The judges, Ryan, and the contestants are all in on this fake banter vibe that is really irritating, just cartoonish, but that ends early as the judges start agreeing on every single contestant and giving the same notes every time. Not as fascinating: Kat McPhee, who does a boring rendition of "All in Love Is Fair," by Stevie Wonder, a song with which I'm not familiar but I'm fairly certain it's not usually that boring. I fear for her. Kinnik turns in a fairly lackluster Gretchen Wilson song, "Here For The Party," wearing a lovely cowgirl outfit but shocking the judges with her loss of all range and personality. Lisa Tucker turns in another professional number, this time "Who's Lovin' You" by the Jackson Five, but Simon wisely warns her against coming off as "a very young girl singing grownup songs." Melissa sings "Why Haven't I Heard From You," by Reba McIntyre, which is a good song for her, but not that interesting to watch. Simon actually hurts Paula's feelings for real. Heather sings "Hero," by Mariah Carey, and it doesn't matter if she's good (she's fine) because it's Mariah and she didn't bring anything in particular to the table or change it in any way.
Brenna comes in with yet another hairstyle, and sings a totally boring-yet-passable version of "Last Dance." Disco is not her thing, and neither is this feel-good bullshit. Where were the claws? I was promised claws. I don't want her to go, not really, but I wouldn't be surprised this week. Paris is wearing a crazy outfit! Again! She looks like Rudith Huxtable dressed as my grandmother. She sings "Wind Beneath My Wings" and it's kind of creepy and low, and it's technically sound but played out. The judges beg her to stop being a little old woman. Beautiful Ayla sings "I Want You To Need Me" by Celine Dion after attempting once more to come out of the closet, and Simon warns her against becoming too perfect, and like who wouldn't kill for criticism like that?
Kellie actually turns in a fairly adorable "Something To Talk About," her razored bangs and makeup doing their job of distracting from her face. Pleasant and impressive. Mandisa then teaches Ryan a fun game to play with his mom (yeah) besides Scrabble and performing tableaus in the parlor, and then quickly blows everybody's ass off singing Faith Hill's "Cry" in an incredibly powerful performance that's still only scraping the possibility of what she can do. Randy and Simon aren't thrilled with the song choice, due to the fraction of her skill it represents, but everybody admits it was amazing. Tonight: Joe R. and the Dawgs.
Ryan's wearing dirty black jeans and an elaborate velvet tuxedo coat; Will is already bouncing around. Ryan tells us that last Thursday was "the biggest night in television for an entire decade," given that Survivor was up to something, Dancing With Idiots was having its finale, and it wasn't simply the Olympics, but Ladies Figure Skating, Ryan's total favorite, and yet AI still was "on top by two to one." I don't know what that means exactly, but it's exciting nonetheless. A spooky girl in the audience looks on as Ryan bows to the judges in his little outfit; Simon grins at Ryan because of the fake-ass banter in which they're all about to engage. Ryan mentions how all last week, they were all on different pages, judging-wise, like apparently that's a new idea, and Simon asks him to redefine it as Simon being on the "correct page." He says that after "watching it back," he gives himself ten "marks out of ten," using both of my favorite weird Simon phrases in one sentence, while Randy and Paula were averaging about six and a quarter. Paula laughs, and Ryan mentions that Simon might want to try some of that humble pie they were talking about with Brenna last week. "It's just about being right, Ryan." He says the other judges are wrong about 60% of the time, blah blah, he's playing to type, this show is a dumb cartoon and they all know it. Which producer's brilliant idea was it that this aspect of the show simply must be over the top and constantly hit: "Simon! He's mean! He thinks he's right all the time! Doesn't that make you feel emotions?" Ryan and Paula laugh and joke fakely about how they're just a small part of the show, that it's all about Simon, whatever, Ryan gets down on his knees and screams over and over, "Thank you Simon!" and it's weird and a little creepy. Even Simon is bored by this stupid charade parody of actual worthwhile show content. I wonder if even Simon could explain why this shit is 90 minutes long.
There's a background video for Katharine, who's up first. The theme this week is the highlight of their AI experience. For Katharine, this amounts to wrestling with Kellie Pickler in bed as often as possible. "We're just like silly and dumb together," she says. I wonder if, as a child star with a stage mom from hell, Katharine's ever met another girl before. If you don't know what actual fun is like, I bet hanging out with Pickler is totally fun. They hug and snort and grunt on the bed like Emily Rose, and then have so very much fun that they fall on the floor. It's clearly not rehearsed in any way -- because if it was, that would be like the creepiest niche porn ever; ergo, the cameras must have just accidentally caught them in a moment of exuberance. Can you imagine what this shoot was like? "Arm higher, McPhee...Kellie, grab a pillow and hit her across the face with it? Good, that's good...now you're wrestling, scrabbling...we'll add the maniacal giggles in post...now fall off the bed! Fall off the bed! Yes!" And then Pickler's wearing roller skates and they're both doing massive amounts of blow and McPhee's all, "I've always thought of you as a daughter."
Onstage, Katharine's still thinking in terms of motherhood, because she's wearing a knee-length empire-waist...thing...that makes her look like she's pregnant with the entire population of Liechtenstein. From the neck up, she looks incredibly beautiful -- the hair and makeup department really outdid themselves this week, everybody looks wonderful, even Heather Cox and Melissa McGhee look pretty -- and I think she's strikingly gorgeous anyway, but she looks even more...wait, are those bike shorts? What the fuck is going on here? She looks like a million bucks. Pregnant ones. My mind keeps wandering because Katharine is singing one of the most boring songs I think I've heard in my entire life. I might have heard it before, but I wouldn't remember it. "All In Love Is Fair," by Stevie Wonder, who I love and cannot believe that he performed this song so lifelessly. I wonder what the actual song sounds like. Because this...sucks. It doesn't even suck, that implies that it does something, anything, but all it does is lie there like tapioca. Why? Why this song, Katharine? You're my favorite! Her voice is of course mostly lovely, but she sucks it up on a particularly tricksy part, then goes nasal and crappy in the middle. Mostly it's boring. Her ass looks great, at the expense of the rest of her. Her parents, in the audience, are very scary. I don't know what to say right now. Her voice is pretty off tonight, and this is boring, and I picked her to go home in the TWoP betting pool with Joe and Sars. That's quite a loss of faith.
Paula talks about "the magic" and how it was not happening, and I'm wondering how come we, the viewers, were not worthy of ever actually seeing this "magic" in effect. She asks Brenna how she thinks she did, and Brenna of course thinks she did wonderfully, and Paula's quite quick on the uptake: "I don't know why I asked that question." Brenna says that she liked it, that America will love it, and this will be reflected in the votes. I applaud the balls and eloquence of Brenna, as do the crowd and Paula herself. She's wrong, but I like how she said it. Randy once more calls attention to the weird similarities between Brenna and Simon, which I'm sure have been captivating us all since it got brought up last week, and which could not be more boring to think about, and then Randy tells her she was awful in every way, which she was, considering what she could be capable of doing. Simon flat-out tells her she's going home, and compares her to someone "at a bar, murdering a Donna Summer song." Randy cracks some dipshit joke about how Simon's right for the first time, but honestly: when Paula and Randy switched places, something magical happened, and now all three of them have become smart. And by smart, I mean that I agree with them, which is all you ever mean when you critique the judges. But without Randy's commentary to simply regurgitate verbatim, or Simon to smack and slap and tickle and crawl all over like a jungle gym, Paula comes up with valid criticisms and is forced to think beyond her simple "nice"/"mean" binary, and then Randy actually has a second to think about what he's going to say, which is quite helpful, and then Simon, well, I always seem to agree with him anyhow, but in this order, they actually agree with each other, and I wish they would just leave it like that. Brenna goes to the "America's choice" well for like the fifth time, and Simon's like, "Trust me, they listen to us. Your ass is toast," but she's just like, "You have no idea what you're talking about." She and Ryan have another adorable moment as -- in the middle of saying her numbers -- he looks over, grinning, like, just to see what she's up to, and then giggles. I will miss her, make no mistake. But she earned her dismissal tonight.
Paris is wearing a crazy outfit! Again! Huge Victorian collar, white shirt with a buttoned chemise over it with spaghetti straps, almost like a corset, six hundred strands of pearls, tiny heart earrings, and a braided bun. She looks like she's going straight from here to a performance in Arsenic And Old Lace or something; it's creepy. She tells Ryan's she's got "favor," and that's all the way over his cute little head, and he makes this adorable but still squicky face of like, "I'm just a dorky white guy and I don't know what you mean," but could she do him a favor and sing a song. It's awkward. Her highlight tape is just gibberish, just complete gibberish, like, this is why I don't talk to teenagers, because I have no doubt that they're saying something interesting, but I am simply too old and boring to even understand it. Or maybe she made up her own language. She talks about fashion and how she sometimes dresses "the gloomy" and sometimes she dresses "the fever" and sometimes she dresses "the hat tipped to the side" and she "loves to keep change because change allows you to see who you are," just like fashion, and you can tell who she is through the fashion. She is adorable and awesome and quite possibly a lunatic. I think nobody tells you what song she's going to sing so that it will freak you out when it starts, because it's "Wind Beneath My Wings," and it starts very low, but even down at the bottom of her range, it's so amazing down there. There are some crappy notes, and she sounds pretty creepy during some of the slower parts, and she makes some less than appealing faces. Lots of angry lip-pursing and deep voices, but then of course, at the end there are a set of runs, and the crowd goes wild, and her mother and grandmother are crying. It's a very dramatic performance and the backup is excellent, and she ends on a very low, very Desiree kind of man-note. Maybe my brain chemistry just thinks it's Halloween or something, tonight? But the whole thing reminded me a bit of the little girl in The Others, or like maybe she's a little old woman and has just been fooling us this whole time. Brrrr.
Paula's like, "Can you get any cuter? I wanna squish you! Adorable! Unpretentious! Good song for your vocals! Made us smile! You danced, finally! Keep on going, girl!" Randy pulls some Dawg Pound bullshit I don't even need to relate to you -- except to note that Taylor is so completely over it, and I can think of about six reasons that might be -- and says it was the right song choice and that her outfit is cool and that the performance was "organic." Simon: "You're very...I don't know what it is. You cannot help but like you. If I hadn't heard the 'calamari' bit and didn't know you, if I just heard the song and wasn't watching you, I'd go, 'Wasn't the best vocal, rough around the edges in spots, but...' The 'calamari' is worth the votes. You are cute, you're likeable. America, if they haven't already, are going to fall in love with you." I wouldn't go that far, but I did actually enjoy her this week, so that's something. What's mostly freaking me out is that I can't remember a tongue bath this intense in a really long time from all three of the judges like that. I wonder if her numbers dropped last week. Ryan calls it the "irresistibility" factor and Paula interrupts everything to give some kind of choreography note, and Simon turns directly toward the camera, scratching his nose with a fully-extended middle finger, eyes completely blank. How can you ask why I love him?
Mandisa wears another lovely black dress, this one with intense beading around the neckline, and a tight bun up top, with lovely tendrils all around. She'll be singing a song she's not performed before, "Cry," by Faith Hill, which is a song I don't mind. Whatever it is that I hate about all country, Faith Hill somehow circumvents it. I wouldn't ever buy an album or anything like that, you won't hear me saying, "Let's put on that hot new Faith Hill track" ever, but it's fun, she's nice, she has a good voice. She seems like she might be weird, to me. Like she has strange habits, she holds things up so she can paint little faces on her toes for luck, or stands on her head for an hour a day, and Tim McGraw's just rolling his eyes all, "She always does this shit, but I find it endearing." I don't know why I think that. Are they still together? Would we even know if they weren't? Country people are even more boring than real celebrities. All they do is get married, and talk about their kids, and pray. Those are great things to do, don't get me wrong, but as a consumer of train-wreck culture, it's a damn sight less interesting than, say, Courtney Love's uterus falling out on a Tuesday morning while she's in the process of overdosing during a court hearing, or whatever. And Frances Bean is there with a catcher's mitt, like, "Moooom! I told you to keep an eye on your uterus!" And when they do have scandals, it's like, they marry like Garth Brooks, they marry other ones of their group. Or they marry Renee Zellweger, officially the most boring person alive, even though they are kind of gay. Even arranged Hollywood don't-ask-don't-tell marriages, normally the ultimate ambrosia of train-wreck consumption, are boring when they involve country singers.