Look at pretty, sweet, smart little Cardin Lee McKinney (20, Nashville TN)! She's so professional and cute and fun! She's totally one to watch, I can't wait to see how far she goes. She sings "One Night Only," apparently from Dreamgirls, in a pretty red dress. I think I just said the word "pretty" like eleven times. Oh crap, I can already feel it happening. She's totally going to do that thing that Kat McPhee did to me, where my brain is going to turn off and I'm just going to silently want to touch her hair until she goes away again. I'm not going to lie to you -- I haven't been watching Joe's nights, just reading the recaps. I only love the Hollywood round, you know that. But I haven't liked anybody this much all year of the people that I've seen. Simon's a no, Randy's a yes...
And Paula puts her through. Which either means Simon and I are getting a divorce, or he knew they were going to put her through, and he knew that they knew, and he knew that I knew that he knew that they knew, and I think Cardin probably knew at least as much as I knew, although possibly not as much as Simon knew, and that's why he said no before anybody else said anything, but I do think that he knew and that Randy and Paula knew that he knew and that's why they didn't fight him and just put her through, because this way, if she proves too theatrical or whatever, like he said, he can blame it on them. But you know what, on paper that looks really unlikely, actually. But Simon! Pretty! I think we all know that he knew at least that, which is 90% of the whole deal, and I'm going to leave it at that.
Jumper: If you had magical teleportation powers, where would you go? I'm torn between the Marvel Bullpen and John Varvatos East Hampton at about 11 PM when all the employees and security are gone. And that's...all there really is to me, apparently. Unless you could go back in time, which I'm not sure about because I haven't seen the movie, but if you could go back in time, I would totally want to meet Margaret Mead, or actually Nelly Bly because that's what I feel like whenever I recap this show.
So remember that there was a pageant queen, Lady Morgue's LARPing beef patch, and that awesome little Oklahoma kid I loved so much. Now, meet the beautiful plus-size model Joanne Borgella (25, Hoboken NJ), who sang the national anthem in Madison Square, and will now turn it out. Singing "I Love You," by Celine Dion. Maybe the reason this sucked so much this year is because they put all the people in this episode. Or in Joe's episode. Or maybe I'm just in a good mood today, I don't know what it is. Paula tells her she's "stunning," which she always says when she means "fat," but the girl is gorgeous, and again Randy and Paula put her through over Simon's quiet disinterest. Hooray! Joanne! Hooray Joanne's jumping family! Hooray Ryan's plaid shirt and...really intriguingly dorky dance moves.
Now: The Real Jacked-Up Teeth of Orange County. Who was that girl on Laguna Beach that was so new money even the girls of Laguna Beach knew there was something off? She had those five-foot platinum extensions and the huge veneers and the fake boobs and the orange tan? Well, minus the teeth and unnatural tan, and plus about fifty pounds of saddlebags, and you could be looking at Alesha Stelzl (18, Ontario CA, which is nowhere near the OC I do realize), who talks in baby stripper voice and is wearing a low-cut evening gown in the middle of the day. And sings some song nobody could ever possibly figure out, in an ear-splitting vibrating Chipette that could easily make a person vomit. Her vocal coach is Ron Harris, if you're taking notes. She swings her hair around like Cher and once Simon tells her how "absolutely dreadful" she is, you can see a glimmer of a soul, and it's kind of sad, and Randy and Paula bully her into going and learning a Dolly Parton song so she can embarrass herself some more. Neither Alesha nor her mother know any Dolly Parton songs, but you know who does? Ryan Seacrest, in his cute little sweater vest. He knows all of them. ...God. More. Alesha learns "Islands In The Stream" off YouTube, which is excellent. Ryan sings it with her a little bit, and sends her in, to sing in her shaky weird voice while her Wildensteinian mother listens at the door. And then, stupidly, Randy and Paula put her through. This is dumb as hell. Inside, even Simon can't believe that Paula was right about the similarity to Dolly's voice, and then Paula blabbers drunkenly in such a fucked-up way that Simon almost collapses from laughter. They're so tired, you guys.
See, now there's Brandi Gregorie (27, McClellanville SC), who you would think would get the Lady Morgue treatment because she's nerdy and a big girl and -- be honest -- because of the giant golden glittery cape she wears to her audition. And yet, I find her absolutely bewitching. She throws herself into it with abandon, never stops moving and hopping and dancing, and is generally happy with herself. Other ways she's different from Lady Morgue are: she is not an ass, she is not socially defunct, and she actually understands other people and that they matter and that they exist. Brandi, you rock. She sings some song about this man who is "extraordinary" and it sounds like the olden days, and she looks like Natalie Merchant's big sister, and Simon is creeped out by the cape-throwing striptease, and she's like, "That was a calculated risk." I love her.
All of which introduces Chikezie Eze (22, Inglewood CA), who sings a song by Luther Vandross and has a nice voice with a sometimes iffy relationship to the notes themselves, but he's got power and control and a nice high register, so the judges just let him go for awhile, even though he's obviously through -- until he refuses to stop when Simon asks him to. Which earns him enmity and an accusation of being uninteresting, which causes him to get snotty and start kissing Paula's ass in about five milliseconds. What a theatre kid! He went from likeable to drama queen really fast, didn't he? I can't wait to hear him tell us all about every single thing that happens to him and what it means, and I can't wait for him to crash and burn in Hollywood when he pulls that shit on the rest of his team. Watch.
The flamboyantly fabulous Danny Noriega (17, Azusa CA) was eliminated last year, when he was I guess a fetus. He has very nice teeth and bears a...striking resemblance to Lisa Stansfield circa 1990. Because gay is the new bumpkin, he will be singing "Proud Mary." And does he keep on burning? Yes, yes he does. And is it kind of hard to watch in that way that only a gay teenager singing soul diva songs in front of his mirror is hard to watch? Yes it is. But he's got a lot of force, a really nice tone, and those teeth. They talk about the Aiken-esque surprise of that voice coming out of his tiny little baby-bird-boned body. The judges love him. I love him too. Did you know that Menudo is back? I saw them in the Thanksgiving Parade.
"The auditions finally come to an end," Ryan says, like he's talking directly to us, and then there's a montage of video footage of roads and this song about roads, and then clips of a bunch of people, including the virgin and Ryan lying about kissing girls, and that scary goblin girl, and the orange gay rocker, and the giant fan, and that guy getting escorted out, and Moses, and "No Sex Allowed," and fucking Lady Morgue, and "I Am Your Brother," and that kid in the sweater with the mohawk, and the fingernails, and the arm-wrestling, and it's all very nostalgic, or it would be if anybody had cared in the first place, but nobody did. Everything up until Hollywood is just a Smiths song anyway. So when they sing "Here comes the rest of our lives," I'm not imagining what it would be like to be a high school senior: I'm going to be thinking about the Season Seven auditions of American Idol, and how boring and ultimately unrevealing they were.
Hollywood, Ryan says, comes down to one word: "Intense." Man, I hope so. They'll go from some number of people down to the Top 24. Paula will fight with somebody, Simon will get pissed, the people will freak out, somebody plays a guitar, a girl falls down, there are pianos and stuff, Chikezie seems to be doing well, Simon and Paula get into a knife fight, one of the kids smuggles in some Ecstasy, thirteen people die in a freak tourboat accident, a little boy cries, and all the people who don't make it into the Top 24 are, the intensity of the ads would have you believe, not going to survive the experience. Finally, there's something at stake! Bring it on!