Woo, Paul McDonald (25, Nashville) looks like a damn movie star and sings "Maggie Mae" prettier than the real one. Jimmie Allen (25, Franklin, TN) is similarly cute and talented. Danny Pate (23, Auburndale, FL) is a cute ginger giant and makes them all sing along with him. I guess when you're gigantic you don't need to be afraid of anything. All three of them go through. It's nice for them to put the nice auditions all in one place so you can change the channel afterwards.
Supergigantic hillbilly Matt Dillard (27, Cheatham County, TN) talks super deep and his intro song is that song from Once, so you know that it's going to be heartrending in some way. Yeah, their family takes in wicked numbers of foster children and he talks about how this is "dear to our hearts," and then he sings some Josh Groban that is weird in connection with his looks, and then he says the most charming things in this Boomhauer way and they tell him he's going to get swallowed up, but Steven Tyler puts him through. Mostly I just want to keep looking at his face, so I can figure it out. Very confusing, the face. I cannot get a handle on it.
Lauren Alaina (15, Rossville, GA, a 3,500-person suburb of Chattanooga) is a Georgia girl with a whole lot of Ke$ha hair who obsesses on her redheaded best friend/cousin in a really sweet way, and then on top of it this Holly got some cancer a while back and Lauren did a singing fundraiser to fight the cancer, things like this. Crying and hyperventilating in the middle of her interview. I don't know, she's cute. I hope she sings okay.
Outside, her parents look like they're about twenty, which is also how old Lauren looks. "My cousin and I were raised like sisters" makes this a Tennessee thing, Ryan, into which there is no need to delve. I realize Ryan is from Georgia and he may well be from that kind of Georgia, but honestly it's just not worth making a thing about. Families are complex. People get pregnant like every day. Super cute people, like Lauren's sweet baby parents.
But I will be honest about this, I was not loving the look of Lauren. I think it has to do with my violent hatred of poor old Aly Michalka, whose fault it is not, and to do with how the past week has finally come crashing in on me in the last ten minutes. Not one but three reunions with people I haven't seen in like ten years -- one from college, one from high school, one from the family; a hat trick of neurosis, a veritable hat trick -- and somehow I have gained the ability to function on four hours of sleep while still not getting any work done, and how I guess alcohol has calories in it because I'm sure not eating any food this week and yet I keep going, and then this stupid show keeps refusing to record on my DVR, and then random Word crashes a minute ago, literally as I'm writing the last paragraph of this recap, and the whole thing's already hours late and now maybe I have to write the whole thing again, and there it is: Actual frustration, to the point of tears.