Brooke is singing "I'm A Believer" and "I Am, I Said" -- Neil tells her not to refer to herself as "New York City born and raised," because she wasn't. She was brought by a stork to Arizona. Otherwise, he thinks she is near having a nervous breakdown and singing difficult songs, but is pleasantly surprised by her ability to throw herself manically into everything and seem terribly sincere.
Emphasis on "terrible": she starts at the goaty Carly Simon bottom of her range on "Believer" and rocks out with a crazy pageant smile on her guitar with some fake-sounding "Whoo!" And Paula's spazzing around in the audience, having forgotten her life's work of choreography perhaps forever. The whole thing's kind of scary to watch, frankly -- so sped up and weird, and with that freaky smile plastered on her face, that it brings to mind nothing so much as "Eight Days A Week." I don't want to live in a world where that's the first comparison you can make about Brooke. Oh, girl.
I bet David Archuleta will sing the "Coming To America" song for sure, and probably "Sweet Caroline." Those are my bets. OMG! I win my bets! Only backwards -- "Sweet Caroline" first. Neil calls him a "prodigy" and hopes he will listen to his advice. We're moving so fast we'll never really know, though.
"Caroline" is irritating, but only in the way that David is irritating and this song is irritating, all put together into one irritating, hip-bouncing, wriggling, arm-out supplicatory mess. He is so theatrical when it is so uncalled for, plus this song is worn out and rusted anyway, and the arrangement is toothless to the point of being like Muzak with a little boy moaning on top of it and looking like he's doing something out of Aeschylus.
Syesha thinks of this as a "mini-concert," because she's singing two songs. She's singing "Hello Again" and "Thank The Lord For The Night Time." Neil asks her for a hug and she graciously allows him to touch her garment. Neil and I agree that this is going to be awesome, but I don't know if he's as disinterested as I am in the awesomeness.
Syesha is simultaneously prettier and less interesting with straight hair, but one thing it does is emphasize the always-unnerving resemblance to Kelly Kapoor. I wish I liked her as much as Mindy Kaling, but that's impossible. You know what, the first song at least is not at all as awesome as I thought it would be. Turns out "Hello Again," already kind of a boy's version of a diva song, cannot handle turning into an actual diva ballad without becoming entirely boring and saccharine. But what matters at this point is that she's good, and clearly enjoying herself for the second week in a row, and wearing a pretty purple dress, and those things matter I think.
Ryan brings out everybody onstage with her because he's managed to get us ahead of schedule, so quick summaries from Randy: Jason and Brooke were better than last week, David was awesome, Archuleta was the bomb and everybody screams, and Syesha was in the zone.
Paula's notes say, his first song exposed his lovely lower register, but the second song left him empty, and altogether he wasn't fighting hard enough to get into the top four. Ryan gets super, super scared and stares around and Randy finally mentions to her -- as Simon half-mooses his ass off -- that they're only halfway through. She stumbles around for a second, completely confused because her notes are clearly there in front of her, and Ryan makes a joke about how she can see the future. Simon and Randy chuckle about it, because it's not actually that big a deal -- it's a lot easier to judge the performances in rehearsal, and then compare those initial impressions against the live performances, but like...
Paula's whole thing has been "keep rolling, do the professional thing," and a show that is this much about bread and circuses can't be suddenly springing shit like this on the audience, because if you question the narrative of the show, which Ryan packages up so pretty for us, then you start to question everything. I mean, if you really thought about it you'd already know that they've heard these songs at least twice at this point, but putting it out there means you've broken the wall and reminded us that this is a production, full-fledged, with billions of bucks being poured into it to make it the biggest show in all of television history, and that's a step the puppetmasters can't afford, because if that's fake, then what else is fake?
(A: Everything, obviously.)
Which is fine, I love the idea that some ten-year-old just went, "You mean Muppets aren't real? They're just socks with some guy's hand up them?"
But the real problem here isn't Paula's mistake, or the other judges and Ryan rushing to help her crunk ass out, it's that tomorrow all the papers and blogs will be spinning it into something completely different and weird, and you won't be able to get away from it for days, and Joel McHale will eat it for breakfast, and it'll be on YouTube and whatever, and everybody gets to glory in the takedown just like when people talk back to Simon, or get all heated up about whether David Cook sang DAUGHTRY's cover of "Walk The Line" or whatever. It's in the news cycle now: "America Overcomes Mass Hallucination, Sees Little Man Behind Curtain." Which feeds our sense of superiority while keeping us locked inside the game of the show, and bringing in more viewers, who now think they know the whole story, and so are only knit deeper into the phenomenon by virtue of their complicity. And that's news.
And that sucks, because really the only new thing, the only news, the only bad thing about what has happened is that Jason Castro now gets to sing live, in front of millions of people, a song that he already knows is going to get shit on. And that is sad. That's the new part of AI history that applies here, and that's what we should all be talking about tomorrow, instead of how we've finally exercised our power over this show in a way that means nothing, because we'll still be watching tomorrow night and five years from now.
Paula acts so crazy and it makes me so, so nervous, and she's wasting crazy time, and Simon finally makes her name her favorite (David Cook, because she's Paula and also because she's right) and Simon sums up: Jason forgettable, Cook just above average, Brooke a nightmare, Archuleta amateurish, Syesha old-fashioned: You're the fucking Top Five. Give me a performance of a lifetime time around. Which, word.
"September Morn" gives us another freakishly excited Ryan, and a freakishly boring Jason Castro. Take the pot brownie that he normally is and then slow it down and imagine him in your dormroom at three AM actually thinking he's going to get play, like, singing this song with all the intensity he can. And how sweet that is. He stands up on the key change and wanders slowly around the stage. I will give him this: he is much more professional as time goes by. He's a smart kid with a steep curve, because he tried this kind of smoky performance with "Michelle" weeks ago and it was the funniest fucking thing, like a Rottweiler puppy trying to seduce you and falling all over his giant paws. Now, it's at least the song that's sucking.
Randy tells him it sucked, Paula tells him he did the exact same Lunesta shit to both songs, and Simon tells him he's not the Jason we've had until the last two weeks. He's lost the specialness and is just doing slow and boring songs now, without any Jason-ness to them. Totally true.
Cook's second, "All I Really Need Is You," starts out with a black suit jacket playing acoustic guitar and breathiness verging on the tubercular, but builds -- in the tiny short time it's allotted -- to a location very near awesome. You've heard the song: it's the one with the "Just say/ What you wanna say" chorus. His control is even better than usual, and he even slips up into falsetto at a good part, and then slows it down again. That's how you arrange a song to rock even when it's this short. Way to go.
Randy calls himself a fan, and loved it. David's hair looks good for once, I should mention that. Paula again praises him for grabbing obscure tracks and actually making it work, and calls him the presumptive American Idol. Simon agrees that the first song was okay, but the second was brilliant: he made it both current and suited to his own style, which is what Jason has suddenly found himself unable to do. I agree with every word but I wish somebody would mention the stupid jacket he's wearing, which has red flames appliquéd up one arm and "AC/DC" on the opposite side. Dammit, David.
Brooke babbles for a fucking week about how Simon is wrong, she wasn't a nightmare -- you totally were, sister -- and has written one problematic couplet on her hand just in case. Ryan finally gets her lunatic ass to the piano, and...yes! It's great: her voice is completely sensitive and sincere, lots of fun dynamics, playing with the stop-and-go phrasing that makes the song special. The strings aren't too much, and the piano is not as quiet as usual, and she doesn't make crazy faces or anything. Wow, actually, you know this is one of her best performances in a long, long time. I would say the same thing as Cook, on this one: It is nigh impossible to make a whole story, a whole arc, out of a minute and a half or whatever, but she did it. All the way up, all the way down. Amazing.
Randy agrees with that, and the elasticity of her range and everything, and Paula thought it was great too. I wish this weren't a redemptive moment for her first, awful, nasty fucking performance, but whatever. She deserves to have this one praised, even if it's tempered by her earlier critiques. Simon basically recapitulates all of that, and you can see that all it takes to get Brooke back on track is like one nice thing. Niceness is her Prozac.
Archuleta: "America." Ask the Colonel what I think about bringing songs like this to the table, because I think it's repulsive, but that's David anyway, just focusing directly on the America bullshit instead of the puppies and gun control just to the left of it. He shoves the whole "I sing of thee" and "Let freedom ring" part, fucking of course, but leaves the rest of the song out so he can just say "they're coming to America" like a hundred billion times. I think I might hate David Archuleta. Whether or not this is any of his idea, or even if he's able to have ideas, but that was unconscionable. I would hate him more if this was somebody else's idea, because that makes him a cute little hooker.
The judges accept their sloppy handjob gratefully, and though Simon knows what a total bullshit move that was, he still thought it was good, because Simon doesn't care about bullshit moves, he cares about the sharks and how they swim, and I think he agrees that David, or the hollowed-out lack of spirit we all seem intent on turning David into, is capable of swimming with them. Which is the point of this show: not well-rounded individuals, but people who won't roll over and die, Brooke, when you repeatedly abuse them, music industry.
Syesha's "Thank The Lord For The Nighttime" is joyous, and better, it builds to it, which not even the original really does. The percussion is awesome, very stop-start and all about time changes and whatever. I knew she'd blow on this one, because it's secretly what she likes best to do, drama and bright-lights songs like this, but I didn't expect to find it musically interesting. Plus, she's not wearing shoes, so that's fun -- but only because it's Syesha, who seems like she must wear high heels everywhere, like in the shower even.
Randy tells her to stay in this box, because she rocks this box. Paula loved her vulnerable side on "Hello Again" and that's her magic, and but this theatrical pop performance is equally her magic. Simon laughs that Paula loves her so much, and calls this the strangest episode of all time, which it is. How can something be "chaotic," as Simon says, but still so boring? And then he totally says that too, because without explaining himself, says she's in trouble. Her second song wasn't as memorable as the others' songs. He calls it a calculated guess, and they always are, but doesn't it count that hers was one of the only first-round songs worth hearing?
So: Jason was awesome and interesting, then boring and smarmy. David was good, and then very amazing. Brooke was scary as fuck, then turned in one of her top three performances of the season. David A. was adorably awful, and then straight-up repulsive. Syesha was a bit desperate on her first pretty melody, but then as usual pulled it out on the big fun drama song. Everybody's voices sounded pretty-good-to-awesome, but the sad truth is, they are getting more tired than we are.
Bottom Three: Jason, Syesha and Brooke.
Going Home: No idea. Historical tradition says Jason, Simon says Syesha, and overcorrection taking into account my love of Brooke says Brooke. I wanted to make some joke here about how much I liked her third song, which of course she didn't sing, but the forum posters beat me to it, so I'll leave you with this:
How many Red Bulls did Ryan Seacrest drink tonight? Because the last time I saw him this overstimulated, he pulled off Kathy Griffin's shirt at some awards show, and if that's the magic number, I'm giving him twice that many if we ever meet, because you know he drinks that shit down like a high school track runner, because it tastes like candy, and I want to know what Ryan is like when he's truly crazy. Imagine the Paula and Simon stories he could tell. I mean, imagine the shit he knows. And not just them, but every shady thing in Hollywood, Ryan is connected to. He's like a storehouse of awesome gross shit, like walking Hollywood Babylon, and all you have to do is given him enough Red Bulls and you turn the key in that lock. I'm convinced of this.