So if you see a white person sitting between two black people and say something about snack foods, guess what? You are a racist. And the black people will laugh harder than the white person -- who will probably not laugh, because you just made it weird -- but they will do this only because you have made them uncomfortable, because a second ago they weren't three colors of people, they were just people. And now you have made them full of carbohydrates to boot. And as with any weird thing you can do to a minority person, the easiest possible response is to go along with it, or even worse make the joke first so that you're even more in on the joke than the unreconstructed person who was about to make the joke, and then fast-forward ten years and Queer Eye For The Straight Guy has created an entire genre of television where fags do tricks.
So Neapolitan will be singing "Bad Romance," and badly from the looks of it, and another group -- called, sadly, "Destiny's Wild!" -- will also be singing "Bad Romance," and this second group is a fascinating-looking girl named Siobhan who is already coming unraveled, a girl named Theri [pron. "theory"] whose hair is lovely shades of blue and purple, and a couple of annoying gays named Jareb and Todrick. Jareb is basically okay but way hyper and inbred-looking, and Todrick has gross fake contacts and a seriously ugly attitude, but can do flips like a ninja.
Even as annoying as half of Destiny's Wild! are, they are still about a thousand times more polished than Neapolitan, whose talents may well be prodigious but whose collective personal appearance is Goon Dockishly tragic. When the most put-together person in your group has hair the color of a My Little Pony's sucked-on mane, you are in trouble. Especially considering the first challenge Neapolitan has been faced with is finding an open space to rehearse in... In a hotel, which is most easily defined as a building full of open spaces.
Instead, they end up to Destiny's Wild!, and things become amazing as the two groups attempt to outsing each other, getting louder and louder and louder until their eyes look like space rockets to the moon, which is made magical by the fact that they're both singing "Bad Romance" -- a song, okay, that literally goes: "Rah! Rah! Rah-ah-ah! Ro! Ma! Ro-ma-ma! Ga! Ga! Ooh la la!" -- and suddenly you got something out of Yellow Submarine happening, like an angry danceoff between those Sesame Street aliens with the Harpo-honker noses and an army of broken Roombas.
And I see you saying, "But I have a crazy person in my group who's not taking it seriously!" That is also on you. You have got to learn to judge a book by its cover.
If they've got a giant purse, you don't want them. More than a regulation amount of jewelry on their person or anywhere on their face? No. Anything stupid on their head? You don't want them. White person with dreads? No. Black person with green or blue eyes? No. Shivering girl with <5% body fat? Nope. Linebacker with a chin beard? Gone. Any clothes that incorporate ripped fabric in some way or otherwise look schizophrenic or costumey? Dunzo. Hollow eyes, hangy-open mouth, tight jealous lips, crunchy hair, protruding tongue, quick birdlike movements, distinctive eyewear, excessive scratching: Out. Anybody who says things like "I'm not here to make friends" or "It is what it is" or "I'm just doing my thing" or "This is my dream"? Deal breaker. Shut it down.
Team Awesome -- Big Mike, Castro, Tim Urban, and Seth the other giant dad -- seem to have their ducks in a row. Oh, except for Big Mike's wife who is now in labor. And just to save time, we're going to assume that every single paragraph of this bitch ends with:
"And Big Mike's wife has still not had her kid, although by the demonic looks she's shooting the annoying cameramen in her hospital room flashing lights up her cooter it shouldn't be too much longer. Meanwhile, Big Mike can't stop wandering around crying about how he wishes he were there more than anything... Except for this thing that he's doing instead."
Castro goes to sleep, some hot cowboy is hooting, it's 3:20 and well into the Hour of the Wolf, but the Mighty Rangers -- who are in some ways even more unfortunate than Neapolitan, to be honest -- aren't sure what to do. Generic Kim and way-torqued Maddie want to keep working, but the nerdy one with the glasses Mark (he sang the Squeeze song at his audition and has giant eyeballs) has had it and just wants to go to bed. The younger guy in their group, Danny, who is like if Frida Kahlo had a baby with Zac Efron, says it's fine for them to sleep, which they are always doomed when they say that, and then later Maddie pretends to blow her own brains out, which Kim finds very whoa.
I know you won't believe this but the Dreamers are still bitching. One of the trashy girls is insistent that her opinion be heard, but nobody's interested in hearing it, and Mary Powers has become so drunk with being Mary Powers that she retreats into the self-evident self-reinforcing circular thinking pattern of how she doesn't want her fate in anybody else's hands, not to carry or be carried, etc., which... Of course that's true, but that's true one hundred percent of the time, not just this one night, so why do you need to keep saying it to yourself over and over and over again? Because you've seen this show and you've heard gross people like yourself say it and you thought it sounded like a bad-ass thing to say, and then went right back to not saying it the rest of the time.
Then Destiny's Wild! takes the stage and completely fucking rocks it. Their outfits are insane, and Jareb sounds amazing, and the choreography is totally cool, like, referencing Lady GaGa but not so much that it takes away from the vocals, and like Todrick's doing flips and flying through the air, and their harmonies are uplifting and lovely, and Siobhan's got this amazing range and powerful screech, and then at the end they turn it into this sort of monk-chant thing, and the boys slowly kill the girls from behind, and it's just incredibly perfect. Which is like: This was worth your dignity? That was so much better than the whiny other team could ever do, and you still saw fit to sink to their level. Sad, not to mention confusing.
But not as confusing as Ellen taking issue with their performance being "weird" and their wardrobes being like unto Cirque de Soleil and all the other ways you would expect your aunt to not get it -- "It was surreal, is what it was," she says -- except this isn't your aunt, it's Ellen. How can Ellen not get Lady GaGa? I always thought her bucktooth dork routine was fake, like she's not actually still listening to Salt 'N Pepa, but then you come along and go, "Your performance of the Lady GaGa song was unnerving because of the clothes and the choreography"? How does that compute? Too creepy? The song is about loving somebody so much that you fuck each other to death. I mean... Anyway, they're through and I'm glad. I love them, especially after that.
More groups get through: Some girls, some other girls singing about being superwoman, a fabulous Tom Waitsy cover of "Get Ready," some girls in some outfits. I think it's a symptom of our age that I feel compelled to bitch about not recognizing these people and knowing I won't recognize them in the round, while also thanking Jesus that we don't have to watch them or meet them or deal with more people. You know what I mean? "That thing I hate! Why have you given me less than my due?"
Then comes the walking trainwreck that is the Mighty Rangers of Denver. Maddie, who was wearing obnoxious plastic-frame glasses yesterday, has changed into even more obnoxious plastic-frame glasses today, and the fact that she has multiple pairs of giant plastic glasses that match her outfits makes me want to punch something all by itself, and she's still whining about whatever bullshit. Tori sings okay, Mark has weird moves and forgets the words along with Kim, and finally they just shut them all up. I don't know what song they are singing at all. The Judgery dispatch young wolfman Danny, Kimberly and Mark, and -- though Danny begins to blubber and look even more like somebody they would date on 7th Heaven/Secret Life Of The American Teenager -- Mark ends up being the first to openly start begging onstage. Ouch, Mark. Kara informs him that "we've" all heard No more than Yes in "our" lives, and Simon straight up tells him to cut it out ("Don't beg, it's not cool") and finally they are gone. Maddie and Tori get through.
Phoenix is ; today Byrd told them they have no idea what they are doing, both individually and as a group, which caused Moorea to skitz out some more and fight with Jermaine more, and the most interesting thing to happen with them lately is that about five minutes ago, one of their number -- a soft-faced uninteresting girl named Kat -- decided that she/they were doomed and, rather than soldiering on or even attempting to prevail, has left the building altogether. She explains to us that she just didn't want to be humiliated, but I hope she realizes that's exactly what she's done.
Gay piano guy tells them not to panic, and they head onstage. Ben Honeycutt is a hot little hobbit, but a little iffy; Jeff Goldford is old and wears a vest and is a music person; Moorea Masa is the girl that wouldn't quit with the harmony, and immediately forgets the words; and Jermaine sounds totally great until he goes into his usual showboating stuff. They're singing "Carry On Wayward Son" and they sound so smooth together I can't imagine what Kat would have provided. Moorea's voice is placed in the middle of all those boys and it sounds great, although at the end she does some unnecessary desperation runs to make up for the forgotten words.
Kara calls Moorea out for hiding behind the men, and instead of explaining that they lost another female voice, Moorea starts into some vague involved narrative about their "struggle" and Simon points out that their "struggle" is irrelevant by comparison to the fact that Moorea forgot the words, which she did. The song is the tree, the performance is the forest. Anyway, Jeff and Jermaine get through, while Moorea leaves with a graceless random speech about how she won't be trying out for Idol ever again, and [...Instead? Because of which? In related news?] has grown "as a person" in the past year, and is thankful for that.
...What? What does that sentence mean? I cannot parse it. So then there's a funny montage of several people trying to remember the retarded words of that inane "Sweet Escape" song, including Haeley cracking up and then doing it herself, and finally after a million people -- including a sympathetic Ellen herself -- one girl finally gets it. The whole auditorium goes shit nuts at that point, and it's a nice fun bonding moment for everybody. (Except the Dreamers, because they cannot bond.)
Big Dreams -- a team so utterly tragic that we didn't even hear about them until just now, which includes Matt the giant guy who just got out of jail, and Amanda Schechtman the Actress who got so ridiculously overdramatic that Simon could not stop fucking with her and has I think gained a little weight since her audition -- and they also fuck up the words of that stupid song, so badly that Ellen cracks up out loud, and as a group are just basically a shambles. Simon says it was the worst thing he's ever heard, and this adorable nameless gay guy who looks like a young red-headed Woody Allen does a little begging, and then Jailbird Matt goes home crying, while Amanda continues to emote at a prodigious rate.
Some other people who go home crying are: Somebody named Leah, that BFF girl, a Dallas girl named Kimberly, the incredibly beautiful Dave Pittman, Danny the Werewolf looking even scarier with eyebrows raining down his face like Marcel Marceau left out in the rain, everybody crying with Taylor Swift playing in the background, and most deliciously back to Amanda, who now has makeup smeared all over her face to the point where she looks like a coal miner, and then being physically revolted by the cheers of the people who made it through, and running off into the sunset clutching her stomach. As unhinged and vaguely Tatiana as she was, I'm kind of going to miss that crazy little thing.
Things start getting really good, groupwise, at this point. Middle C then appears singing "Closer." (The pretty Ne-Yo one, about how the person wants to control you and come closer and being just unable to stop or otherwise escape. Although it's funny you should mention it, because I had a dream last week about what if somebody sang the other "Closer" on this show and how in the dream I couldn't remember whether Adam Lambert actually did that and then I woke up, and reality was a little drabber.) So this group is Jermaine Purifoy, Janell Wheeler and Casey Bikini, which is like the most talented trio in the whole thing, obviously, and they kill it. Just absolutely great. Simon goggles lovingly at them.
up is Andrew Garcia's group Three Men & A [Lady? Baby?] with Katie Stevens and her scary childlike face, singing "No One" (the Alicia Keys one that wouldn't quit in those commercials, about how everything's going to be all right, which, you know I hate her songs but the more saturated we are with her the more likely we'll be to start being able to discern the difference between "catchy" and "good") along with a guy in glasses and JB Ahfua, who is all muscles and eyebrows. They all get through, as well as Casey's group, and then Casey drops to his knees in a mess of relief and joy.
The Dreamers are the last group of the day, which I would like to think is a happy happenstance but either way works out for us. Alex yells that a particular piece of choreography will "look ignorant," the trashy girl continues to complain about Mary's penchant for overpowering everybody else and singing loud as she can to take up more space, Mary continues to act totally disgusting -- "That's not the way I was taught to rehearse!" she laughs, all world-weary -- and slowly unspool. Delicious. Ryan calls them "five big personalities," but really what they are is three people who don't matter, a simpering somebody it took me thirty seconds to remember, and a monstrous woman with a serious case of the Meanicorns.
week: Is the last round before Semis. At this rate, I can see how getting from 71 to 24 really will take the whole rest of the month. Not that I'm complaining, because tonight did it for me. Oh, Group Night. You really know what you are doing.
Whatever happened to past Idol rejects like William Hung and Bikini Girl? See what they're doing now.