Well. That sucked. I liked three out of tonight's four vote-outs. This isn't how it's supposed to be.
All twenty-four semifinalists crowd the stage (and the staircase, and the wings, and the fucking roof because there's twenty-four of them) and sing "Take It Easy," written by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey and made famous by The Eagles. Yeah, that's right. During the performance, we learn the following: Elliot may indeed be a better singer than I gave him credit for, but he still looks like a grizzled old fisherman; Ace will always be looking at you like that -- like he wants you to go to Winter Formal with him; David Radford will always sound like that; Chris's vocal chords are gonna be for shit in a few weeks; Patrick is doomed; and you do not ever want to run into Will, Taylor, Kevin, and Bobby in the same place, ever. The girls are there, too, technically, but they don't get featured. Conspiracy!
The first to undergo the feng shui machinations of Ryan's elimination procedure are the women, of whom the back-row-seated Mandisa, Kellie, Paris, Ayla, Lisa, and Kat are not going anywhere. And, to his credit, Ryan never pretends otherwise. The lowest vote getter comes down to either Brenna or Becky, surprisingly enough, and it's Becky who goes home. And she does so with a shitload of class, if you ask me. She wasn't anywhere near the worst or least interesting on Tuesday night, either, so I'm not sure what went down there.
The spatial arrangement for the guys is more integrated between the slam dunks and the easy outs, to wildly mix sports metaphors. The lowest vote getter (Bobby) comes down to (Bobby) Sway and Bobby (Bobby), and it's indeed Bobby (!!) who goes home. Sway was not sweatin' that for one second. Bobby acts a fool, more than a little bit, but the judges are nice to him, thankfully, and he sings "Copacabana" again. Not so thankfully.
Kinnik and Brenna, who had to sweat it out with Becky, get spared the time around, and the elimination comes down to boring-ass Heather and bad-idea Stevie. Stevie gets the predictable boot, even if Heather was at least as deserving of it, if not more so. Then Stevie sings her Groban song again, but ditches half of the high-pitched stuff and it sounds really good. Well, better at least. Damn. That's disheartening.
Finally, Ryan arranges a chorus line of guys in preparation for the final elimination, and he fakes me out and makes me think Patrick is safe, even though he's totally gone. That one hurts. Yeah, it was a shitty Etheridge performance, but he was a favorite. And in exchange I get Bucky, Gedeon, AND Radford? Thanks, America.
Ryan and the semifinalists barely fit on one stage as we begin the results show. Bobby and Heather look intense. Would those two be the scariest Vegas cabaret act you could ever imagine, or what? David Radford can't stand still, so nervous is he that he's going home. Brenna strikes a fierce pose and will not break it. Gedeon can't not smile. Kevin is so psyched to be standing to Paris, he barely knows what to do. Becky's back to looking pretty after Tuesday night's Marg Helgenberger moment. Stevie is experiencing all this from one hour in the future, that's how over this show she is. Will is petrified, like somebody just told him the truth about Michael Jackson. For the first time this season, Ryan gets to say "we are LIVE!" Well, except for this part, which had to have been pre-taped because one short credit sequence later, everybody is lined up side-by-side, all the way up the staircase to the RC Cola lounge. "Almost forty million votes" were cast between Tuesday and Wednesday nights, although to be fair, a lot of those votes likely came from senior citizens looking to book tickets on whatever cruise Bobby Bennett was advertising for. Yes, they were deaf. Ryan reminds us that two boys and two girls will be eliminated within the hour. He doesn't say "in random and geometrically diverse ways," but we know what's up.Ryan turns to the judges, and it gets awkward, because Simon and Ryan's George and Martha moment from Wednesday night is still fresh in our memory. It's hilarious, though. Ryan starts asking Randy some bullshit question, while Simon starts whispering in Paula's ear. "Tell your father to pass the dinner rolls, if he's not too selfish to spare one." "Fine. I'd ask for the butter, but your mother was clearly too drunk to let it soften on the counter this afternoon." The actual question Ryan asks Randy is about how much weight the "likeability factor" carries with the audience. So they're already addressing the Pickler conundrum. Randy lets us know that he is softening on his time-honored belief that it's all about the singing, and that Simon "might" be right about it being about personality as well. I understand the need for the judges to maintain the pretense that this singing competition is all about finding good singers, but what Randy's saying is like if he said, "I'm beginning to suspect viewers tune in to the audition rounds to laugh at the delusional morons." He does say that once it gets to the top twelve, it's no longer about the personality, it's about the singing. Good to see he's back to lying again. I'm much more comfortable this way. Ryan's asks Paula why in this, the fifth season, there is "more buzz, more popularity, more votes than ever." I love that. "Paula, why do you think we're so kick-ass?" Paula starts to talk about demographics, and I'm pretty sure she got all this info off a bottle of pills somewhere. Perhaps Stoli has started to print random facts on their labels like cereal boxes? Ryan mentions how this season's contestants don't seem like "your typical American Idols," which is dumb because it's the same mix of ringers, teenagers, and shrewdly placed "misfits" that there's always been. Then, and this is the best, Paula says "each one of them can pierce the heartstrings of America." I love Paula Abdul. I'd love to see her speak at a high school graduation.Paula and Simon bicker like children for a moment, and then Ryan moves in for first blood: "[Simon's] gonna try and be tough in his baby blue sweater." And the metro comes out swingin'! Simon: "Why are you obsessed with what I wear?" Because you're his living Dorian Gray portrait? ["Oh, snap!" -- Jacob] Simon says the obsession is "creepy," but what's really creepy is how the show manages to slow down like this every week, to the point where it's just the two of them staring at each other, trying to work out the "how to make him seem gay without seeming gay myself" math in their heads on live TV, and you're sick of making the "just kiss already!" joke so you end up simply wanting this infernal running gag to be over. Every week! Simon, as always, says he knows who's going home, and he says it's because "they were terrible." Which is false, even from his own perspective, but it's his shtick so who cares? He says "we have trained the American public to be good music critics," which is hilarious in every single way. Ryan totally misses that part and instead focuses on the pronoun "we," which Simon says was "the royal 'we.'" Meaning Simon alone. Or The Dude, maybe. Can we get to the other filler now?
Ryan starts to ask Heather about the chatter around the breakfast table, and he wants to know what kind of Mean Girls shit is going on, but he totally uses the wrong word because Heather is like, "Breakfast? Yeah, they don't let us eat breakfast. Ever." Ryan tries to interpret that as "too nervous to eat," but Heather keeps on, saying how all they get are mini-muffins and nothing else. That's awesome. It's like the Magdalene Sisters behind the scenes at AI. Ryan finally steers the conversation back towards the "chatting," and Heather says something boring about how they're all nervous. Whatever, y'all, back to how they're being starved and mistreated! Then he asks who is "feeling it the most." Becky is the only one who raises her hand. She says all the things you're supposed to about nobody being safe and a million reasons she may or may not be safe. It's not clear whether she actually thinks she's going home tonight, but she's putting on a good face regardless. Then Ryan says, "Well, let me explain to you the theory of the duck." Hee! Okay, that was based on a false premise, but it was still mad funny. Becky and Brenna sure think so. Now it's "get serious" time. Somebody is going home. This first elimination will be the girl with the least number of votes. He asks the back / totally safe row to stand up. The camera pans down the line, and Ayla is standing between Paris and Lisa, so when it pans down the line the sequence is: Paris's face, Ayla's breasts, Ayla's face, the top of Lisa's hair, Lisa's face. They're all safe. Paris does a little dance, which I should chalk up to the seventeen factor. Plus, Paris has something of a history with not realizing just how much of a lock she is for the top twelve anyway. Taking the super-cool route are Ayla and Lisa, who manage to be happy and poised. Now to the bottom row of awful, boring losers. Stevie -- who has alternated all evening between pissed-off, super-nervous, and over this whole enterprise -- looks both pissed and over it. Ryan tells Heather, Stevie, and Melissa that they don't have the lowest number of votes. Stevie looks even more pissed now, because she just wants this finished already. Kinnik, Becky and Brenna get brought to the middle of the stage. Brenna looks ready to beat someone down as Ryan sends us to commercial.
At this point, I figure it's gotta be Kinnik, for being boring, I guess. Because it's totally not Brenna. And Becky was judged "better than expected" and was interesting, and actually got screen time before Tuesday night. So of course Kinnik gets sent back to the couch first. It's either Becky or Brenna, who we learn are roommates. Yikes. Ryan asks them if they'd like to say anything to each other. They slowly turn and regard each other for a good long beat. Brenna's like, "Good luck?" With a total question mark. "Good luck? I guess? Hope you beat me?" I love it. Becky manages to be slightly nice/less sincere in her best wishes to Brenna. Ryan tells Brenna to take her seat. She turns to hug Becky, but there's nowhere to go with it so she bails, and then Becky sort of touches Brenna's arm. It wasn't bitchy, I don't think. Just horribly awkward. Or else Becky just didn't feel like getting emotional? That could be, because she is bound and determined to shrug it off. Paula gets teary-eyed. Both she and Simon tell Becky she should be an actress/model instead of a singer, with varying degrees of bluntness; I'll let you figure out which judge took which approach on your own. It seems harsh at first, but Becky's final words are pretty much "thanks for putting me on TV," so I doubt Becky was too insulted. She sings out with "Because the Night," and it's the exact same performance as Tuesday: limited but not bad. Ryan thinks she has a lot of fun with that song, and she does, and it shows. She's being pretty great about all of this. Ryan blames us all for not voting, as usual. See ya, Becky! Try and remember that girls kiss boys, not their own sisters.Back from the break, the boys are in the hot seat. Back row: Gedeon, David, Taylor, Will, Bucky, and Patrick. Front row: Ace, Kevin, Bobby, Sway, Chris, and Elliott. Much more mixed in terms of safe and not safe, and you figure it'll be one guy from each row. Bobby and who else? Because, come on. It's totally Bobby. Ryan starts off talking to Elliott, who pointedly reminds us that Simon said he had the potential to be the best male vocalist in the history of the show. Smart move on Elliott's part, I think, because it might keep his supporters from getting complacent. Plus he gets to look all humble and shit. He also gets to look like an extra from Pirates of the Caribbean, what with the scruff and the teeth and the jutting-out chin. Just picture him saying "arrr!" It's not hard. Ryan asks "Kev" what the highlight of the week has been. Kevin, who is sixteen and impressionable, spits back exactly what he was told to, which is that he loved getting his cheeks pinched by the Suffragettes last night. He says if he's lucky, he'll get a few kisses time. What do you even do with that? What do you do with Kevin, entirely? ["None of that, for starters." -- Jacob] He's been paraded in front of company like this his entire life. He will jump through every hoop you ask him to. It's the actual asking him to that weirds me out. Ryan tries to make a "picking up chicks" joke, even though Kevin is as far from sexual as Ryan himself is. I kind of feel bad for Kevin. The world of adults is exciting and fresh and rushing at him all at once now, yet this show keep doing shit like having the girls pinch his cheeks, which has to be blurring all his lines at once. This is how you create a Buster Bluth, people. Don't do that to Kevin. Oh, except if you want him to sing something from Gypsy. Then we're all the way back at awesome again.
The whole concept of singing the song that got you bounced is so twisted, but especially here when it was song choice that ultimately did Patrick in. Well, that and being crazy boring to the rest of non-Joe America. That, too. I mean, I love Patrick, and I love Melissa Etheridge, and I love "Come to My Window," but nothing about the performance makes me want to listen to it over again, which says a lot about how uninspired it really was. And still: sad. Lisa Tucker is my girl, because she's pretty crushed here. Me, too. It's not unfair, and it's not an outrage, and it's not nefarious, it just sucks. For a million little reasons. That Bread song that sounded like actual angels. The skinny, crane-neck hotness. Saying he wasn't as pretty as Ace. Admitting to being a closet Trekkie. The fact he plays the piano. None of those reasons were enough to get people to vote for him, and I can understand that. But leaving me with Bucky and Gedeon? And David Radford? And Sway? Cold, America. Very cold. So Patrick sings "Come to My Window." Lisa is now crying. Will looks like his dog just died. Damn.Everybody crowds onto the stage for the final sign-off. Melissa is bound and determined to get some of that lost air-time back, so she's hovering over Seacrest's shoulder. Brenna keeps trying to crowd into the shot, but she's not making it. There is one more bit of filler before we close up shop tonight, as Becky, Bobby, Stevie, and Patrick get a goodbye video package, a highlight reel of their journeys so far, set to the same "Had a Bad Day" song we memorialized the audition rounds with. At least now the lyrics make a little more sense. We see Stevie auditioned with a big ol' yellow flower in her hair, and was against all laws of nature even paler than she is right now. We see Patrick audition with those stupid-ass sunglasses on, and I'm really glad we never saw that during the early weeks or that entire paragraph above may have never happened. Bobby remembers being psyched that Paula called him a character. All these interview clips sound like they're right before the Top 24 were chosen. Patrick talks about being happy to get that far, "but man, wouldn't it be great if I could make it through this round?" Okay, I'm just going to stop talking about him. I guarantee I will not be doing this every week, don't worry. I love watching Becky O'Donahue continually flip out. Stevie is so controlled in her celebration, but Becky's all about jumping around and throwing her arms up in the air. Two sides of a pretty decent coin, right there.
week: Triple-recap week yet again, as the FOX scheduling department can't seem to help itself. This time Jacob gets the girls and I get the guys. Here's hoping Ace picks a song that isn't about having sex with your dad.