Ryan bops only the elderly Australian shoulder of Michael as he ignores the rest of the boys on his way down the stair. Randy is wearing an airbrushed shirt that looks like Kimora Lee Simmons barfed on it, Paula has mom hair, and Simon is wearing light grey. Ryan asks each of the boys about their most embarrassing moments. Besides being on that show American Idol, I guess.
Luke! Menard's moment is the time his sister dressed him up like a ballerina and took pictures of it, which we see. God, that's embarrassing. You'd really have to question your masculinity twenty years later if something like that happened to you -- perhaps by wearing, as Luke! is in the video, olive drab military clothes whenever you discuss it. Probably you would go way too far in overcompensating for that moment by like never talking about it and only singing the most macho songs you can think of. Probably that's what you would do, if that was your most embarrassing moment.
Especially if the one criticism that you've gotten every week, Luke!, is that you are an insubstantial girlyman whose preternatural prettiness is like this Gorgon that gives all dudes who look at you gay panic. Probably, if the sum total of things that the public knows about you are that you are pretty to an uncomfortable degree, can't sing as such, and that we've seen you in a tutu and barrettes, you'd head over to the rocker side of the fence at least once before you go-go. Because if not, well, you'll have let us down, and we will have to give you up. Even if, as you say, you would really, really love to stick around.
So: "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," by Wham! The gayest song in the universe by the gayest band in the universe. Choose Life, Luke! But he doesn't choose Life. I think he's one of those dudes who is so whatever about that stuff, and so generally cheesy about everything, that, like...whatevs. There is no way that this will not be excruciating, so unless you're going to fast-forward past it, like, you are getting what you asked for. Giant smiles, thin awful voice, wonky bullshitty phrasing, an inability to "hit that high" just at the moment that he is declaring his desire to "hit" said "high," TWICE. Twice, that happens. Sad and gormless and dickless and silly and weak and very pretty to look at. But it's Luke! Menard: you knew what was going to happen before it happened.
Randy knows that Luke! sucks and explains how and when and where he sucked. Paula: notes that the song choice was horrible, says she once choreographed a George Michael tour, thinks Luke! is hot, and babbles until Simon tells her to shut up. Simon hated it, calls it "weak" and "girly," and gives him not a chance to win, much less make it through this week. Paula disagrees for no reason; Luke! tells Ryan that he chose the awful song because it's fun. Because that's what Luke! thinks of as fun. Which I don't doubt. He is a nice boy, a kind boy, a future husband of a boy, but one thing Luke! doesn't have is: any idea at all. Picture Luke at a wedding reception or whatever, and they start playing "YMCA." You and I both know that beautiful face lights up like Christmas, and that's...all there is to Luke! Menard. Do I like him? Yes. If he were my cousin, he would be my very favorite cousin. But sadly, this is not America's Top Cousin.
So I think that David A. is being manipulative up to the point where he knows what he would vote for, and it's shit like this, so that's what he sings. And the fact that he is right about America is sucky for America, but great for him -- and so, so great for you and me, because what a fucking circus.
Is his voice amazing? Yes. I could listen to him sing literally anything, no matter how fucking horrible, and he just demonstrated that fact, on TV. But that's not the main awesome thing about David A. The main awesome thing about David A. is that he himself is fooled by David A., like some kind of freaking Phil Dick story where it turns out that David is actually Simon Cowell in a David costume or something. Randy calls it "like watching one of your concerts," and refers to David's "vocal prowness," which is not a word. Paula loved the notes that were off, because it proved to Paula that he is not a hologram, and says his imperfections show that he is perfect. Simon says it was less good than last week, says he should have stayed at the piano, says to stop being gloomy, explains that "Imagine" is kind of a bummer song, and tells him he's Final Two material. Ryan says the bummer thing is a sign of Simon's intimacy issues, apropos of nothing, and then gets really freaked out when David heads into an unplanned speech about how the plight of the homeless is like, so sad. Barf me out to the end of the block, yes, but also: keep doing what you're doing, kid. David Archuleta is the Sanjaya of feelings.
Danny Noriega will be singing "Tainted Love," by Soft Cell via the Pussycat Dolls. Daddy needs a beer.
Okay, I'm back. Denise Richards is in the audience, looking beautiful and awesome as always. She's the Sanjaya of boobs and I love her so, so much. Danny Noriega fell down in front of "one of his crushes" and blushed like "a cute little tomato," and the whole situation was "TMTH." You know what's Too Much Too Handle? The myriad ways in which we have failed Danny Noriega. If I think about him for too long I'll start crying like a cute little tomato getting run over by a cute little Mack truck, but I'm sorry: when even your casual phrasing betrays this complete abdication from responsibility for yourself? When you have so completely crossed yourself off the list of people to check in with that you actually describe yourself in terms of third-party perception? It's so fucking infantilized and gross. Nobody ever did anything "like a cute little tomato" without hearing somebody's voice in their head describing them as a "cute little" whatever. How about instead of blushing "like a cute little tomato" you fucking stand by your convictions and sexuality and stop apologizing for it? Your sex life is not a motherfucking cartoon, and believing people when they tell you that it is will get you killed.
Anyway, Randy loves it, because Danny's a pocket gay, and wanted him to take it further frankly; Paula rightly loves his vocals, but grossly loves his weird OTT gayness; Simon points out that the purple stripes in his hair have nothing to do with the "absolutely useless" monstrosity of his performance, earning himself a half-moose. The thing is, Danny is awesome and smart and funny and cool, which makes the whole thing worse and not better, because he's "brave," but about the approved list of things -- when in fact his humor and mindset are more perverse and hilarious than probably anybody ever on this show.
Ryan is all, "I didn't even notice those [purple streaks] until now..." and Danny, without blinking, goes, "Mmm-hmm," with the arch look. Seacrest's measured eyebrowing of the camera tells me this isn't exactly improv, but mostly it's just: maybe there's a point to putting yourself in this position, as well. Maybe Danny's the Marilyn Monroe of the show and knows that fulfilling an archetype this insanely well is actually a power play. I can see that, actually. I just don't like what it does to everybody else -- also, now that I think of it, a problem with people like Marilyn, who excel at putting on the face like that. Nobody else could ever imply that Ryan was a homo with so little blowback and that's something. But on the other hand, is it worth making your own opinion so worthless that you're allowed to have true opinions about anything? Somebody on the forums called Danny the Court Jester at the coronation of David Archuleta, and really, that's true to like a Shakespearian degree. Here's hoping he uses it; his gayness is the least interesting thing about him, and the loudest.
On the other hand, there's David Hernandez, whose most embarrassing thing is apparently not his total gayness and stripper past, but: Hmm. I hit "pause" to find out what it was, and found out that it included the word "booger," so I guess I'll never know what his secret thing was. I really have no feelings or interest about this kid, actually. I've spent weeks trying to form an opinion about him, but I just cannot. He has a good voice, a blandly good body, a completely forgettable face and personality, and a squatty performance ethic with weird pronunciations. I would hesitate to call them "diva-like," now that the gay stripper thing has come out, but that's what I've been thinking all along. "It's All Coming Back To Me Now," by the Meatloaf Pandora Celine Collective, is not an interesting song. It's a VH1 Divas kind of song, which never interests me, and he does it in his usual bombastic Clay-like manner. But sadly, we already have our Clay for the year, and it's the new Elliott: Jason Castro. Sorry, but David? You're so five years ago.
Randy and Paula are as boring as he is, and Simon points out that America is easy and that by singing a drippingly stupid overwrought song in a dripping overwrought manner, he is into the Finals. David shouts at Randy about how awesome his shoes are -- they're not awesome, they're stupid -- and then more boring talking. I don't even know. When you bore me like this, and then babble like that, I just have to admit that you're managed to bore me more than Celine Dion, which thing I used to think was impossible. Why won't anybody ever sing that "offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses" song? That's like the most interesting, fucked up song I've ever heard.
While the crew is "working on a guitar," per Ryan, he interviews Michael Johns, whose seal of approval he desperately needs for some reason. Michael tells us about dressing up as "Boomer the Roo" for a rugby match, and getting beat up for being a mascot or something. Translation: "I am Australian and we do this kind of thing on the regular." Which isn't embarrassing if you just own up.
Oh dear. Imagine Michael Hutchence singing "Don't You (Forget About Me)," by Simple Minds, two keys too low. Most every note is wrong for voice, and the transpositions and changes he makes, while inventive and smart for his voice, keep the song in a painful range just under like two octaves, which is like having every word screamed at you in the same four notes, while the band is working overtime with the shimmering background sound. It's like Flatland or in A Wrinkle In Time when they go to the two-dimensional world and can't breathe. You expect him to go up, or down, but he just stays on the same level playing field, boring you to death, and you realize there was nowhere for him to go, because you got confused about dimensions again.
Also confused: Randy, who goes on at length about how this is such a homecoming song for Michael, who is after all from Australia, much like the Scottish band Simple Minds. Paula praises his strong "low range" and says that this season "all" the boys are "unique and different," and that Michael is "no exception." Which the David Cook Word Nerd in me enjoys, because mostly I like Simon calling him a big old girl, because like the Ladies this season, he's really talented and yet apparently cannot demonstrate this fact. Word. Word, Simon. He's such a wannabe and lame-o like Ronnie, and it's so sad because he is actually awesome. Michael talks about The Breakfast Club and then Paula makes zero sense about the day she leaves the planet. It's Paula, I'm not fucking rewinding. Ryan points out again that David Cook has fucked up everybody's life by demanding a whole setup for whatever bullshit he's about to perpetrate, which is why Michael's whole segment was so weird because they had to fill time to set up. Well, good.
Randy calls it a "slightly emo" version of an "extremely pop" song, and says it could be a single. I can't disagree. But then, I have a playlist that consists only of covers of "Umbrella" which usually lasts me about the length of a recap, so my concepts of "single" and "emo" are a little skewed. Also, Randy could not put together a cogent definition of the word "emo" if his life literally depended on it. Paula totally loved it, as she always does, because she knows he's surprising and talented. She agrees that it could and should be a hit today, which means I'm two for two, which hurts. Simon calls it "very brave" and says he "loved it." Thank God Simon agrees with me or my heart would break like a cute little clay bust made by a blind girl. Who I am stalking.
Ryan then takes away from Simon's star-spotting, silly story about running into Lionel in the Whole Foods or something, that Simon possibly engaged in gay sexual intercourse with Lionel Ritchie. Which is kind of like turning into Danny Noriega right before our eyes, thinking you can go there. Jason Castro, that lovable little fucker, tells us a story about how he was on a date and actually pulled out a dreadlock with his bare hand, but they did go out again.
Jason sings his broken-note Rob Thomas/Jack Johnson-sounding version of "Hallelujah," by L. Cohen via Jeff Buckley. And as usual, he seems to have no idea what he's actually singing, or where it came from...and then to fucking rock it on the merits. Voicing and phrasing are 100%, but the visual is too sweetie-pie for its own good, with a lot of fist-pumping and Jesus Eyeballs, but mostly, he's awesome and the song is awesome, but that adds up to just pretty great. I love how he eschewed the guitar this week by having one of the band guys play the guitar instead, that's genius. Not his best performance, and oversold kind of grossly, but he chose the right cover version to sing, and he did the bitch up, so that's good. Simon loves the Buckley version, as do Paula and Randy (the latter in a prickly way), but Simon loves how Archuleta the whole thing was. He says he's getting better every week, with which I agree, but only on a technical level. I am less entranced week by week, because he talks like a duck and smokes pot like a duck and plays hackeysack like a motherfucking duck, and yet...is totally the best thing in the universe.
His personality is getting less and less attractive as it goes, and I think this is going to be an issue moving forward. I remember how good Scott Savol was at mimicking boyband voices, and Jason is the same way with pothead voices. And I remember that Scott's awful personality eventually came through and freaked everybody out, and I remember that everybody's grandma loved Scott Savol. And the only difference I'm seeing so far -- besides the fact that I totally adore Jason -- is that the grandmas were more about giving Scott's retarded ass a cookie or a hug. Yet what I'm seeing with the grandmas this year is that they want to, part and parcel, fuck the hell out of Jason Castro, which is very Elliott and very -- explain please? -- Clay Aiken. We didn't have a Clay/Elliott last year -- Blake came close in terms of the poetic nonsense he inspired, but it wasn't cougar-centric in the way I'm talking about -- but I am telling you, [i]AI[/i] betting pool people, that Jason Castro is in it for the long haul. In the past two weeks I have been privileged to read more five-page creative writing essays about the magic in that boy's motherfucking soul than I ever thought possible. He's a power player, just trust me.
Jacuzzi's moment has to do with using the women's restroom for weeks, accidentally. No thank you. "All The (Wo)Man That I Need," Whitney of course, is his choice of song. It's obvious why he's in the last spot of the night -- it's the most dramatic, low-light crazy song of the night -- but honestly, this should have been switched with Michael this week. It's anticlimactic in a serious way, and as meh as I was on Michael's whole deal, Chikezie would have been better in more of a context. Randy liked it in a nondescript way, Paula was disappointed by how boringly good it was, and Simon and Chikezie get into some kind of bullshitty Encyclopedia Brown nonsense about which boring diva it is that owned the song. Simon's point -- that it's a Whitney song and you can't go there -- has nothing to do with Chikezie's point, which is that technically she didn't write the song or some shit. Which, this is always the problem I have with Chikezie, is that he tries to argue his way out of criticism, which is not how criticism works. Unless Chikezie is willing to send a handwritten note to every person in America who thinks of this as a Whitney song -- which is fucking everybody on Earth except two nerds who can't stop themselves from correcting everybody else -- then his point is moot, and anyway, what's the point of arguing with Simon? Way classier to just nod your head even if you think he's wrong, because guess what? He's not. It's your job to figure out what he's saying, and why it's true.
Simon Cowell speaks with the authority of dollars. It is not in Simon's interest to tell us that we are better, on the mean, than we are. When Simon says "people" will think something or "people" will assume something, he's not making a judgment on you or me, he's making an aggregate statement of fact. "People" means a specific self-identified group of people whose money talks. If you're reading this? You are not "people." He is not talking shit about you as an American, for example, if he says "people" will be confused by the fact that you're singing a classically Whitney song. He's not even really talking shit, he's just saying: "There are people who will be confused by the fact that you're singing a classically Whitney [or thus classically female] song. And those are the people that -- sorry, internet -- matter." There's no judgment in it: not for the singer, not for the song, not for the audience and not for us, here, talking now. There's a difference between thinking and feeling, and it really seems to trip us up when it comes to Simon. Simon doesn't care about truth or souls or spirits or the nature of our innate talent.
The music industry, and thus Simon's version of American Idol, does not follow The Harry Potter Model of Imaginary Folk Tales, in which a person's innate wonderfulness or secret gift is what gets them famous. Simon has never once uttered a qualitative opinion in the history of the show: he talks about quantitative facts, his opinion about marketing and salability. If you want to be famous and make lots of money, ask Simon. If you want to feel special and like the only magical girl in the world that can talk to dragons and unicorns, by all means talk to Paula. But only one of them is going to tell you which rough edges to rub off in order to make boatloads of cash. If you're attempting this show -- or watching it -- in the hopes of playing out the Paula narrative ("some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this"), the show is going to do its best to sell you that vision: FANT ASIA will come back and perform, the hideous undead shade of Clay Aiken will stay a virgin forever, Elliott's melting teeth will get veneers and we'll all live happy ever after. The show needs you to believe the Paula narrative, because it's the reason we watch: we all secretly know that if Simon, Paula, and Randy were sitting in our bathrooms and heard us singing in the shower, they'd start spontaneously crying and give us a check. However, the show is duty bound by physics and the supply/demand curve to simultaneously follow the Simon narrative, which is: lose some weight, cut that hair, sing your heart out, walk the line between total cliché and total rebellion, be good enough but not too good, that you land in the middle group, where all the money is.
It's Super Tuesday all over again. Simon says the real world is full of hard choices and corporate imperatives: our duty is to stay fast to the straight, hard line of reality, even if it costs us, because victory depends on truth and not hope. Paula says the entire point of dreams is making them come true; that the real world results inexorably from the choices that we make, and that by positing unlimited potential, we can get better and better every second of every day. Experience and change, change and experience. But what the show demands is not a smart median between those two narratives, but an impossible cataclysmic simultaneity of both; the journey from auditions to Chair to Semis to Finals to crowning is just a competition to see who can best embody both narratives simultaneously. Every elimination and every weird moment is an expression of the tension between those two stories, and no less for the viewing audience, who is asked to constantly shuttle between those two viewpoints. Are we voting for Jason or David A. because they're implicitly, Harry Potter-ishly special? Or are we voting for the various Simon favorites because Simon's right, and they're what sells? And who do we fight with when we can't resolve those opposites except each other? When the whole show comes down to Tyra Banks endlessly eating her own tail and being eaten, consumer-as-consumer-as-consumer, I don't know that we can really blame ourselves for the resulting craziness. It's too much responsibility at once, but it's also addictively no responsibility at all -- total power as a voter and fan, zero power as a consumer of product; having those competing visions sold and told to us again and again every single week -- which is why it's the biggest show on TV and probably always will be. Luckily, this is just entertainment, and not politics, so either way we win. Because what a fucking circus.