Ryan's wearing a suit jacket and jeans, Randy is wearing a nice argyle cardigan and booing Simon with his usual lack of class, Simon is wearing what you think he's wearing, Kara's looking hot in a silver lamé cougar top under a velvet crop-sleeved blazer, and Paula is dressed like ... a Playboy Bunny. About last night, Randy says his usual lack of anything; Kara points out that Stevie, Casey and Stephen sucked last night. Randy mentions "Simon" a thousand times and Paula and Kara gamely agree, and then Ryan says he's talking about the show itself, not Simon's extracurricular sucking.
Simon loves it, Randy's scandalized, Kara can't believe it because she doesn't know how this goes every Wednesday; Paula demonstrates a limited awareness of what's going on around her like always. Simon says that Kara was fantastic last night, and even better at dinner afterwards. Thank God we've raised the bar. There's a long, bewildering montage of old footage of the twelve victims tonight notable only for how obnoxious Jackie Tohn seems to be most of the live long day.
Group sing! What a terrible idea! "I'm Yours" -- which I guess is another artifact from the long-discredited conspiracy to convince me that Gavin DeGraw, Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz are three discrete entities -- begins with awkwardly dancing and creepily nervous Brent, studly Michael, and Anoop attempting to harmonize, then over to Gokey/Fowler/Ricky acting similarly weird; Danny does a particularly fucked-up Botox facial freeze on mention of "divine intervention," perhaps inevitably, followed by terrible dancing; Tatiana mugs her ass around in front of the girls, Casey does more of those freaky faces she makes, Ann Marie is already gone; barely there Stevie/irritating Jackie/pixie-dressed Alexis are acting recognizably Jamaican somehow; There's one girl taking the high notes really beautifully, but I can't figure out who it is. I think it's Jackie. Actually if you close your eyes so you can't see them all acting jerky and fucked up -- and Casey inventing lyrics by the handful -- this sounds way more awesome than you might have expected. Then they all go into a sort of Isadora Duncan Powwow move, and it's finally over.
It's a sign of my waning patience with this crew that seeing all twelve of them on those couches is already giving me a toothy sort of schadenboner. Up top you got Gokey and Tatiana on one side and Sarver on the other, with doomed Brent and Ann Marie in the middle. The bottom has Alexis in the middle and Anoop on the right side, with Ricky and Jackie between them, and on the left are Casey and Stephen, who looks gigantic and marvelously dressed as usual. Among all these large, sensibly dressed people, Alexis's outfit -- boots, mini, tiny vest, and fedora -- looks sort of desperately individual. Well, and Casey looks like the hostess at a sex club-slash-buffalo wing joint.
Ryan's like, "Last night was sort of ... raw." He calls it also intense, and we see the screaming epileptic fit that was Jackie Tohn, which Randy and Kara stupidly praised. Ricky Braddy may or may not even exist, so of course Randy loved it. Sarver could literally stand there and read the phone book in a Rosie Perez voice and it wouldn't hurt him one single bit; Stevie was freakishly self-possessed after stinking up the joint; Casey did her best Alaska Governor; Stephen was violently boring; Brent and the rest of the world had no idea what the fuck he is even doing here; Tatiana was fucking brilliant solely to piss me off; Anoop was fabulous and the only person to benefit from the usually-fab backup singers; Ann Marie followed a vocal miscalculation with a social one; Alexis was just about the cutest thing and got the Kelly nod from Paula and Simon; Danny Gokey did the exact same shit he's going to be doing until May.
"Who gave you hope, America? The votes are in," Ryan hints, because obviously that means Danny. Ryan asks Jackie how she did, and she fucks around because she can't help herself and finally gives herself a 91% final grade. The fact that she does this while wearing one gold hoop and one earring most resembling a hand-woven potholder that has been destroyed by animals is a clue that this number may be inflated. Anoop says nice things that I can't even pay attention to, and Ryan gets all in his face and acts adorable. Of course, Jackie's got to get her stupid face in there and throw off the bit, but whatever. Ryan and Tati agree that she is apparently "humbled" to be here, and they talk about how she's wearing a Paula Abdul ring. Tati gets a little weird, and Ryan tells her to pay attention. She talks insane for awhile, and giggles to herself, and Ryan moves on to Stevie's giant face.
She's proud she's gotten this far, Stevie explains, and at Ryan's prodding she goes into the whole old/young thing once again, which is boring and clueless and makes me think she has a stage mom and has been listening to this shit for 22 hours. "It's like being in a relationship, it's tough to please somebody," Ryan says, and even Stevie laughs openly at this, because the idea of Ryan Seacrest actually holding a relationship together is laughable even for me, who has been in a committed relationship with him for like five years at this point. You'll never have to try to please me, Sprinkles. Just keep doing what you're doing, and never age.