Everything's bigger in Texas, we are reminded for the second time by a giant drag queen of Pink, who is discernable from Pink not so much. Some girl with an eyebrow ring...the end. Beth Maddocks (18, Coppell TX) will be singing "Beautiful Disaster," half-appropriately enough. She's screechy and wearing parts of a black potato sack. They stop her quickly enough, and Randy and Simon agree that it's only half-right. They discuss how she sings while waitressing, Simon gets bitchy about it, they kick her eyebrow-ring-wearing ass to the curb while her mean girl stripper friends watch her freak out and Ryan holds the door closed. Then there's an hour of bad auditions, a guy with thirty family members, a chubby girl who clearly loves horses, and a screaming woman in strange garb.
Then comes pretty blonde Alaina Whitaker (16, Tulsa OK) and all of her teeth, telling us how she and Carrie Underwood kind of look alike, in her mind. She busts out "Stronger," by Faith Hill, and it sounds very much like good singing sounds on this show; I don't know the song so I have no idea how much of the ornamentation on it was her idea, but it sounds great. Simon says she isn't as good as she thinks she is, although she's good, and blows her mind by using the word "latter." ("OK Fraaasier LOL," texts her brain.) Unanimous yes, and she's through. What we needed was more Carrie. Her family goes crazy and Ryan restrains her Reba-like grandmother, then that Crest commercial where Ryan flirts with heterosexuality while Sela Ward smirks behind her voiceover and looks thirty-three for the eighth decade running.
More untrue Texas bullshit stuff involving cattle, and then these scary inbred high-schoolers, boy and girl with the same long hair, that are tall like pine trees act totally freaky and sing one of those musical theatre songs where you're singing two songs at once. Or maybe they are actually singing two different songs at the same time. It's mind-blowing, like Clay Aiken, but you don't really want to investigate further, like Clay Aiken.
more so? Perhaps all-time all-star championship mind-blowing? Bruce Dickson (19, Bastrop TX), who has never kissed a girl or had sex with a woman, and cannot stop talking about it. At 13, his dad gave him a Promise Keepers locket and they got all virginal on each other, and God was like, "This is not what I intended at all." Bruce tries to explain the weird mechanics of their creepy incest lockets, like, the dad has the "heart" and the child has the "key" and one day the "heart" will go to a "lady" but until that day, they're both content with the boy shoving his "key" in the dad's "locket" whenever he feels the urge. Even the show is like, "This makes me want to throw up." If this were a girl and her dad, the authorities would be there in a hot minute, but instead the world is like, "I don't get it, I don't want to get it, the kid looks like everybody in a gay porn anyway." High school wrestling looks up from the floor and asks, "Anybody finding this inscrutable but upsetting nonetheless?" And as if I needed to tell you this, the boy walks exactly like Ryan Seacrest. He is also pretty classically victim-beautiful in that helpless blonde Dennis Cooper way, like you don't let this kid on Greyhound without a chaperone, but the dad just managed to make the whole thing somehow even grosser. Suddenly I was like, "What is A-Fed up to these days?"
Ryan is so totally interested in Brandon Green (21, Lucedale MS), even though he's totally boring and collects his fingernails in a baggie. That is like an eyebrow ring times three. They discuss the shit at length, I don't know what all they say because I was barfing, barfing, barfing. Ryan's grossed out too, and thanks the Lord for his twice-weekly manicures. Brandon offers Ryan a commemorative fingernail and then tells the judges that he wants to be a role model and not Britney Spears. You're well on your way to Britney Spears, you gross troll. The judges discuss the nails with him also, earning him Paula's eternal hate and Simon's total disinterest. He sings "Rich Girl" by Hall & Oates, which Randy thinks is funny, and sounds pretty good and Mississippi-ish, but I will never forgive him for the nails. I hope he makes it to the finale so I can figure out new ways to call him disgusting. Simon calls him "forgettable" and Paula likes his gross ass -- "You would," Simon snorts -- and Randy likes his tone, even with occasional nasality. That's two, yeah? Come on! He kisses Simon's ass a while, and has really delightfully beautiful teeth, and whatever, he's in. Screw you, Brandon Green, keep that shit at home. This is why TV is good for you, it's so you don't get weird and save your waste products. I'm convinced Howard Hughes just needed him some Gossip Girl.
Pretty, wispy Kayla Hatfield (24, Campbell TX) has two kids and some kind of debilitating illness...there we go: she got t-boned a while back, lost half her face, kept her heterochromic eyeballs, and so now she's got a Victoria Williams vibe about her. Black boots, a black skirt and shrug, and a lovely dress with matching headband. She lectures the judges about nothing whatsoever for a while, about the Iraq and like such as, and then busts into "Piece Of My Heart." And it would be really good, if she weren't obviously so fucking nervous all over the place. Which bums me out so bad, because she's sweet as hell. Simon flirts with her about how exhilarating and exhilarated and nuts she is; Paula says no (!), but they put her through even though there's pretty much no chance of her making Top 24, because she's cool. Her whole family is wacky enough that I think she's a Hatfield of the Hatfield-McCoy Hatfields, like she might break into an Irene Ryan/Gold Rush Moonshine jig at any time. So I guess watch for that!
Ryan -- fresh from a dismount off some filly, we presume -- introduces us to more shitty auditions, including a scary song from a hugely fat black guy about his mommy, a semi-cute big guy who cannot sing, a little child-man who looks like Napoleon Dynamite out of costume and cannot sing "Think" and whom Simon pronounces "creepy." Last audition of ... whatever day this is: Kady Malloy (18, Houston TX), who looks exactly like Alaina-the-Underwood from earlier tonight. She's clearly an intelligent and funny girl, despite her mall-rat looks, and I find her extremely likeable. I wish her hair were just a tad healthier, but that's it. She does an "impression" of Britney that sounds about fifty times better than the reality -- biting from her baby-voice moaning and weird stop-start phrasing -- and then heads right into "Before He Cheats" and sounds great...if exactly like Carrie herself. They stop her immediately and she goes into "Unchained Melody," which doesn't sound like anybody in particular except the way everybody sounds on this show. She does some neat tricks with her registers, though, and Randy and the rest agree that regular Kady flavor is the best flavor of all. Awesome. "Super, super talented," Simon says, and Randy totally scoffs, but they love her. Paula and Simon agree that she's the best they've seen so far. I can't disagree. Paula and Randy caution her to be herself only, at all times, like all eighteen-year-olds on Earth are so good at; Paula claps like a seal, yes, but dude, she's so together tonight I can't believe it.
Is this dude hot? Colton Swon (18, Muskogee OK) is mysteriously cartoonish and his hotness is like a cat in a gedankenexperiment box. He's got Howie Day hair, always ambiguous, and all of his cute little features are clustered in the middle of his giant head, like a Cabbage Patch doll. Luckily, he's got an eye for Urban Outfitters and Diesel fashions that are flattering, and he sings pretty well. Paula has nothing to say beyond the fact that Dateline is watching her right this second, and that he is kind of squinty. Simon thinks he's okay, doesn't sing awesome, but is totally hot and salable. He plays this last close to the vest but I know he'll be okay with him in the end. And then it's unanimous.
Ryan gives a speech about cowboys and how men are men, and so of course there comes the usual parade of gender estrangement. Fat Pink, gay kid in a Chippendale's outfit, some dude in a wig and muumuu, tranny getting tranny with it, showing us she's "versatile" with a photo of herself as a guy. Whatever.
Total farmer hottie Drew Poppelreiter (24, Saltillo MS) drives a tractor around with some song about how sexy tractors are, and then talks some crazy country talk I can't really understand. I bet he sings like a bomb. This is the first home visit, so watch him. He sticks a fucking piece of straw between his teeth and says the word "farmin'" about eleven times. He is also dressed as a farmer at the audition. Are you telling me this is what America is wanting? Because he'd be hot in anything, without all the creepy farmer sparks flying everywhere. Also, he sings exactly like George Strait. Great, I guess. I'm in. Fuck it. Simon's an instant no, because of country music, and Randy loves him, also because of country music. Paula correctly notes that he is a secret squirrel of the Scott Savol variety, with no discernable approach specific to himself, but then puts him through because that's how this show works: he's totally hot, accessible to a freaky degree, and this show is a joke.
Kyle Reinneck (20, Edwardsville IL) is a hardcore rocker who likes rockin' and guyliner, as well as having sexual relations with men in a homosexual way, and is too depressing to really talk about. Suffice to say that the main emotion he produces in me is gay bashing. He's got a "rockin'" poster of the kids he counsels (scary) with his awful fake tan, who are "rockin' out" with him, and then..."rocks out" all over "Never Again." The last time I saw a man do that to a person, it was in the back room at the Chain Drive. Please, please get this kid off my screen. It's scary, his face is weird and manic, on which Simon calls him, and he agrees that he is intense. (Perhaps it is the guyliner?) Mostly I think that he is awful, and I think he should sing less and be cool for like five seconds. This behavior is unconscionable. How inappropriate. Paula's like, "You're off-putting in every way, to a degree that you're not going to fix this with any amount of therapy or rehabilitation." Simon just about pulls out a gat. Why are we wasting time on poor Kyle? I bet he's nice. And I bet his boyfriend is forty years old, and mostly hates him, and they fight a lot about things that aren't actually very important.
Awful dreadlocks guy intros us to a long montage of "Since U Been Gone," including a bunch of people not interesting enough to highlight anywhere else in the episode. Did you know some people can't actually sing that great? Because this stupid show is here to show you that it really is true. Dudes doing the splits, falsettos, a mime, Elphaba, little girls from Sunday school, a nerd, an overenunciating person. I love that song so damn much but now I'm not sure I want to marry it anymore.
From Kelly C's Burleson, TX, comes Nina Shaw (24). She's got legs down to here and is totally adorable, even with the flower in her hair. She sings "Run To You" and boy, is it annoying. Simon calls her "old-fashioned, overthought and overdone," and Paula calls her "pageant-like." She then annoys her way through "Summertime," I think, and Randy decides that she is jazzy and that it reminds him of Amy Winehouse. Nina responds by shooting needles of bleach into her eyeballs and then jumps out the window screaming, while cutting herself. It's still not as annoying as her singing. So of course they put her through, for some stupid reason. Maybe she'll get better, maybe I'm grumpy. I don't know. Two hours is a long fucking time, you guys.
The sun is finally setting on Day Two, and like why go out on a high note or with any effing class, so of course we get this creepy dude in a pimp cape who looks stupid, talks in broken English, and gets his cape fluttered by Ryan, who asks why a man dressed in white fur and silver cape would get bows from passersby. Renaldo Lapuz (44, Reno NV, of course) whines that nobody ever bows to him, so the dude bows to him, super low, and Ryan loves it like only a short man can. It gets to a point where Ryan becomes uncomfortable, but that point is way further than you think. Inside, Paula wonders why the dude's hat says "Simon," and his answer makes no sense, and Simon laughs angrily for awhile about how his life is a dumb-ass joke for three months out of the year. Randy one-ups the dude in boring blather, and then the dude sings a song he wrote himself, about him and Simon, and everybody else. "We Are Brothers Forever," he sings. And yeah. It's kind of catchy, but still. I mean, this is the biggest show in the history of television. Do we not, as Americans, owe ourselves more than this? Everybody leaves during the fifteenth verse, and Simon is left to send hate vibes at Renaldo all alone. I'm not exaggerating. It goes on for seriously ten minutes, the same two lines that make no sense, about brotherhood and shit.
Ryan, Paula, and Randy wander around like that moaning freak earlier, laughing and singing alone. Paula finally busts out with some of her storied dance moves, and the dude finally fucking quits with that awful William Hung racist stupid bullshitty...bullshit. Simon shakes his hand and then gives him a big hug, which we see from lots of angles before he launches into a truly crazy insane speech about how wonderful Simon Cowell is. I want a hug from Simon so bad! He is "Heaven's Chosen"! Just as Renaldo says! So like the speech slash love letter to Simon is something that I totally love and agree with, but the show of course treats him all villainy and ironic, and we cut to clips of people flipping him off. Anyway, it's funny, I can see that, and I can't really figure out a way to argue that what we need is to listen more to grumpy old white dicks. This particular one that I adore, even, I can't really make the case for that, so: Twenty more people make it through, Simon is awesome, we get it. week, San Diego and somewhere else. Wake me when it's Hollywood, if you please.