Ryan continues to be completely stupid and irritating. What the hell is this? What if the huge new auditorium, which has caused Chikezie to become great through the power of human energy, has also ensuckened Ryan and this is just how he is now? I will be so sad, because I think Ryan is a like a wonderful creature from a dreamland of magic and he's by far my favorite thing of this show, besides Simon. That's like the opposite of Samantha Who? That's like Ryan What? Jason Castro does the Castro version of "If I Fell," and if you like it, you like it, and if you don't like him, you won't like it, because he only does the one thing. He does it really well, and I like it, but you've already made up your mind and I don't see it changing based on samenesses like this. It's pretty awesome, especially toward the end, when the band kind of creeps up on Jason and his guitar and makes it all amazing and whatever. Because Jason Castro is the new Clay Aiken, and David Cook is the new Elliott, fans-wise, I'm trying to beat everybody to the punch to make up the fanbase names but all I can think of for Jason is "Castrati." Which makes me laugh really a lot, but I don't know if it'll necessarily catch.
The Castrati in the audience go mildly insane for awhile after the song, and then Randy is all, "That's one of my favorite songs ever" for whatever, and says "false" as his special codeword for "falsetto," and generally says that it was not a good arrangement or something. Which, I mean, have an opinion or whatever, but it sounded exactly like the regular old song, so I don't know if this is really the time to... Sometimes I think that Randy has a little bowler hat under the table with scraps of paper and he just picks out four during each song and arranges them on the table and then reads them off: PITCHY FALSE DAWG PITCHY. And maybe there's a vacuum cleaner somewhere on the FOX lot with a tiny scrap of paper in it that says "TTO" and that's why he can't pronounce that word. I dig Jason and all, but I'm not really a Castrato as I have identified them, so I don't think that I'm being defensive about this. I just think it's stupid. Paula's the original one, and she writes her granny essay about how she can feel Jason's heart or whatever, and Randy and Simon make fun of her. Simon calls it very "nighttime," like a college student in his bedroom, playing the guitar and waiting for your panties to drop. Which, I don't know if you know this, but that's...who Jason is. Obviously.
Ryan tells Simon that he shouldn't be in young men's rooms after dark, and then Simon totally tries to pull his bluff, and Ryan raises the bet and then calls, and Simon's got nothing, so Ryan wins. Because he just dared Simon to call him a homo on live television and Simon couldn't do it. And whatever, it's Transatlantic, Ryan's being a total cooze this week for some reason, and with all the back and forth of gay/not gay/sex/not sex going on here, I just realized that somebody tonight is going to sing "Across The Universe," and that upsets me. I was in college once too, and I'm sure everybody has a couple of Beatles songs that are not up for discussion, and that's mine. And this hateful show is so against me that it'll probably be Amanda that freaking does it.
Ryan manages to be so irritating that he makes Carly Smithson seem charming. I would not have thought this possible, but there you go. She'll be singing "Come Together," as she does every week in her life as the movie Coyote Ugly where she's just a girl in hard-working America with big dreams that constantly blow up in her face. And yes, the performance is totally karaoke but at least she's owning the stage, and the backup singers on the chorus are kind of cool. She seems to be having fun for the first time ever, which is notable. I still don't give a crap about her, and I find it hard to understand how anybody could ever care one way or the other about her, but at least it makes sense for her to be in this room. Randy notes how exciting that must have been for her, correctly points out that she was in tune the whole time. Paula says it was "strange" because it was like watching somebody who is already a star, and welcomes her to the Top 12. Simon congratulates her on finally picking the right song after weeks and weeks of failure. Awesome, that was awesome. Then he compares her to Kelly Clarkson, which is nice for Carly but makes me want to barf.
David Cook continues to find himself intoxicating. And the thing is, I kind of do too? But I feel bad about it. It's like the Paula/Simon thing last week: I hate him and love him, both at once separately. It doesn't even out or split the difference, it's just both things happening at once, not ambivalent but just bivalent, which kind of make me feel crazy. At least when he's singing you don't have to worry about it, and here's the trick: don't look at him while he's singing, and it's awesome. He calls his life "quasi-quiet" and himself a "drink-slinger," for example, and of course he's going to be singing "Eleanor Rigby" because that's how he rolls. But first, Ryan and Simon make out for awhile about something mysterious and creepy, and I don't want to know, just sing.
Afterward, she cries and cries, and Randy is like, "That was like watching your dreams come true." Aww. Paula congratulates her on picking songs that make everybody fall in love with her because they're songs that allow her to express her magical self. Simon calls it -- "again" -- one of the best performances of the night, for the third week in a row. He says we've seen karaoke tonight, and then there's the serious raw reality of Brooke happening in the middle of things and turning this show legit. Even Ryan chills out and brings her a handkerchief, and comforts her shaking, crazy self as she babbles adorably about how the stage is all crazy and there are lights and cheering and a string section, and Ryan brings her her shoes, because you know Brooke is just wandering this world in her bare feet, lettin' it be, and Randy and Simon make fun of Ryan and say that he wants Brooke's shoes for his own tiny exquisite feet, and Ryan manages once again to make them look like date-raping fratholes for calling him a fag on TV. How does he do that? I think that he got special gay powers from Danny Noriega, that's what I think. Like whether or not he's gay, who cares, but Danny was like his private Oprah who told him to remember his spirit and not let Simon in there to make him feel weirded out or thugged out. Ryan Seacrest has perhaps finally learned to let it be. I don't think that it will last but I am excited for him right now. Hopefully he will be normal and nice for the rest of the show, which is now half over, but my hopes are not high on that front -- I think the new stage is just too exciting for him. He certainly won't stop talking about it.
David Hernandez tells us about his job at a pizza bistro. He says the words "pizza bistro" like a million times, which no matter how many times you say "pizza bistro" it still means teabagging out-of-town businessmen. He looks better than he's ever looked in his package video, and then he launches into "I Saw Her Standing There." And as usual, it's mannered to a fault, completely over-rehearsed and boring and fake, like...ABBA singing songs phonetically. I never feel like he knows what the words of the songs are or anything, because every note is so cheap and planned out and cheesy and it's like, do you even enjoy this? Because you should enjoy your job, and singing is your job, and you have the voice for it, but then every week it's just boring and by-the-numbers. It's like he took a mail-order course in Being On American Idol and Refrigerator Repair, or even got his degree. Both Randy and Paula...basically tell him that exact thing. Too many runs, Paula says. Simon: "No. No. No. Corny verging on desperate. Rabbit in the headlights. Not very cool." Word to all the above. I wish that David Hernandez had been on this show in the third season or earlier, because that kind of bullshit would have flown years ago, but now it's too artificial and creepy. He is very cool about it, though, explaining to Ryan that it's easier to pull back than to push forward, and that if he's lucky enough to be here week he will stop doing that shit. Good for him! I would like to see him actually sing a song for once; that will be nice.