Back from commercials, Ryan's in one of the balconies, shilling for the summer tour. Not on your life. Well, maybe to go laugh at Ace. And see if Kat and Chris hit up that Seether duet I've been itching for. And see how many weird-ass outfits Paris can sport in one evening. Maybe. By which I mean "no."
The lights go down in the theater as Katharine sits on the stage for "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Before this show, there was a lot of debate over whether it was a mistake to sing this song tonight. Personally, I didn't think she had a choice. When Simon made such a big deal last week about this being her "moment" and how it was the best performance of the season, he basically told her she had to sing it again this week. The final performance show is always the show where you give the consensus choice for your best performance. It's unfortunate for Katharine that that performance didn't show until the -to-last week, but it doesn't change the fact that this was her "vehicle." She had to perform it, back-to-back weeks or not. It's essentially the same performance as last week, though I think the vocals are stronger and more polished, which tells me last week wasn't a fluke. Which is good to know. It's nice to see Kat get this moment -- and get it twice -- before it's all finished. She spent so much of the season falling just short of something like this, and she deserved to have it all click for her, I think. ["I…didn't think it clicked either time. It got kind of whiny at the top end of her range, which I didn't enjoy; I don't like her, but I like her voice fine when she's not throwing sparks off those top notes, which it sounded like she was doing on this song." -- Sars] Once again, Kat's in tears by the time the judges begin to speak. Randy reflects the popular apprehensions about performing the same song two weeks in a row, but he says she worked it out again. That she did. Paula...oh, let's just go verbatim once again before the season's over: "Katharine, it's no mistake that it's God-given talent that you are possessed with...that you are possessive of. That every father around this country is feeling the tears down their face as your father does every time the camera goes...on him." The beauty of it is that she speaks it like she's taking diction lessons. How can she possibly be drunk when she pronounces her words so distinctly? Holy crap, did anyone else see her on Larry King? I think I saw her down a bottle of pills on the air. And, of course, Larry's all, "Why do people think you have a drinking problem? Is it because you never make sense when you talk?" It was awesome. Simon says that while she "got slaughtered" in round one, she's come back with her best performance of the competition to date. He declares her "back in the game." Ryan takes the stage and points out the hundreds of McPhee family members who are, at this moment, incapacitated by the weeping. He asks her how she feels and she's says pretty great, considering her earpiece died on her up there. This was the thing last week where I thought she was trying to brush a piece of hair out of her earring. It was actually an earpiece she was using to find the key during the initial, a cappella part of the song. When that part was over, she pulled the piece out of her ear. This time, the monitor didn't work, but she managed to start on the right key anyway. ["That I was impressed by." -- Sars] Kat delivers this in the very hyper, bouncy, giggly manner that has characterized all her best interactions with Ryan. One of these days, FOX is going to convince him to do a prime-time special called Ryan Seacrest's Slumber Party, where his guests will be Kat McPhee, Nadia Turner, Simon Cowell, and that guy that Jake Gyllenhaal keeps getting photographed with, and it will be this kind of thing for two whole hours. Bouncing, giggling, gossiping about Clay and Lindsay Lohan and Jared Leto, and lots and lots of schnapps. I can't wait.
After the break, Ryan's in the audience with Taylor's parents. Taylor's dad looks vaguely Tom DeLay-ish. Ryan gets Dad to say "Levon," because that's the song Taylor has chosen to sing . Ryan calls this the song that "made Simon eat his words," which is dumb on multiple levels, primarily the one where Simon doesn't ever say anything unless it ultimately benefits him, so "eating his words" probably had nothing to do with it. Onstage, Taylor tries to do that walking down the rampway thing that Katharine does sometimes, only she tends to slink down, whereas Taylor is currently doing his best impression of Frankenstein's monster. After spinning the Wheel O' Affectations, Taylor has opted to sing "Levon" in the Ray Charles voice. I can't fault the song itself, because it's Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and those two could produce some fine-sounding songs when they wanted to. Which is why I'm super-pissed that Taylor has made me roll my eyes at this song. That sucks. What sucks even more is...Taylor, actually. I was not expecting that. He sounds way more nasal than usual, and he can't seem to find the right pitch. Which makes the annoying way he sings the song even more annoying. Of all the ways I figured Taylor would bother me tonight, I didn't actually consider "singing poorly" to be one of them. It's a refreshing change of pace. Except for the part where Taylor looks bored and/or terrified. When he's done, he and Paula smile at each other like a pair of lobotomy outpatients. Randy does the "check it, baby" thing he does when he's preparing to give bad news. He keeps it real and calls it "pitchy." The crowd turns on Randy frighteningly fast, but come on. That was not up to the usual standards of Taylor Hicks and his well-sung assholery. Paula manages to be even meaner by trying to be nice. She tells Randy, "What seems 'pitchy' to you is the essence of who Taylor is." So Taylor...is pitchy? It's cool to see Taylor have to process that the way Kat's been having to for the last few weeks. Paula's backhand packs more of a punch than you'd think, especially when she doesn't know that she's giving it. Simon tells Paula that she just made absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever. Simon, what seems like "making no fucking sense" to you is the essence of who Paula Abdul is. He tells Taylor that this was probably not up to the quality of the first performance, and that Katharine takes the round.
Then...did anybody else get a chill at about 8:35 EST last Tuesday? Because I hit my pause button just now, and it's the most frightening thing I've ever seen. I've thankfully never had to witness anything like Leatherface emerging from my pantry door with a chainsaw or having that girl from The Ring crawl through my television screen into my living room, but this might be worse. In the audience, we get a reaction shot down a row of seats in which Bucky Covington and Constantine Maroulis are seated two seats apart. I don't think I can have kids now. That poor girl seated between them, who I think is Bucky's girlfriend...I think I'd like to send her a box of Lysol cleansing wipes. I can't stop imagining the rest of their evening. Bucky sitting in his hotel room, itching his scalp, while Constantine tries to impress him with the story of how he almost totally scored with Alex H. from Laguna Beach. I've never really felt sorry for Bucky before, but just imagine how many times he had to avert his eyes that evening as Constantine went to whip his cock out in front of, like, perfect strangers. I hope he was able to get nice and high.
Onstage, Ryan schoolmarms the judges about pushing and shoving, even though none of it gets caught on camera, and if Ryan knows anything, it's that if it didn't happen on camera, it didn't ever happen. He gets Simon to reiterate how, with the first round going to Taylor and the second round going to Katharine, it's a tie game right now. This show is such a perfect self-perpetuating monster. Only Simon's opinion matters, so if he arbitrarily gives the imaginary round one to Taylor and the make-believe round two to Taylor, those things totally count. Ryan, as he does right now, buys into it entirely, because while he may still be the holier-than-thou Brandon Walsh teenager of the family, Simon's still the dad, and what Dad says goes. Then, year, Ryan will get to make cracks about Simon's ego and puppet-master shit, like, who put those ideas into his head? Ryan isn't thinking about any of this, because his TV mission in those ten seconds was to sell a neck-and-neck competition, and that's what he did. Taylor OCDs his "Soul Patrol" thing again, and his heart is even less into it now that he got those mediocre reviews. Then he goes backstage and hugs himself three times for every time Randy said "pitchy."
The show-appointed songs will be accompanied with video packages of the parents, it looks like. Which means another trip into the tears-and-terror of the McPhee family. Mama McPhee's name is Peisha? Did we know this? Peisha McPhee? That's such a "Bunny Lebowski" name. Anyway, this is just another clip from that interview about five weeks ago where we first met McPhather. Blah, blah, Katharine was always a performer. Kat interviews, separately, that instead of love and attention from her mother, she had to make do with the sounds of scales being sung down the hall. I'm extrapolating, perhaps. Singing comes natural to Katharine, and it's what she was born to do. Really? She always came across as having a natural inclination towards ironworking, to me. Ryan manages to tie the parents' comments to the title of the show-appointed single, which is called "My Destiny." As if it could be anything else. I keep waiting for the year where all pretense is finally cast aside and the winning single is simply called "Check It Out! I Just Won American Idol!"
So Katharine emerges from the "FANT ASIA" doors, and it's like the viewer just died and went to precocious stage kid heaven. There's that much light. She looks dynamite, I will say for the final time this season. Just stunning. Like she's performing at the Oscars. The audience at the front, by the stage, has been told to sway their arms back and forth, lest something terrible happen to someone they love. The song is the usual Idol tripe, with phrases like "moment of bliss." It's sort of unnerving how all the coronations songs end up at the same place, where love and human relationships are used as a thinly veiled metaphor for naked ambition and the glory of being on TV. It's completely not the right fit for Katharine. Well, the naked ambition part is, that's for sure, but I'm talking about the style of the song. I don't think the Idol people ever quite got Katharine's musical strong suits, which are: high drama; precocious, insincere Streisanding; and Aguilera-lite balladeering, emphasis on the "lite." Not all schlock is the same, and this kind of inspirational blandness just isn't happening. Also not happening, in a manner which makes all questions of song quality utterly moot, is Katharine's voice, which is totally flat for most of the song. When she's not flat, she's sharp. Just a bad performance on all vocal levels. In a maneuver that only AI could have the utter lack of sense to pull off, Kat's joined onstage by a gospel choir. And why not? When I think of Katharine McPhee and empty-headed pop ballads, my mind goes right to church. Not all schlock is the same! Kat goes for her big note and screeches it terribly, causing Annabeth Gish to almost throw up in the audience. That was maybe my favorite moment of the season. Annabeth looks so very afraid. And after all that, after the bad singing and the dumb song and the gospel choir, after everything...Kat still looks like a million bucks, and I still love her. This is what this stupid show does to people. Are you a Carrie or are you a Bo? Team Kristen or Team Lauren? Ben or Noel? Celtics or Lakers? Angel or Spike? I've picked my pony and that's all there is to it. I don't even think I want her to win at this point. I just generally prefer her and want her to succeed in every aspect of her life and be the happiest girl in the world. What? This show is fucking sick.
Randy has three things for Katharine. First off, she looks amazing, which she does, and she's finally learned to laugh this off and take it for what it is, which is nice. She's also crying, once again, for the billionth time tonight. Second, he says she sounded "really good," which I don't think is true, but I'll let Randy love her more for a change. However, and this seems like the most important part, to Randy: he did not love the song. Which you can't hold against Kat at all, because: didn't write it, didn't choose it. This time, I think Randy at least realizes that this isn't something Katharine could help, but I think because it made the performance wholly unlikable for him, he feels he has to mention it. Paula, who has decided to be nice to Katharine this week for some reason, tells her straight up (hee) that the suckiness of the song is not in any way her fault. "You are brilliant." Simon's not going to bash the song, of course, but in avoiding that, he stumbles upon the truth anyway, which is that she went from "brilliant" to "quite good" in the span of one performance. He gives her big praise as a "great potential artist" and you can tell he really likes her and wants her to win. He tells all the potential Kat voters out there to vote based on the "second song." I think even he knows it's futile at this point, but it couldn't hurt to go for the direct approach, right?
Ryan takes the stage and tries to iron out the "her fault/not her fault" issue. He lets Randy explain that he thought, in this case, the singer was better than the song. If you were paying attention, this is where you'd know that Katharine has absolutely no shot at winning this, because no way do Simon and Ryan allow Randy to sandbag the potential winning single like this unless there was no chance it would actually be the winning single. Ryan reads the numbers as Kat is red-faced and emotional. They giggle one last time about how cute she looks, and she gives one last shout-out to her fans. Goodbye, Katharine McPhee! Try to make a record that doesn't make you sound like an idiot! And stop letting crazy people dress you every other week!
Taylor's family video features merely Tom DeGray, talking about how Taylor used to play his harmonica for him as a kid. I loved how, during the press blitz between Tuesday and Thursday, Taylor was all excited to be able to play his harmonica again, because the show's "no instruments" policy has kept America from seeing what a virtuoso harmonica player he is. Dude, if it's an instrument that's a part of a one-man-band ensemble, I'm not going to be that impressed. Talk to me when you can master the knee cymbals. Ryan introduces the real first single as "Do I Make You Proud?" My mind immediately goes to the Harry Chapin/Cat Stevens place, and I start to think that, as little as the producers of this show get Kat's appeal, they must really get Taylor's appeal if they had the foresight to go to the fathers-and-sons, cats-in-the-cradle place. Sadly, the title is just another flimsy metaphor for "I just won this TV show!" If you're at all interested in the ways in which this show is marketing its final pairing, the first two lines of this song are very telling. Whereas Katharine's song was about her taking her rightful place at center stage, where she knew she'd be her entire life, because she was born with a spotlight over her head -- it's her destiny! -- Taylor's song is all about how he never thought he'd be where he is today, and he was never the kind of person with sunlight on his face. He was content to let others shine, that was his way. He always walked a step behind. Taylor closes his eyes and puts some feeling into it: "Did you ever know that I'm your hero? I'm everything you would like to be!" Maybe not, but that's the idea here. He's the Barbara Hershey to Kat's Bette Midler, only this time Bette dies and Barbara has to raise her own damn kid. What the fuck, you guys, I'm making extended Beaches comparisons? My spirit has been broken. This is what false modesty does to me, though, and this song has it in spades. Not to mention the cloying chorus. "Do I make you proud?" I hate to say this, but Taylor, you're better than that. That's an Ace song title. The gospel choir slinks back onstage, and I don't notice it until they pull back to the wide shot, so it's sort of scary how all of a sudden they're right there. Taylor hits his big note, and his head spasms around so much that he inadvertently makes his voice do the fade-in/fade-out thing. It's funny when your affectations make you fuck up. Overall, Taylor sings the song well, but if this is what his album is going to be like? Have fun, Graymates. My OCD theory is really taking shape as once again Taylor screams "Soul Patrol" in multiples of three. Maybe he's just really into Christian numerology and the number three is sacred to him. Hey, it's clearly working for him. If there's anything America loves, it's Christianity and compulsive attention-grabbing. Randy continues with the hating on the awful songs, which I love him for, calling this one "slightly better." He gives Taylor props for knowing who he is and making every song into a meditation on the Taylor-ness of Taylor Hicks. Paula says basically the same thing but with the words all mixed up like the Junior Jumble. Taylor gets what passes for an endearingly anxious look on his face as he waits for the official word from Simon. Simon breaks it down simply: "Assuming that I was right that the show was tied, then you've just won American Idol." Taylor "woo"s and flips out like he's actually already won, because he's too stupid to figure out that Simon was trying to sway the sympathy votes hardcore to Katharine. But beyond that...Simon saying it doesn't make it true, you giant pile of self-aggrandizing jackass! I can forgive Mandy Moore for flipping out in the audience, because she's Mandy Moore and Saved was awesome and she probably doesn't know any better. Ryan plays the enabler and gets Taylor to "woo" a few more times, including the extra-annoying head-tilt, body-heave "woo," which has proven to be quite the crowd-pleaser. I wonder if, like how this year Bo spawned all those wannabe "rockers" in the auditions, season will see hordes of auditioners with involuntary muscle issues and neurological conditions. It's what the people are clamoring for, apparently. Simon smiles like the devious kingmaker he wants us to think he is, and for the second time in an hour my pause button finds effing Constantine. Like I wasn't already sick enough this week. Randy and Paula make a fake stink about how they're pissed that they supported Taylor all season and now that Simon-come-lately has jumped onboard, he's getting the big reaction from the crowd (and Taylor). Simple roulette rules, Paula. When you have a chip on every number on the board, it's not going to be as profitable when you win as the guy who waits, bets his one number, and hits it. Also, these are the roles you've signed up for. Sit down and have another swig. Ryan reminds everyone that Simon passed on Taylor back in Vegas, and it's supposed to make him look dumb, but of course I think it makes him look like the only sane guy in the room.