nelson, and to fail in this pursuit. However, all of these guys except the slightly creepy Jessica, unknowable Perrie, and completely dramatic Syesha, do not do it for the Thursday Pass.
Kyle sings "You Raise Me Up" in that same weird scary ugly screamy drama queen way, putting me in the awkward position of saying, "This is like a sucky Clay Aiken." Which thing I cannot actually imagine but I can talk around it. Randy tells him he was "actually really good" and Paula tells him it was "safe." Simon honestly apologizes for throwing a fit during his time onstage earlier in the week, which is cool and impresses him, and then they put him through.
Frim-Fram finally goes down, creepily as ever, with a craptastic "Whole New World," and Joey Catalano -- who's been barfing all week, apparently -- looks like a corpse singing "Ribbon In The Sky," I think, and sadly goes down. He needs some medications and a nap. Syesha is also sick, and has been getting sicker all week no matter what she does, causing the judges no small amount of stress even as they put her through because of how awesome she has been to Hollywood. She is freaking out, of course, but promises us and herself that she really is going to force this to happen. Her "Chain Of Fools" is confident and lovely, if much thinner than we might expect, and her last huge note and trick is clearly what she's betting on, and she rocks it. Randy calls her "one to watch" and I agree; her professionalism is inspiring and she really pushed through all the shit she's been handed. Simon: "You did it." She starts crying the second they start talking, and man. I really like Syesha.
"Australian" Michael Johns, who's packing guns and a fine voice, takes the stage for what's sure to be another soporific occurrence of ... oh, we're doing "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Ugh. Right, of course. Of course you are. That's so aggressively Australian, I can't stand it. They're just ... to a man, they the kind of people who would sing this song during Hollywood Week, I don't know if I can clarify beyond that. Australians, ugh. "Bohemian Rhapsody," ugh. He's even wearing blue jeans. I mean, really. What's worse than an Australian wearing blue jeans and singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" is: nothing. Everything they do, they do it to piss you off. While it is true that I hate women, homosexuals, and the developmentally disabled of Omaha, really it's all flash and dazzle to throw you off the scent of my true enemies: the Australians. Joe R will back me up on this. ["It's true. But he hates homosexual, developmentally disabled Australians most of all." -- Joe R] He sounds the same as he always does, and this is because he is competent and has a great voice, and this is because he's trained and very practiced, which is in turn because he is forty years of age and has been doing this since Freddy Mercury was alive. Simon calls it the best audition of the day, because Simon likes it when people know what they are doing, and when they are crazy hot. Simon thinks that's like so great.
Carly Smithson, who I thought was a tad annoying until that Amanda showed up, sings "Alone," and rocks it completely, after we review her whole thing with the green card problems and stuff, and thank God none of the judges see fit to complain about how a real American Idol would be one born on American soil, preferably white, and so how in order to keep this vital national institution pure, we should erect a great fence around our country so that no pop-idol hopefuls sneak in under the wire and steal more of our jobs in the pop music industry. A's'i'a'h' has some kind of depressing story, I forget what it was, but she rocks the heck out of her song, "I'm Going Down," and Simon calls it her best performance in the whole process.
Brooke (Atlanta) is screamy, skinny, blonde, and more than a little petrifying. She sings "Unchained Melody" terribly, and her dead eyes accept no defeat, and she screams at Paula to give her a chance, so of course stupid Paula puts her through, even after I swear they tell her not to sing any more and she does anyway, and Paula calls her a dick basically, and she acts the fucking fool all over the place, and finally, mercifully, cuts her. That could have gone a lot faster if Paula knew what was going on around her at any time. ["The fact that Paula didn't cut this bitch's face off after she was all 'You know you're going to pass me through, so just get on with it,' was an admirable act of restraint, I thought. Or would have been if her dulled reflexed hadn't made it her only option." -- Joe R]
Last audition is: Josiah, the awesomest of the world, who is about to once again break down in tears. Oh, there he goes. In a stairwell, feeling "defeated," and completely overwhelmed by the fact that his backup band laughed at him for writing an all-new arrangement for the whole band. Byrd grabs him in the lobby and explains to him that he was freaking out and being a diva with the band, but offers to spend one-on-one time with him and work things out. He still has no idea what the problem was, which is that he's simply too awesome for this show and has no idea what they expect from him, or what to expect. He tells the band that they are great...and then tosses their asses to the curb! Randy and Paula laugh their asses off about all this, and Simon asks if the judges should leave too. He sings "Stand By Me" a capella, and it's nervous and shaky, but I think you might be able to hear the awesomeness of Josiah in there somewhere, if you...oh, dear. It spirals out of control and goes on spiraling. Little kids, when they are out of it, are the scariest thing in the world. If you see a little kid after naptime has been postponed an hour later than normal, I mean really look into their eyes, you will understand how it is that nuclear war is still a possibility even in our world of today.
Randy asks if he wants the band to come back, and Paula says it was a terrible choice, and Josiah is...terribly sleepy and not getting it. He tells them how brave he was to do this, and Simon calls this little act annoying, and yells at him for dismissing the band like that. Oh, this is the grossest little thing to see happen. Simon calls him overconfident and Josiah loses one year a second and finally starts crying and rubbing his eyes. Oh, this is so awful! Randy tells him it's worth another shot, Paula tells him he's honest and vulnerable, and Simon says -- despite Josiah's efforts to the contrary -- he still believes that Josiah is a good guy. Josiah retaliates by roaming from bathroom to hallway to hotel lobby crying his ass off. He continues not to understand what the problem was, because he is a little child, and nobody seems able to explain the problem to him, but finally it's over. Oh my God that was messy. If ever a situation called for Ryan Seacrest, that was it, and where was he? Kissin' truckers, I know it.
So the third montage of memories this hour.... Do we find out the Top 24 now? Is that all there is, to Hollywood? That is some bullshit. This is seriously five minutes long. I just smoked an entire cigarette and it's still going on. Why. Why would they taunt us with this shit we don't get to see, and then show us several times the shit we didn't get to see?
DUDE it really is the end of Hollywood. Fucking show. That sucks bad. There's not even...oh, okay. Now they're the Top 50. I can see... Chikezie, Kyle, ginger guy, a screaming girl, a giant scarf, a cute girl with big earrings who is relieved, Josiah, Cardin I think, that girl ramekin, Natashcia, the gross Bo freak, three children, that nasty guy with dreads and fake contacts, presumably white trash Amanda is in there somewhere, and then downstairs the music gets super scary as the judges "toil" over the Top 24. They pass a bunch of photos around and we don't get to see them while unrelated vague dialogue plays over it all. But if we did see the photos, would we care? This, also, goes on forever.
Tonight: Join Joe R. for the Chair, a Botox mishap on Paula's face, Danny Noriega shitting a brick, and people either making the Top 24 or not, then crying either way.