Ryan introduces Simon as "Darth Vader" and then Paula, out of the deep weirdness of herself and wearing a whole crazy outfit with pearls and long silk gloves, produces a photograph of her head and Simon's head glued onto a sepia print of little Dickensian kids. Those always make me think of how the aristocracy used to have themselves and their dead babies commemorated in those pictures, or in portraits with the dead kids alive, or represented by skulls or whatever. The Olden Times were so fucked up. But well, babies die less now so maybe there's not as much of a market for incredibly creepy dead baby shit.
Then Ryan shows a Frankie Avalon performance of "Venus" from the year Simon was born. What the eff is going on here? Is it going to get ghoulish and will Natalie Cole start singing with dead Frankie Avalon as some kind of joke about how old Simon is? Wait, no, because Frankie Avalon is alive, and singing on the Idol stage. Which is somehow more fucked up, because why the eff is Frankie Avalon here and singing for us all? They talk about it for awhile, but nobody really knows why so they can't give you much information.
KYLIE! They're singing Kylie! Fever is the best all-around album I think I've ever heard, before Metro Station. There are lots of albums I like, and by better musicians, but every album has a song or two that you don't care to listen to, or divergent tonal stuff, or things that don't fit the concept of the album, and are just on there because they wrote them. Tori Amos, the most concept-album person of all time, even she always does that, throws in random buzzkill crap or ten stupid songs that aren't necessary. Like, Scarlet's Walk is this hugely underrated masterpiece, but then you got the dead brother song throwing you off there at the end. But then Fever and Metro Station are like these incredibly long, exciting stories about: having fun, dressing awesome, and fucking. Which are the three best things. Ergo, those are the best albums. Impeccable logic.
So they sing "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" so very poorly that I guess they're not lipsynching this week, and they're doing this because of the year American Idol was born. And every time you think they're going to medley, they just sing more repetitive verses of that song, and parade sort of listlessly around the stage in different combinations, and Adam and Lil once again have half the solos, and it's over. Not that interesting, due to the horrible sounds of it all and Lil's weird Thunderdome outfit that looks like she scavenged it from a combination sex club/auto detailer.
You know what's more boring that pimpmercials? Behind The Scenes Of Pimpmercials. And you know what's more boring than that? Watching some hottie emo motherfucker dude too old for his own bangs dressing them all up like if Alex DeLarge shopped at Kmart and acting as though he's an auteur and not ripping off the ripoff of a ripoff that was that one Panic! video. However, I think Adam is wearing a dress, because apparently we just forgot to hate gay people lately. Or maybe it's just Adam.
Okay no, it's a big white trenchcoat. And then Kris and Matt act like stage magicians, which they seem to have interpreted as "effeminate and creepy," probably because they're all so young all they know of magic is having their Minds Freaked. And then for all that setup, the whole thing is like ten seconds long, with lots of dramatic pointing at cars and an exhausted and uninteresting group cover of "Circus," which you have to admit is 99% sound effects if you even like it at all, and then more pointing, and it's dumb. That shit was lavish, yet pointless. I can't believe I'm saying this, but that pimpmercial would have been vastly improved by being twice as long. God, that feels dirty to say.
Anoop talks about his heterosexual pain in having to wear glitter on his face just like everybody else, and people cheer. Ryan asks how Adam felt when Simon stood up ("on his lifts") for Adam's performance, and Adam sends the sweetest of all vibes over at Simon, because he is a pumpkin pie of a person. Meanwhile, Matt's special visitor is the Mayor of Kalamazoo. Though I love them both equally, I submit to you that these two moments illustrate perfectly the difference between the two of them.
Stand up, Adam, while everybody screams and shits themselves for you. Stand up, Kris, so people can do the same but squealier. Anoop, stand up if you're not feeling too snotty to do so. Adam is consistently wonderful and has managed to shove this show in the chest like it's fronting at a bar and needs to cash the checks its mouth is writing. He is obviously safe, and will live to instruct this show on how it should be operating for another week. Kris rearranged that Henley song into "boring," "disappointing" crap; Anoop managed to pull a Bad Boyfriend on us by apologizing just in time, and rising to the occasion once again. But between the two of them, Anoop is wildly inconsistent and Kris -- though boringly consistent and consistently boring -- is sex on wheels. So Anoop's stooling it tonight.
What I know about Flo Rida is that I once got the most hilariously outraged email from what I presume to be lonely teenage girls -- or their equivalents -- when I mistook a reference to him for a reference to a favorite character from the Gossip Girl books, a musician -- patterned, I believe, on my dear Shifty Shellshock -- named Flow. You see how I got there. So but now all I really have to associate Flo Rida with, is dorky internet girls getting snotty up in my inbox. Which to be fair is not a distinction Flo Rida keeps solely to himself. So now I will learn about Flo Rida, who is now to sing "Right Round" or something. I can only hope he's as classy and disease-free as the state from which he takes his name.
Oh. He's going to be doing that amazingly original thing where a rapper takes somebody else's song and then talks about how awesome he is in a monotone voice over it. I do so enjoy that. That's almost exactly like music. God, no wonder his fans are so stupid. This is music for stupid people. Now there is a girl singing the song too, in a slutty outfit. Wasn't expecting that! Oh, and there's another man, I guess somebody is getting "ft." in this song. That's quite an accomplishment, since in ten years nobody will know who either of you are. When people say "I like anything but country and rap," what they're saying is, "My brain does not accept this as music, because it's deeply unintelligent and my brain just got bored." I don't even know how a baby could like this.
Oh, and we're mixing it up, because now there are five whores, doing a little dance. One of them screeches and the other ones roll around on the floor, and there is confetti. How shitty and pointless and musically ignorant does your act have to be before you start making me feel embarrassed for American Idol? Much less America? GaGa was just like the annoying art girl at every party that's not as cute as she thinks she is, but at least she was thinking, even if what she was thinking was Mental Hospital Gangbang, because that's usually what she's thinking. Flo Rida -- while attractively constructed, and in possession of quite a large timepiece -- is just saying words. Probably words somebody else made up. I just lost so much respect for Nelly Yuki.
Anoop is enstooled, and who will join him? Danny, obviously not, and who cares anyway. Matt's been in the B3 before, but not this week. Thank goodness. He's so special and he really does deserve to be in the Top Three. Fingers crossed. Scott stands up and we remember how bad he sucked last night, and how he picks songs nobody has ever heard except like really hip shepherds. Bottom Three! Finally. Ryan walks him over, and it's Allison's turn to stand up, with Lil. Allison's Raitt was to die for -- oh, the judges are scared too! -- and Lil fucked right up with her "beautiful karaoke," "third-rate" Tina song. Allison's been B3 twice, Lil never... Allison's safe, thank goodness, and crying into her mic of course while hugging people. Wait, and Lil is in the B3? That's crazy! Aren't there like five people left?
Simon says the competition finally is hardcore this week -- which, agreed -- and says they're actually thinking about using the Judgery's PoV this week. Then commercial, and Ryan goes, "You are dialed in on Idol," like, that means less than nothing. And so the Bottom Three are Anoop, Lil and Scott, but what will happen to them? Who cares, when Kellie Pickler is in the house. With her scary Real Housewives shaved nose complimenting her fake boobs. I can't wait to see what happens . I say either a bunnytail on her lower back, or wings like a dragon.
I wish she would have the surgery that makes your eyeballs not be crushing themselves together in the middle of your head like you're inbred. That would do more than all the lizardy dragon wings in the world to make her cute. She's a good performer, though, and it's nice to watch her in metallic dress and shoes, running around singing some damn country song about how the apostrophe of the song thinks that he has to for intents and purposes forgotten the narrator, but is in fact incorrect about that. Afterwards she works the crowd, and you can tell Ryan likes her a little bit more every year, and then Kellie gets lost and he tells her to go get some calamari backstage, because he is adorable.
One person is safe. Obviously it is Lil. He takes his time and then goes, "Anoop? ...Stay where you are," because obviously Lil is safe. Anoop smushes closer to Scott and puts his arm around his shoulder, and then it's breaktime again. And you know what? I don't care who goes home. Anoop has flashes of brilliance, but I seem to remember that Scott was vaguely impressive at some point long ago. So you have the inconsistent guy who's good when he's on but very often shitty -- and tacky, and dorky-rude -- when he's not, or the more reliable guy who thinks we're here to impress Neil Sedaka and could be marketed as a sleep aid. I'm on the edge of my total disinterest.
Paula's fake-crying into her gloves, and they finally say the evictee, who is ... SCOTT! America, I don't believe you sometimes. You are my idol, a little bit, right now. Everybody looks fucked up and morose, because they have to, and give him a standing o because it will mean so much to him at this point, and then he sings that awful, awful song again so that the judges can pretend they care, even though he can't see them deliberate so it's in some ways less stressful than usual and some ways more, for us the viewers. And to be fair, he does it about sixty times better just standing there with the microphone. There are iffy bits and not-great places, and it's his time to go, but I would have enjoyed him doing this well last night. ...Ouch. The painful places toward the end that were nightmarish? Not helped by a twenty-four hour turnaround. Forget about what I said, that was marginally better, but mostly it was marginal.
Ryan reminds Simon that he blew Megan off last week, and he's like, "Because genuinely neither I, nor Megan, gave a shit. I mean that literally. It wasn't worth faking." But this week, he says, two people want him to stay and two people want him to go. Which is very interesting and dramatic, so stay tuned on Wednesdays or whatever, but also kind of a bummer. Because on the one hand, he better not stay or I'm going to throw a damn fit, and on the other I feel 90% sure it's the two people that aren't Kara that he's talking about which pisses me off in a third way, plus how this is all just smoke and mirrors because they're going to need it sometime in the what, two weeks? Hopefully for Allison, but whatever keeps Matt G scared is fine by me because he needs to step it up.
Simon honestly says that it's just tough because he likes Scott a lot, but looks at the full pool of talent and can't even justify that shit. It's time. Him now, Anoop later. "I can please you another week," Scott says, and Kara tells him that he's done it right in past weeks, so this is a one-week elimination that pays no heed to his accomplishments. They make much of telling Simon "Just make a decision" because nobody wants to vote against the blind kid and they know that he feeds on hatred and it harms him none, so he's like, "Sucks but you're done." Paula cries about how classy and inspiring he is, which is not only obligatory, but factually true, so fine, and we out.
Thanks, America. And Kellie Pickler's inbred eyeballs, and hottie emo video director. And Ryan, who I bet got spanked over last night's runtime, which was fucking egregious, I mean, I literally would have just not been able to recap the show overnight until I found that last performance somewhere. Well, I hope they're nice about it. I'm more worried about that little four-tet issue on the PoV. I guess Kara was one of the holdouts? Which is dumb, although I guess he does have more maturity and "artistry" than most of the other middlegrounders, just by virtue of being really old. He has created the perfect illusion of being a blind singer-songwriter, which is appealing to them as "artistry" although I think I have an inkling of how he managed it. But they're still wrong about his overall performances, because he's been on a downgrade trajectory the whole season, but that trajectory started out as "really good at being boring," which is not worth saving. This is American Idol, not America's Top Manilow.