Quoth Ryan, "The level of talent is higher..." I believe that, having seen half of them last night. I can honestly say that I enjoyed the Top Twelve Guys episode more than I have ever personally enjoyed an episode of this show. Which is really subjective, of course, but it does make me more interested in where this season's going -- and whether I'm going to love the ladies as much as I did most of the boys last night. And also, they all have the flu or something. Except Amanda, who always looks like that. Carly Smithson looks like a comic book convention in real-life human form. Paula's hair is very Danny Noriega, and Simon's winking all over the place at Ryan, so we're in for a treat.
Ryan reads a bunch of Randy's bullshit non-commentary off of cards in his hands, which are beneath mentioning, and Paula asks the ladies to bring both their "charm" and their "vocals," and mentions having heard "rumblings of the rehearsals," excitedly. Simon and Ryan agree that disagreement and backtalk are a turn-on for Simon, even when it comes from total creeps like Danny and Chikezie, and then there's a video of the Top Twelve Ladies walking through a door and screaming when they got their Hollywood tickets. Singing? No, why would they sing on this show? That's secret stuff we'll never get to see, now.
Kristy Lee Cook is up . She's like if Felicity had a horse, only even less interesting. She likes to sing "Amazing Grace," and how boringly pretty she is, is equal to how true the following statement is: I couldn't pick her out of a lineup consisting of Kristy Lee Cook, Oprah Winfrey, and her horse. Which she wants to buy out of hock when she wins this show. She sings "Rescue Me," in a tempo just slow enough that it's boring without being slow enough that it's inventive or interesting. She also does totally spooky and inappropriate shit with her eyes and face, like that woman from Xanadu that I saw in the Thanksgiving Day parade that made me go back to bed at 11 AM because I realized that I had no more Thanks to Give.
If you're ever in trouble and you are looking for help, I am telling you in advance that you need to ask for help with at least a little bit of spirit or heart, because when Kristy sings "Rescue Me" in this Sominesque way, it makes me think she's beyond saving, and in fact that she has resigned herself to never being rescued. Randy and Simon tell her it was awful, but Paula says it's okay to suck because she is sick with the flu or the bronchitis or whatever -- but "you don't want to ever let anyone see that you're having a little bit of a tough time." Because what Paula Abdul can teach you to do, besides bust a move, is convincingly maintain. Ryan wonders if illness matters, or if we should just vote her ass off right now, and says that all the women are dying right now; Paula thanks her lucky stars that we know this ahead of time, that the women are dying. I'm so glad too because that sounds super-fun to hear at the beginning of two hours of shitty singing.
The song starts so slow, you wonder if you'll be hearing more of it tomorrow than you will today, but once the band kicks in, the girl rocks the socks off the two contestants. What is her name again? Alaina Whitaker. How am I going to remember that? She's committed, in control of her voice, enjoying herself, and looks lovely when she sings, rather than dead or possessed. Randy congratulates her on her youth, her conviction, and her awesomeness. Paula calls it a "feel-good" song, talks about Diana Ross for awhile, and then tells her how much she loved the ending. Which is not the usual Paula thing where she only remembers the ending of any given song, because in fact she did totally rock the song. Simon totally says he hates the song, didn't recognize it, but I bet if it were a Chicago song he would like it. Ryan has a short blonde meeting with her sick, babbling self, and they are adorable together for awhile.
Sigh. After commercials, we're "crankin' it up" with Amanda Overmyer, which is either an unfortunate word choice on Ryan's part, given that she looks and sings like a small-town meth addict with artistic aspirations, or a secret message from him to me that this is exactly what she is. She shows a hint of coolness by promising never to sing Janis Joplin, then fucks it up by also promising to "solidify the presence of rock and roll" on stage, whatever the teen-pregnancy-scare hell that means. Amanda growls her nasal grunting way through some song called "Baby Please Don't Go" that sounds like it's probably a hundred-year-old blues song that has been covered so many times nobody knows what to do with it. (Fact-checker goblins say yes, that's what it is.)
Randy and Paula balance on their heads and skip rope and barf rainbows about how "authentic" and "original" and "real" Amanda is, because they have never met a person like Amanda, I guess. Once Amanda starts bantering with Simon, she's adorable; she really is a pretty, funny girl when she's not doing her shtick. However, she's doing her shtick 90% of the time, and it's just not something I can handle. You know you're at a bad party that you need to leave when the Amanda-looking girl starts asking everybody in that Amanda voice if they have any coke. And there is always an Amanda-looking girl, and she always talks like that, and most of the time she's got her guitar in the car, and that's when it's time to go home. That's how you know. On the other hand, she's kind of adorable when she's acting like a person, and Ryan clearly enjoys her on that level. It's not quite the Jason Castro 180-degree hate/love switcheroo I underwent last night, but I feel vastly much better about her right now than I did yesterday. And perhaps, if Alaina did the math right, I'll like her twice this much by the time Joanna gets her ass eliminated tomorrow.
Randy thinks she improved near the end, which I didn't like quite as much, and cautions Brooke to -- in the future, you understand -- get her "slaying" on. Sometimes when Randy talks it's like this, but other times it's like this. This time is one of the latter. Simon's like WTF and Randy's like WTH and Paula's like LOL and it's all totally uninteresting, as of course it would be and always is when one of them decides it's time for a catchphrase, but doubly so because Brooke's just standing up there the whole time, like, wondering what the heck this has to do with her. Paula gets her mumbling craziness on for a while: "And that's what I love about you there you have your own thing you have your own like that's what this whole business is about it's finding someone that you hear your voice the first time and you identify that's work." Simon calls it precious and silly and ridiculous, with the joyfulness and the golden lights everywhere, which it totally is, which is why it was awesome, and he admits that too. Ryan and Simon make out a little bit and Randy desperately tries to get in on it, and the whole time Simon's like, "Um, I'm just saying she's kind of a gaywad. It's a good thing." Why doesn't anybody in the room understand what he's saying? It is because they have lost the capacity for wonder.
Halfway there! Alexandréa Lushington, proud owner of the coolest name written down since Cecilia Frot-Coutaz, sang "My Funny Valentine" at auditions, and seems to dress herself most of the time like the Marines from Aliens. There's a very...Webelos aesthetic to her manner of dress most of the time. Like now she's singing "Spinning Wheel" -- which is totally aiming for the Paula fence, because that's the kind of thing she likes, lots of loud noises, some yelling -- and yeah, she's doing this in an admittedly non-Webelos outfit. Unfortunately, it is also the non-sane outfit of a lunatic.
Airbrushed '80s Nagel-esque t-shirt of a crazy face with silver sunglasses, and giant black pants with suspenders, and her hair pulled back so far and high that she looks like a bald version of T-Boz. Vocally, she delivers about half the song, including some neato parts that are so deliberate and harmonically creative they sound weird, but the other half is like...drag night at the Den Meeting. I am so fucking confused by Alexandréa Lushington. I'm not done thinking about her, but I loved the interpretation of the song, and the dance moves.
Randy and Paula talk about how fabulous she is for awhile, vocal imbalances notwithstanding, and Simon talks major shit for awhile, comparing it to a "terrible '60s musical." Oh! Oh, he's right, that's what it is: she dresses like a cast member of that play with Jesus. Not the one I like, the other one, where they dress like this. Godspell. She dresses like an assortment of cast members from Godspell. Which is fine, but I think the problem is that you should only ever dress like one person at a time, and often she gives the appearance of having dressed like several people from Godspell all at once. ["Each of whom, if memory serves, is also dressing like several people at once." -- Sars] Ryan gets corrected on pronouncing her name -- in that way where you still have no idea what the difference is -- and then Simon and Ryan talk about the deep abyss of loneliness that separates Simon from the rest of humanity, blah blah, they are weird, Simon's so awesome that it scares Ryan deeply, maybe vice versa, blah blah blah.