Ten minutes in, still no content. We're almost there! Can you feel it? Mandisa will be up first, but not before yet another video package telling her story thus far: "Do we need a bigger stage?" "Simon, you hurt me." That's the whole tale. She'll be singing "Never" by Heart, and I automatically sit up a little straighter because I love Heart, and also because this is when Carrie won last season. Mandisa is dressed very boudoir photo shoot, classy but also ready for bed. It is a perfect power-pop song for this kind of show, and Mandisa rocks every little corner of it. Not to get all Paula here, but Ann Wilson's voice is no small challenge, and Mandisa is so up to it. She's also crazy exuberant and dancey and not at all self-conscious or nervous. It's a pleasure to watch.
Randy says she had a few "sharp moments," a point on which everyone but Paula agrees. Including Mandisa. Paula says Ann and Nancy are a lot to take on, and she brings up Carrie, and then she says this: "I think you broke the record for...for just magnificent." You heard it here first. The record for just magnificent has officially been broken by Just Mandisa. Poetic, I think. I'm trying to figure out just what Paula might be on tonight. She's looped, that's for certain, but she's not displaying the violent tendencies she sometimes does. Plus, she keeps going into these trances where she won't speak and we all wait for minutes and minutes for her to start talking again. So, some sort of downer, I think. ["It seemed like the work of Madame Gin to me." -- Sars] Anyway, Simon says Mandisa just threw down the gauntlet to the other eleven women, which: yeah she did. Ryan asks after the state of her relationship with Simon after the whole pre-emptive forgiveness bit. Ryan doesn't specifically ask why the note he left in Simon's tackle box has thus far gone unread, but the implication is there. (Side note: Five weeks ago, I haughtily claimed to Jacob that I was so over the easy Brokeback jokes then littering the pop culture landscape, and I wouldn't be lowering myself to make them in my recaps. Cut to now, my resolve having been broken by Ryan and Simon within three recaps. Try not to laugh too hard, dude.) Mandisa jokes that she and Simon are "practically dating," and of all the one-liners that will be fed to contestants for Ryan Time this week, that was the most spontaneous-sounding.Kellie Pickler is back with her tales of daddies in jail. To be fair to Kellie, it's the same clip they showed when she auditioned, so it's the show being so relentless here. It's all image-making at this point. They show her lying on her bed writing in her diary, folks. This is a character. We see even more evidence of Kellie sucking ass during Hollywood week. But they're keeping her around because they think they can sell her. They can sell her on her personality better than they could sell someone else on their voice. And here's the thing: it's no different than why Taylor Hicks is still around. They didn't take Taylor into the Top 24 because they were shamed into it by his beautiful voice. They found something there that's sellable, just like there's something in Kellie that's sellable. Grey hair = blonde. Post-stroke DeNiro = Joey Potter's dad.
Regardless of which CD she first heard it on, Becky winds up singing the Patti Smith version of the song, which you can tell by the intonation and the lyrics. Patti always sang it like a scary come-on. It's...not a great song for Idol. Or maybe I'm just missing the spazzy delights of Misses Merchant and Smith and feel the lack thereof leaves a lot of unfilled space. It's not like Patti Smith wouldn't have gotten bounced at auditions for this show anyway. (Simon: "It was a little like watching an art exhibit inside a dumpster, Patti. Just appalling.") Becky's performance is uncomfortably situated in between rock and pop, and that's certainly part of the problem. She hits the bridge quite nicely, but she duffs the final note without even going for anything. A mixed bag, is what that was. Or else it was purely awful, but I'm taking it easy on her because I love the song. Your call. The judges all agree on the following things: a) it was a better performance than they expected; b) there were hella off notes; and c) she's gorgeous. So...congratulations? Randy calls upon the Dawg Pound for support, and he tells Paula this is Dawg Pound '06. Paula wonders how that's different from Dawg Pounds '05 and '04. Um, less eyeliner, more intact tracheas? You think Paula actually knows we're in a new season yet? Paula mentions the off notes, and Simon does that thing where he gets all fake aghast when Paula says something critical. Ryan Time includes a nod to Jessie in the audience, and when Ryan tries to mimic her bundle-of-nerves posture, he looks possibly the girliest he ever has. We also notice that Becky tends to bend her knees at a curtsy quite often, which runs totally counter to the silhouette she casts and makes me think she doesn't get her image at all. She's super-poised and articulate the rest of the time, so it bugs me that this one tic is making her look so coquettish. Ryan has to stand on a box so as to not be completely emasculated by the Amazonian charms of Ayla Brown, whose gauchos are taller than he is. Ayla starts talking about her "team" that is supporting her, and I realize that it's still basketball season -- her senior year season on a team on which we'll assume she's the best player, what with the BC scholarship and all. That's gotta be hard for her. I never played team sports past the age of tee-ball or whatever, but I was around it a lot in high school and Ayla's got to have some conflicting emotions about it all. Even more conflicting if you're on her team, no doubt ("Power ballads can't play the low post, Ayla."), but Ayla expresses her support for them sincerely. She a pro in that way you say a seventeen-year-old is "a pro." Meaning: not exactly, but she's doing all the things she's supposed to do. She's been interviewed by her local sports page a lot. Her video clip narration is all about sports metaphors, getting herself psyched up, and taking her criticism well. She'll be singing "Reflection," which was originally sung by Christina before she was Xtina. It's from that Disney movie Pocahontas, the one where Demi Moore voices a gypsy who married the Scottish ogre. I love that one. No, okay, it was from Mulan, which is about a warrior princess from China. China. China. Hey, don't blame me, blame my high school history curriculum. Point being, Mulan was a girl in boy world, just like when Ayla played football on a team full of...wait, played football? I believe that's a point for Jacob.
Stevie Scott tells Ryan that she is unique, mostly because she's Rogue from X-Men. Don't touch her, Ryan! ["And for God's sake don't let her Nadia Turner her ass by singing tonight!" -- Jacob] The video journey tells us all about her since we've never seen her before. Stevie's the one with the opera voice, and Simon's confused as to why she doesn't just sing opera, then. She sounds pretty beautiful in this clip of her singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," but it's still an ill-fitting voice for popular music, I think. She's singing "To Where You Are" by Josh Groban, which is counterintuitive right off the bat because Groban's voice is so deep and hers is so high. She seems to think that since Groban would be just as out of place in this competition as she is that they're both out of place in the same way, and they're not. Anyway, this song is...a funeral song. That's what it's there for. I spent long minutes trying to place exactly which funeral I was at where they sang this song, and I couldn't do it, so I wound up frustrated and sad. Set that mood, Stevie. Listening to it a second time, it's not as bad as I first thought. I can see what she thought the appeal would be in singing this rather ethereal song in her rather ethereal register, but she can't hit all the notes, for one thing. And there's no oomph behind the singing, to get vague about it. No power there at all. ["You know when a-cappella college girl groups would try to do 'R-E-S-P-E-C-T,' and there'd be all this trilling and pageant smiling and chintz all over the place, and you were like, 'It's not bad, exactly, and yet: no'? Stevie." -- Sars] Randy didn't like it, but in reaching into the Big Randy Grab-Bag of Critiques, he pulls out the "boring" card, which is the wrong one, I think. He says he "daydreamed" throughout the performance, which is pretty impossible because how could he not have been riveted to the "what the hell does she think she's doing?" nature of that performance? It was bad, but it wasn't boring. Randy does get to the crux of it, eventually, when he says he "just didn't get it at all." Bingo. Paula did, but Paula's nuts. No, I'm kidding. Paula actually gets at my "ethereal" point, and admired the gutsiness of it all. Stevie is crushed, y'all. Even as Paula is being so nice, she already knows how this is going to play out. Simon's almost sorry to tell Stevie how awful it was, though that doesn't stop him from making the first stop of the semifinals at Simileville, as he says it was "like a horrible Sunday lunch and a child gets up to sing out of tune." Stevie tries to wheedle her way out of it, but it's not happening. Paula keeps trying to tell Simon he's wrong even though he's not, and Stevie is now just up there taking it, and Ryan, get the fuck up to the stage, already! God. You have one job, dude. Shelter the sweet, pale girl from Simon and Paula's demoralizing tug-of-war. Ryan gives Stevie a chance to speak -- and here's where it gets bad -- so she says how she knows she can bring it (Simon: "not tonight, you didn't"), and if her style isn't what America loves then she can change herself to suit our whims. There's a way to convey that attitude without making it seem like the show has broken you. The show has broken Stevie. Simon's like a dog with a bone here, and I'm not sure why. He keeps interjecting about how bad she was. Does he want her to get sympathy votes? Why would he want that? I think she's going home at this point, but if she doesn't, it will be because viewers felt sorry for the beating she took here. Weird.
Ryan approaches, cautiously, and Brenna is fronting like crazy. She won't stop with the clawing. She looks like a moron. Ryan brings up how she and Simon have the same birthday, and she makes a "sexy" face at Simon and grosses me out. (P.S.: I just learned this week that Jacob, Sars, and Reese Witherspoon all share the same birthday. Which makes me love and fear them all even more than I already loved and feared them. Do not harass Sars at Disney's California Adventure, y'all. You'll never see it coming. ["Morning, Mr. R! Looks like you could use a cupcake!" -- Sars]) Anyway, Brenna sucks. Ryan leads her to a "same day, different centuries" joke, she acts like she thought of it herself, Simon is loving all of it, and Ryan hates her. Me too, dude. She works the neck like crazy and promises America more awfulness if they vote for her. Then Ryan asks her to pose some more while he reads her numbers. And she does. A lot. Hate! Pose, pose, pose. And then, right before the end, her face cracks. She can't not laugh at herself and her ridiculousness. Ryan: "We're almost there." Brenna: "I know, sweetie." Awesome. I mean...wait. Fuck! I like her again. How does this keep happening? Heather Cox seems nice and all, but she is so toast. Apparently she was sick all through Hollywood week, but we never saw that, so we never got to feel bad for her. She'll be singing the Tsunami Tsingle, also known as "When You Tell Me That You Love Me," which is why we know she's toast. ["And that she's been kept in a box her entire life by twisted psychos with a weird sense of irony. And that she's a total stripper." -- Jacob] Talk about the most boring song ever invented by human beings. I like Heather's rationale for it -- she loves the show, watches it like a stalker -- but when we haven't seen her before, singing this song is not going to put her on our radar. Even the girls in Suffragette City are taking a powder here. The judges basically say they liked her better when she had laryngitis. Simon says she sang like she was taking "elocution lessons," which made me laugh. She played it safe, says Simon, and was forgettable. Paula's like, "They'll remember how beautiful you are." And I get how Paula's opening up her eager eyes and bright-siding everything for everyone, but Simon's exactly right when he calls her on that patronizing bullshit. "At least you're pretty" is not a compliment, not really. And Heather, to her credit, is like "thanks?" Ryan asks her if she though the song was too safe, but Heather doesn't think so. She thought Vonzell knocked it out last year. Oh, Heather. Poor, misguided Heather. Ryan asks after her health and she says she's all better. Simon, in his one dick move of the night, says he would have lied and said he was still sick. Ryan gets real tight here, like he's seriously pissed off at Simon but he's not letting it show, and says to Simon that he would've worn a t-shirt underneath that sweater. Girl-friend! Brenna ain't the only kitten with claws tonight.
Back from the commercial, Ryan addresses the elephant in the FOX offices and assures us that we're not missing anything at the Olympics. He promises (threatens?) that if we stick around, they're gonna grease up Randy and he'll luge across the set at the end of the show. "Who needs a flying tomato when you've got a slippery Jackson?" to Ryan, Melissa McGhee's like, "Way to prime the audience for me, bro." ["Yet, valid." -- Jacob] Melissa's a pageant girl, and says that the cattiness in that arena is way more prevalent than among the AI women. Oh, to see what pose Brenna is striking right about now. We see Simon really did not care for her at her audition, and from then on her mission was to "win Simon over." That's how Simon gets to be the daddy on this show. He withholds love. Melissa's singing Faith Hill's "When the Lights Go Down," which maybe it only seems like it gets sung every season. It's a pretty good performance. Her voice is kind of scratchy at certain notes, like she might have been sick, or else that's just where her ceiling is. It's just not very impressive, mostly because none of it is anything we haven't seen before. Faith Hill is the Stevie Wonder of the female performances. You can't ever sing it well enough that it's going to impress me, because even as we speak, someone else is singing that same song. No one notices the wallpaper unless you fuck it up.Randy is all over the map with his comments -- she's pitchy, she worked it out, it wasn't amazing, she has a good voice, but it didn't all come together -- but Paula calls it a "shining moment," which is kind of crazy. Simon starts to say how he's not sure he would have remembered her before she sang tonight -- and it sounds like he's working his way up to a compliment -- but Melissa cuts him off and mentions how this is the first time we've heard her sing on this show, six weeks into it. It's a pre-emptive Melinda Lira strike, and Melissa has reportedly been venting about this all week. Simon doesn't appreciate it, because he's pretty much of the mind that if she hasn't been shown on TV yet, she hasn't deserved to be. Which isn't quite the asshole line of thinking it seems to be if you look at it from the perspective of Simon, who feels there is no better arbiter of talent than he. If he felt Melissa was too boring to waste TV time on, then she was. Period. That's his justification. He compliments her singing but calls her "lifeless." She's shocked at the criticism, or at least fake shocked. She looks like about a dozen girls I knew back in high school. Generically familiar. The crowd boos like they're a See-N-Say -- a perfectly timed three-second "booooo" and then they stop on a dime. They don't care about Melissa McGhee any more than I do. Once again, Ryan lets a contestant hang awkwardly while he's late cutting in on the judges. This is what happens when you give the show two hours. Say what you will about time constraints, but how welcome is it usually when Ryan cuts off the judges and their yammering? Ryan asks about the improvements she's been making, and Melissa says she's been trying to really feel the songs. She alludes to struggles in her personal life -- apparently she's got a Pickler-worthy family life that we've never seen, obviously -- but Ryan doesn't follow up, because he gets paid by the show, not by nice young women who haven't gotten any TV time.
You can tell Lisa Tucker has been in stage musicals and Star Search and whatever other poise-building activities you can think of. Girl has her shit together at sixteen -- or thirty-seven or however old she really is. She's singing "I Am Changing," by Jennifer Holliday, because what else is a preternaturally poised girl with great pipes going to sing? She's so great with this performance. Her eyebrows get very severe when she's singing, like we're supposed to smell what the Tuck is cooking. She purposefully avoids a glory note in the middle, to great effect, because it makes you think she's better than that. She's got her life together now. It's a fantastic Jennifer Holliday performance, which is another way of saying that it would be a showstopper if it were on Broadway. And we all know how Simon feels about Broadway. But it's cool here, and Simon doesn't bring it up, because Lisa's in it for the long haul and is pacing herself. Randy once again says a whole lot of things, but it ends up as: good stuff. Drunk Paula grabs hold of his use of the word "dude," because yeah, that's new and unusual terminology for our Randy. She also tells Lisa, "You light a fire inside my heart," which Lisa graciously accepts as you would anything said by a crazy drunk lady at a party or other social function. Simon calls her "special" and forecasts a huge career for her "down the line." Damn, Lisa's parents are fine-lookin' people. Good on ya, Tuckers. Up in the RC Cola lounge, Ryan is talking to Kinnik, who is off-camera. Dudes, if you don't want us to vote for her, just say so! Her video journey tells us that Simon liked her right off the bat, and that she's all class. She sings "Get Here," by Oleta Adams, a song I don't believe I've ever heard before. Man, Kinnik is beautiful. The song is kind of boring, but Kinnik sings it with some spark, and on her last note she bends back at a Matrix angle. Randy calls the song "stylized" and says Kinnik was too sharp for most of the middle of it. He gives her a six out of ten. Paula starts off with "I think you look stunning." Cut that shit out, Paula! She says exactly this: "Sharp notes...a few. So what?" Who needs singing anyway? She says Kinnik was powerful and her "showmanship" was on point. That makes more sense, but don't couch it in "you're pretty, so off notes don't matter." Simon's critique boils down to her being boring and older than the hills. Pretty much. He says the teenagers in this competition showed up her twenty-eight-year-old self. Kinnik's awesome about this, and says she's "willing to learn, even from the babies." Ryan asks her what she was thinking when Randy called her a six. Kinnik: "At least a six and a half?" Heh. That one wasn't scripted, so points for Kinnik. Randy indeed bumps her up as far as a 6.6. Stop reminding people of the Olympics, Jackson!
Ryan's on the balcony with Katharine McPhee, and he asks her to critique the judges. She equivocates, because she's not an idiot, and Ryan sort of apologizes for asking such a loaded question. For what it's worth, this is the second time in two weeks that Kat has been called on to critique the process -- if you recall, last week, she bitched about that Crystal woman getting eliminated after what seemed like prompting. Her video package shows Simon telling her in Hollywood to cool it with all the piled-on vocal gymnastics, and I'm glad someone said it. It's been the one thing keeping me from full-on rooting for her. She's singing "Since I Fell for You," which she says was "originally sung by Barbra Streisand," and that may or may not be true, but I so don't care. Kat talks about how Babs was always getting sung during the vocal lessons her mom gave when she was a kid. It's a very bluesy song. I actually can't picture Streisand singing it. Kat's funny in that she moves around a lot with her upper body but her legs stay pretty much planted where they are. So it's all bending at the waist, like she's a dashboard hula dancer. She's also frickin' great, putting a lot of attitude on display and playing up to the camera in very good ways. She's so much fun to watch.
Randy loved it, and calls upon the Dawg Pound one last time for support. Kat dances like a goof, because she is. Paula is so happy she gets to compliment a good performance again, instead of faux-compliment a mediocre one. She also can't control her arms ("Danger! My hooks are flailing wildly!"), but she's in good company because Kat can't stop swinging her shoulders around. So fidgety! Paula gets Randy to back down from his "a guy will win the show" stance -- predictable as all hell, and most likely scripted -- and he tells the Dawgs that they'll have to bring it tomorrow. Well, now that he's said that. Simon says there were four "very, very good" performances tonight, and hers was the best. We'll assume Mandisa, Paris, and Lisa were the other three. Someone in the audience yells, "Whoa!" High praise for Miss McPhee!
This is so much fun right here: so Ryan asks her how it feels to get that kind of praise, and Kat proceeds to spaz right out. "Amazing! Ahhh!" She does a little happy dance. Ryan is geeking out right with her. "And you make it look easy, do you know that?" Kat: "I do? Oh, that's good." Then she gets self-conscious and apologizes to the audience behind her that they had to "stare at [her] butt the whole time!" For the record, Katharine is gorgeous. Absolutely. At this point, she and Ryan are a girly, giggly mess. She's still fidgeting like crazy, and Ryan eventually has to turn her around to face the camera. At first I thought Ryan was helping her try and hide her gigantic fat (only not) ass. But no, Ryan is just programmed for TV, so this "on your mark" stuff is involuntary muscle action. Kat then air-kisses Ryan and says he's , after she kissed all three judges last week. Ryan freaks out, as you might assume he would, but Paula saves him, telling Kat not to do it. Awkward. No, actually it's all ridiculously cute and I could stand for several weeks of The Kat and Ryan Giggle Hour.
To review: Mandisa, being Ann Wilson in all the best ways; Kellie aggressively pointing; Becky performing at an odd tempo; Ayla being better than we've seen her before; Paris doing the little teapot arm, Heath Ledger-style; Stevie continuing to be less and less horrible every time I hear her; Brenna being boring; Heather being exponentially more boring and looking kind of like Kelly Preston; Melissa being very good, in retrospect, if maybe losing her voice a tad; Lisa being a bit cabaret, to coin a Simon phrase; Kinnik holding a note for a millennium; and Kat not letting us look away for even a second. And then? Dancing like assholes! Awesome. This is just the guys, because they'll be on tomorrow. Of note: Will has rhythm, Gedeon and Bobby have none, Kevin flails around like the tadpole he is, Taylor is having a nervous episode of some sort, Ace is too cool to dance for you, The Rad would be pretty great if he'd just not sing, and Patrick is so awesome it hurts, except that's apparently only for me. Sigh.
As we go to credits, Ryan disappears into a sea of women. Stevie and Brenna are mugging like you would not believe. They both kind of have to. Only Stevie has the sense to feel shame about it, I'll wager. Ayla is lording over Ryan's shoulder because she's eight feet tall and he is a teensy little man. Ryan's mic stays live, so I'll try to pick up as much of what's said as I can. Brenna is exactly like we want her to be: "Ryan! We love you!" Then she does a booty dance at center stage, while the rest of the girls can't get far enough away from her. Ryan (to someone, not Brenna): "They can't see us, so…" Hmm. Then he tells Becky that the stage right now is "the hottest club in town." Becky immediately looks around for a pole. Oh, kidding.
Coming up : Jacob, with the guys' performances. There are teeth and there are toddlers. What's not to love? ["Bucky Covington." -- Jacob] ["…GEDEON." -- Sars]
After that: I'll be back with the results show. And then this whole ridiculous schedule-stuffing nightmare will be ov-- what do you mean, "week, too"? Oh, hell.