By Joe R
Tuesday
The official theme this week is "Andrea Bocelli and the World's Greatest Love Songs" or some such whatever. The unofficial theme -- which, as always, is far more interesting -- is "David Foster hogs the spotlight, is super-mean to everyone, and crafts arrangements that Randy clearly hates and doesn't mind saying so." Runners-up include: "Ryan works his ass off to get this show in on time," and "Joe R comes down with a severe case of narcolepsy due to the heroically boring songs."
Katharine looks like she just discovered her womanly curves and is eager to show them off. She's wearing this yellow dress that flatters her intermittently and has a slit up the leg all the way to yowza. She sings Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing," because she's testing out this experiment where she sees if she can make me like her less. The singing is pretty rough until about halfway through, but not nearly as rough as the tongue-lashing the judges give her for it. It's like they've been saving up for weeks and weeks. Elliott is trying to dress like Ryan, perhaps as an experiment of his own. "A Song For You," by Donny Hathaway, is the perfect song for him. It lets him show off his wonderful voice while keeping him away from potential pitfalls like "excitement" and "unpredictability." Does that matter? Not when Paula literally loses control of all her emotions at once and cries enough to dehydrate herself. Be sure to say your goodbyes tonight, Kat. Paula just booked your plane ticket home.
Kellie thinks that scene in Ghost with the pottery is so cute and does her best to tarnish its memory by underwhelming her way through "Unchained Melody." She may have lost the judges forever, as they're unrepentant in their criticism. They really do tend to turn on a dime, do they not? Princess P-Funk sings "The Way We Were," a song I (shamefacedly) actually like. I love her, as has been the case recently, even as she tells us that she's had no experiences of love in her own life, only memories of her time spent as Billie Holiday, Dorothy Dandridge, and Nefertiti. Huh. I'd always pegged Lisa as the reincarnated one.
Taylor, I have decided, is either an asshole or a sleepwalker, and he just can't come in anywhere in between. He manages to keep all his limbs inside the boat this time around, but all that leaves is a lackadaisical "Just Once" that I cannot imagine anyone would pay to listen to. The judges -- well, Randy and Simon -- give him something less than utter fellatio, so Taylor does that seemingly-imperceptible eye roll thing he does when he doesn't get the praise he wants, because how tedious it is when the judges subject you to the same bullshit they put everyone else through? Suck it up, Graymate, jeez. Chris is apparently accumulating guitarists as he goes along. He's back with his awesome voice and penetrating stare of faux-dangerous sexuality, even if it is in service to The Worst Song in the Long History of Humankind: Bryan Adams's "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" How utterly vacant do you have to be to sing that song? Chris-level vacant, apparently. He's still awesome, and he's my only hope for a respectable winner, so I will try not to dwell.
Tonight: Not Elliott. Probably Katharine, unfortunately. Kellie in the bottom three, at long last? Oh, the bullshit that will unleash.
Wednesday
See, it turns out that Simon and Randy watched the show back again and realized they were totally wrong about Katharine's performance and were way too mean to her last night. So they apologize to Kat, but Paula sticks to her guns, not because she's steadfast, but because she's too drunk to remember what exactly she said. Then Simon brings up the Ryan-versus-Paula elephant in the room, and everyone's fake about "We're one big dysfunctional family," and Ryan brings up Paula's blubbering over Elliott about a billion times, and Simon was apparently petulant last night, and Randy was mean, and then they all huddle around the judges' table like a Manson family of vanity and egotism.
I'm sorry, what? The "contestants"? Like they even matter at this point now that the show has devolved into "Ryan Seacrest's Secret 'No Paulas' Club." They wind up getting put through a pimp-mercial that looks like the lost episode of Law & Order: Special Canine Unit. Lots of car chases and giant walkie-talkies and spawning ugly dogs. Then they have to sit through Andrea Bocelli and David Foster as they give their contribution to American Idol 5: Music for Old People.
Elimination time doesn't come soon enough, and the final six are divided into three groups of two: Katharine and Chris, Elliott and Taylor, and Paris and Kellie. Elliott and Taylor are, surprisingly and a bit unbelievably, not the top two vote getters, even though they are safe. Katharine and Chris are the top two vote getters, and as much manipulation and outright lying as I expect out of this show, I'm not sure they can actually outright say Kat and Chris were top two if that wasn't the case, so: cool. So the bottom two are Paris and Kellie, and of course you're expecting Paris to go home, because she's been bottom three before and Kellie hasn't even been close to the bottom all season. And yet, for the second season in a row, sixth place comes as a surprise as Ryan tells Kellie she's gone. She gets the extra-special sentimental remix of "Bad Day." And I have to give it to her: there was none of the bullshit grandstanding I was dreading. Whether that's because she's a class act or just too dim to realize what was actually happening, she left on a high note. up for the Pick: graduating the third grade! Best of luck!
Tuesday
So you've heard that Ryan and Paula are in this little blood feud that's been manifesting itself as a giant silent treatment on both sides, right? And, of course, the mind immediately goes to "love triangle with Simon," even though that's sick and wrong in a dozen ways. But you completely believe it, right? Why wouldn't Ryan and Paula be childish enough to not speak to each other because of what each of them said to Jay Leno? Jay Leno! Will he ever stop ruining everything he touches? Anyway, the upshot of this is now I will have to not only keep tabs on the raging Ryan/Simon subtext, but also the Ryan/Paula subtext. Assholes. You ever think Randy Jackson just sits at the judges' table, looks to his left, and thanks Jesus that he had the good sense to never have sex with either of them? Not to mention Ryan?
Ryan is dressed incrementally less formally this week, more like a TV host and less like a eulogizer. He reminds us that Ace Young was sadly run down in the middle of the American highway last week as he tried to chase a stray cat named "Gay Hitman Hairstyle." Poor Ace. Ryan doesn't yell at us for not voting for him like he usually does when the audience has the temerity to "aw" like the flashing neon signs tell them to. He does say that even with Ace gone, we've still got a few heartthrobs left, and if you look quickly to your left at the bright light approaching at an alarming rate of speed, that's the freight train bearing the words "He's talking about Randy and Simon!" Randy boos Simon, because after five seasons it's still funny, while Ryan tells us that we've sufficiently thinned the herd to six of these idiots, so they'll each have two phone numbers which viewers can dial and then post on the boards about every single time they dial them and then get banned. As for this week's theme, Ryan says we might be interested in some "mood lighting and scented candles" to prepare us for the final six as they "seduce" us with "Classic Love Songs." Other items that might help set the mood? Bowler hats. The Polo Grounds. Dizzy Gillespie. Victory gardens. The League of Nations. The Model T. Zelda Fitzgerald. An "I Like Ike" bumper sticker. ["Bladder control anxiety. Feeling very hostile toward the Glibbest Generation this week. Erectile dysfunction. CBS." -- Jacob] Because just like every other theme this season, we're delving into "Music for Very Old People." I get why this is happening -- when two-thirds of your remaining contestants are reincarnated from the Greatest Generation, you kind of have to -- but it's still pretty frustrating when you're trying to get a bead on where the eventual winner would fit in the current pop landscape. Toss in Chris and his fierce clinging to the alt rock of 1999, and the only remaining contestant who is truly repping a current music style is...Kellie Pickler. THIS is American Idol! Ryan introduces the video package for this week's theme-related celebrity guests, Andrea Bocelli and producer David Foster. We start off with an old-ish clip of Celine Dion's skeletal frame hyping Bocelli in her customary low-drama style. "If God were to have a voice and sing to us, it would be the voice of Andrea Bocelli." There are rolled consonants in that name that I don't even think exist. They couldn't have just gotten Celine out of Vegas for a couple days to freak out the Idols in person? Would that not have been so much better? Just to get it out there, Andrea Bocelli has a very strong and beautiful voice. But it's classical music. I know Simon wants us all to believe that opera can be pop and Il Divo will live happily ever after on a pile of money that he'll share, but on this show, who is he kidding? Sarah Brightman is on my TV screen, why? It all seems so random. David Foster is a better fit; he's a producer who has worked with some of the artists that the final six are aping, but -- HOLY GOD! When did David Foster become Stephen King? This is slightly disturbing. His jowls are angry at me, I think. There is footage of Foster and Bocelli collaborating on a very tacky concert in Las Vegas with the usual fire-dancing swan-divers and glitzy fake-gold everything that you'd expect from Vegas. Bocelli seems somehow classier than that. I don't know why he'd turn a blind eye to such excess. A blind eye! Now who's ready for Vegas? ["Not funny, Peanut. There are starving blind people in Ch-ch-china, you know." -- Jacob]
Cut to a hotel room in Beverly Hills where the final six file in and compete to see who can look the most sympathetic towards the blind guy. Points to Taylor for clapping first! Andrea shows off for these pathetic no-talents by singing the...scales? Is it the scales where your voice does the do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do thing but with "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah" instead? I shouldn't ever be allowed to talk about music. Anyway, Andrea kicks ass at this particular exercise, and everyone is duly impressed. David Foster and his jowls of grouch ask the Idols to try it themselves, and they suck ass at it. David turns to the cameras and outright asks where they're hiding the real finalists. It's excellent. He interviews in his best "maybe if I'm mean enough they'll bring back that reality show where I bitch at my lazy-ass stepkids all day" voice that if you can't cut it in his studio, you're outta here, buddy. Yeah, everybody's tough in their interview segments. So few people actually punch Taylor in the face or tell Kellie she's a fucking moron. Well, they do, but she never seems to quite get it. We get a little preview of David Foster's FOX Reality audition as he's really mean to Elliott and Chris and such. I liked this better when it was Barry Manilow making cutting remarks while trying to be nice, honestly. Though David certainly has the guest judge platitudes down. "If you can't bring something new to the table, you're going to die in the real world." All right, folks, we'll just pack it in until year, then. He also tells us the difference between "good" and "great" is so small, yet so huge. "Good" is having fourteen Grammy awards. "Great" is fourteen Grammy awards and stepkids who remotely respect you. In a joint interview, Andrea floats the theory that one only attains greatness if it is one's destiny to do so. Foster, brilliantly, turns to him and says, "Oh, really? You think?" I loved that. "Hard work and effort and drive and all the Horatio Alger stuff that we Americans believe in and you shiftless Italians generally don't -- they mean nothing?" Katharine will be singing first this week, which, depending on who you talk to, is either a huge conspiracy in her favor or a huge conspiracy to get her voted off. She'll be singing Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing," and I immediately shoot an expletive in the air, because this song fucking blows, it is crazy boring, and Katharine will be going home tomorrow as a result. Seriously, I came to all those conclusions right then and there. This song was actually written by David Foster, which...I guess the idea was to get brownie points from Foster the Grouch, but it's an awful big risk. As it turns out, however, Foster's nice to Katharine, and he tries to help her switch up the big climactic line of the song so it will have more impact for her. Indeed, it sounds pretty cool this new way. Andrea calls Kat's voice "beautiful, powerful, and clean." Foster asks him if she'd be able to sing opera. Me: "No." ["Jacob: 'Smack!'" -- Jacob] Andrea: "Maybe." Katharine: "Fuck you, Joe, watch me." She starts singing something in Italian without prompting or missing a beat, and if you're not inclined to liking her, that probably came off as way too precocious, but come on. Like I'm not going to find it incredibly impressive that she just jumps headlong into some opera in front of Andrea Bocelli. She's fearless. ["Yeah, that's one word for it." -- Sars] In their "You are blind as a bat and I have sight" duet-terview, Andrea tells David that he forgot to mention how Katharine is all young and gorgeous and shit. David like, "But how can you tell, No Eyes?" Somebody's been Braille-ing the message boards, I think.
We're going to proceed slowly with Katharine's wardrobe, because there's a lot to say and a lot of it is confusing. The first we see of her is a two-shot, waist up, and she looks dynamite. Mostly. She's wearing yellow, the color of hot melted butter, and her boobs are very much right there for the viewing. At this point, she looks like a painting, with the flowing brown curls draped over her shoulders. Just stunning. Then we cut to a wider shot and...man, I just don't know. Katharine's a hippy girl, and she generally wears it well. She's the sexiest girl this season by a country mile, so this isn't a fat thing. This is about how the dress she's wearing constricts to sausage-casing proportions right around her middle and makes her look lumpy. It's like she's wearing two different dresses. Okay, now it's three different dresses, because now that she's moving we see there's a slit up the left leg that goes all the way up to 'Ginatown ["Don't you mean 'G-g-ginatown'?" -- Jacob], and showing off her leg is a very good idea. So she's back to looking awesome again. It's like she's in a hall of mirrors.
The singing suffers from an almost identical schizophrenia. At base, she just looks uncomfortable, for the first time this season. Whether it's a confidence issue or what, she doesn't seem to be going for it as hard. I wouldn't say there are blown notes so much as notes she backs down from. The upshot of this is that she forces the charisma issue as a way of compensating, and it's not as fun when we can see the strings being pulled. She cutely waves at the camera, she stomps around and brushes the hair out of her eyes. It's a little Katie Holmes-Cruise -- just this dead-eyed, "if I keep smiling, I can plan my escape without anyone catching on" thing. I don't think she wants out of this competition, but I do think she wants out of this performance, and soon. But then she hits that key change Foster switched up for her, and all of a sudden she's almost back to normal. Maybe she was nervous about hitting that note correctly? No idea. All I know is my personal threat matrix for her was off the damn charts. I was busy sketching her likeness so that I'd remember what she looked like week when she'd be gone.Katharine's dad is, of course, weeping in the audience. If the revolution comes to L.A., we can rest easy knowing we can always replenish our water source by sticking Elliott, Paris, Paula, and McPhather in a locked room with a DVD of Terms of Endearment or Grey's Anatomy or whatever. Randy starts off saying he was worried about the theme as a whole, which is your first indication that things are about to head south. He likes the song -- which is a total shocker, because I had no idea Randy was a Whitney fan -- he just didn't like Kat's version of the song. "Too big" for her voice, is what he says. The crowd immediately turns on him. I don't, because there was something off about that performance, though I don't know if I'd necessarily attribute it to Whitney being "one of the best singers in the known world" like Randy has. I mean, Whitney was great, but I think if Katharine's on her A game, she could do a pretty good Whitney song. Kat giggles, though this time it's the giggle of "I laugh so I do not cry," because she wasn't expecting that. Paula...oh, ouch, Paula's going the "you look stunning" route, so this is going to be bad. Trying to decipher Paula is a bit like going spelunking, so bear with me as I try to work this out in my head. Paula's main gist is that Katharine over-sang the song and as a result went flat on some of the power notes. However, as always, the only way to get the true Paula experience is to go verbatim: "You are a star. You are born to sing. Watch...know what your money is...your back pocket...what your money is, and your money is your intimate vocals." There's been talk this week that the yo-yo nature of the judges' comments to Katharine was pre-planned so as to create a perfect storm of sympathy/pimpage for her, but I'm officially off the knoll for now, because there is no way these three morons could ever get together and engineer a bake sale. Katharine has no choice but to thank Paula for whatever the hell that meant, even though both she and Simon haven't the first frigging clue. ["Maybe this says something scary about me, but I thought that was perfectly clear, that Kat Mac shouldn't try to sell a bunch of glory notes when a much quieter vocal is her greatest strength." -- Sars]
Simon says, very simply, that singing "I Have Nothing" is like telling all of us that she's as good as Whitney Houston, and the reality is that Katharine is not. Now, I have no problem with anyone telling Katharine that she gave a crap performance. It wasn't my favorite by a long shot. But that reasoning is pretty bullshit. Kat singing Whitney is no more making the claim that she's as good as Whitney as having all twelve finalists sing Stevie Wonder is them saying they're as good as he is. You're all over these kids to pick good songs, and since she's clearly done that in your eyes, it's a little unfair to dick her around like this because the song was too good for her. Tell her she sucked, but don't sacrifice her on the alter of Whitney "poor people smoke crack" Houston. He does say she was "old-fashioned and cabaret" and that's valid. Ryan then rushes out onto the stage, and the expectation is that he'll play mama bear once more and shield his best girlfriend Katharine from mean old Simon. Boy, are we idiots. No, the first thing Ryan does is tell Katharine that "For those who don't have their volume on, I'm sure you're going to get plenty of votes." So mean! Katharine sort of fake-smiles and looks to the camera like, "Who brought the asshole?" I realize he was trying to compliment the va-va-voom of the dress and all, but come on, Seacrest. Not everyone appreciates artifice above all else like you do. ["And honestly, the comment would have been a hell of a lot less bivalent if anybody thought you liked girls. Don't make us jump through hoops like that, man. That's Comedy 101." -- Jacob] Yes, Katharine comes close, but she has some pride left. Dudes, she wants off that stage in the worst way. Her eyes are all squirrelly and darting around the auditorium, like she's looking for an actual escape hatch. Meanwhile, Ryan's spiel takes twice as long because he has to explain to the at-home audience how two separate phone lines work. We get it! Letters become numbers on a phone keypad! Cut to commercial before she makes a break for it! OH MY GOD nobody's going to text message for this dumb show! Go to commercial! I feel as crazy as Mama McPhee right now.Back from the break, Ryan is sitting by the product placement monitors to a very hunched-over Elliott Yamin. Man, does Elliott have scoliosis now? Dude can't catch a break. He is wearing a nice suit, his tie showing shiny pastel solidarity with Seacrest's, though the tie has been pulled loose, possibly due to swollen glands. It's just a guess predicated on the fact that Elliott is a walking AMA handbook. Ryan talks about the goddamn Yaminions in the audience, though he manages to pronounce it so it rhymes with "Armenians." Elliott parrots it back to him the correct way. You know, where they're "minions." This is why we don't go high-concept with Ryan very often. So you know how Elliott is always nervous? Like maybe he is a drug dealer and his head is always on a swivel for the fuzz? Multiply that by a billion and you get Elliott in this segment. It's probably because he has a lot to remember and part of what he has to remember is giving props to a member of the band, so it all comes back to Elliott being a super-nice guy (as it always does) and me being a jerk (as it always does). But for now, it looks like he's under the lights at the downtown police station. Ryan actually has to put a hand on his shoulder several times to get him to calm the fuck down. And what's all this jitteriness about? He's singing a song called "A Song for You" by Donny Hathaway. That's all. He squirms and rocks in his chair as he tells us that this was the song he sang in the audition we never saw because this show is so out to get him, OH MY GOD! So finally he gets to sing the song he's been dying to bore us with for weeks. He shouts out one of the backup singers for being Donny Hathaway's daughter. It's really very sweet, but he's so jumpy about it all that he fakes out the camera at first. It's the seventh week of finals, kid. Calm the hell down. His video package is deliciously brutal. David Foster manages to tell him to a) cut the shit with the skoo-bee-doo-bop stuff, because it's superfluous and annoying, and b) do something superfluous and annoying with the song so it won't sound exactly like Donny Hathaway. Mean old man. According to Elliott, Foster created a different arrangement for the song and it took him a while to get used to it. It all seems like it comes together by the end, though unless you're Queen and Ace Young, that's how all these video packages end.
Once again I have to say the same thing about Elliott? Jesus Christ. Hey, if you like this kind of music -- this kind of white-boy slow jam Easy 96.1 mellow soul stuff -- then I'm sure Elliott drives you crazy in a good way. And also in a crazy way. He's a very good singer. I can respect the voice, but I can't even remotely deal with the songs. They're in one ear and out the other. And some of that is how the themes this year have been designed so a singer like Elliott (or Taylor, or Katharine, or Paris) doesn't really have to step out of his zone too often. But I have to think some of it is the fact that Elliott is super-boring on stage and never does a thing to hold my attention. You think half the old-timey songs Paris sings are up my alley? Not really. But she brings something else to the table that keeps me from nodding off. Elliott's only done that once, and that was when he was shoved out of his comfort zone with that shitty Gavin DeGraw song. Which, I suppose, is going a long way to say, "Zzzzzzzzzzz." Hey, at least Kevin Nealon seems to like it.
Randy didn't like...the David Foster arrangement. Got scared for a second, didn't you, Yaminions? ["Joe, don't acknowledge them. That's how they get their power. Like terrorists, or ghosts." -- Jacob] What Randy did like was Elliott's singing, because it was the bomb. He gets really insistent about it, like he's going to pick a fight with David Foster over how cool Donny Hathaway is. And Lord, how I wish that fight would happen right now instead of what we see . Because what we see is Paula Abdul being an utter crying mess for no reason at all. What the hell? I realize the intoxicated among us are prone to mood swings and crying fits, but it really does seem like she's found something in Elliott worth crying over. He moves her, you see. She garbles a whole bunch of words together, but maybe what she's saying is that he deserves to be where he is in this competition, despite being the dapper little bridge troll he is. Did she think he was going home this week and felt bad about it? Because that little production right there kind of sealed his place in the top five. Gotta love it when Paula Abdul falls ass-backwards into strategery. She says, and I quote, "You're just handsome, evolved, performer, that is...you are an American Idol." Awesomely, the camera catches Simon off to the side trying to suppress a guffaw. Which is good, because seriously, Paula. Pull it together for one second and pretend that your entire state of being isn't just some runaway train you're trying desperately to catch. Simon manages to stifle it long enough to tell Elliott that his performance tonight, at times, made good on Simon's early season claim that he was the best male vocalist this show had ever seen. Ryan approaches the stage gingerly and comments on the "emotional roller-coaster" at the judges' table. I love how Ryan is always very eager to sidle up right to Elliott, because he's the one guy Ryan's taller than. Ryan makes the necessary joke about how Paula's crying is ironic because it's Elliott who's normally the weeper. He reads off the numbers and gives us one more judges update -- Paula apparently is still crying and just punched Simon. Lady needs an intervention in the worst way.
After the commercial, Ryan and Kellie are on the cola stools, probably talking about why Kellie chose that awful hairstyle I hate where the top of your head just has a puff of pulled-back hair. It looks ridiculous. This week, instead of pretending not to know the meaning of simple words like "staircase" or "water," Kellie is in full-blown Hee Haw mode. Ryan asks if she's dedicating her love song to anyone, and Kellie mugs for a bit about how she doesn't have a boyfriend. Then she asks Ryan if he remembers the movie Ghost. I'd mention that a nod to Ghost is pretty dated, but with this crowd, 1990 seems positively au courant. Anyway, she brings up the hilarious "love in the time of pottery wheels" sex scene and makes the Lucy face as she tells us about how she ain't getting any. Ryan seems more than happy to let her ramble for a while, because he hasn't yet figured out how dangerously low on time we are tonight. Kellie's Bocelli video has her acting a fool, naturally. The Ghost reference is because she's singing "Unchained Melody," which is a beautiful, if entirely played out, song. David Foster tends to agree. Kellie says she's doing the "LeAnn Rimes version," which I didn't know existed, and it makes me sad that it does. At one point, Foster makes this face that captures the world's most exquisite combination of horror and boredom. He's horrified that one man could possibly be this bored. Bocelli is his usual ethereal self about how the song is sweet and has wings or some such thing. I totally get how he could be best buds with Celine. They both live in metaphors and superlatives. Foster tries to help Kellie tweak, and she's way too eager to point out her own flaws. Self-deprecation is absolutely essential if you want to be a person I can stand for ten minutes, but being too eager to cut yourself down tips the pity/respect balance too far to the former. Thing is, at this point in the competition, I don't think Kellie thinks she belongs here. And while I don't think she's sabotaging herself, I do think she's setting up a nice thick cushion for when she is ultimately dumped. It doesn't make me hate her, but it does make her performance here a waste of my time. Foster tries to get Kellie to go for a very high note at the climax of the song, and she doesn't know if she can hit it because they don't have notes that high in Albemarle. Only iceberg lettuce and poverty. Then Foster engineers a lame "even the blind can tell she's blonde, from the stupid" joke with Bocelli. Frankly, that's beneath us all. She's not dumb because she's blonde. She's dumb because she's Southern. Where have y'all been?She starts out sitting on the steps, Covais-style. Strangely, she begins the song in the middle, at the "lonely rivers flow" line. It's not strange that it's an abridged version, because they all are, but the opening line of this particular song is so iconic. It sounds weird to start it without the "ohhhh, my looove" part. The country twang doesn't improve the song, as it turns out. Makes it less stark, for one thing. She's singing it like Fievel on his windowpane. Dudes, what I wouldn't give for "Somewhere Out There" on this show. They're all cartoons at this point anyway. That song, "Poor Unfortunate Souls," and "Babysitting Blues" from Adventures in Babysitting, and you could have a "Gleefully Rape Joe's Grade-School Years" theme. Don't think I wouldn't give that shit an A+. Kellie's not unpleasant, she's just boring. As David Foster said, this can be a fucking boring song if you let it. She ramps up to that high note on "I neeeeeed your love," and it's not as impressive as she neeeeeeds it to be. In the audience, we see "Kellie's Grandpa and friends," only it's a different Grandpa. And I understand the whys and wherefores of how someone can have two grandfathers, but there's more than a small part of me that will not accept anyone other than Grandpa Clyde. Get this fake grandpa out of my sight. On the bright side, Sela Ward is in the audience looking, as ever, super-gorgeous even though she doesn't even seem to be trying. She's got kids with her, and I pick up my phone and start dialing 1-866 before I realize Sela's not an option.
Randy is warming up to hit Kellie upside the face with criticism, but he doesn't really want to, so he pusses out and asks Kellie to do it for him. Seriously. "Hey Kellie, remember how last week you told us all how you butchered your song? Would you mind doing that again so I don't have to feel bad?" She admits she's scared but doesn't give up anything incriminating. Randy says there was strangeness and also pitch problems. Paula comes closest to making sense, which always gives me that funny feeling in the pit of my stomach like the elevator of blood is about to get off on this floor. She says now that we've gotten to the final six, what was nice and fun and acceptable about Kellie just isn't going to cut it anymore. When you've got five people raising their games, it's no longer good enough to be the Ellie Mae anymore. Simon starts off by saying maybe Paula should have been weeping uncontrollably at how awful this performance was. He talks about how it went on and on and was robotic and, in Ryan's pre-emptive defense, he is getting rambly, so when the music kicks in and Ryan storms the stage, I don't exactly feel sorry for Simon. He had made his point. But he's the damn star of the show, so he has to make a big deal about getting cut off. Ryan's in no-fooling "job to do" mode, not even bothering with Simon's pissing contest. "Unfortunately, if we don't speed up, we're going to go off the air quicker than we want to." Much as I can hate Ryan, he does tend to let his vanity take a back seat to his job. Of course, that's not exactly a fair comparison with Simon, whose vanity is his job, so: push. Ryan speed-reads Kellie's numbers and shoves us into commercial without so much as an "I'll call you." Those Hollywood types are so damn slick.Awesome little Paris is going to sing "The Way We Were," which is super-easy to make fun of -- just listen to the lyrics some time -- but I won't because as pop ballads go, it ain't bad. I was at a funeral once, not too long ago, where a recording of this song was played at the internment, only it was a live version, so over the sounds of gentle sobbing and grim scripture readings, we got to hear Babs vamping all over about the beautiful crowd and how lovely it was to be back in New York or whatever. It lightened the mood. ["I can never not think of Tom Hanks's 'pick-churrrrrs' version in Big." -- Sars] If you want crazy wrapped up in classy packaging, it's either Streisand or Diana Ross, you know? Paris is the opposite: classy wrapped up in crazy packaging. Sometimes it's the package of undisciplined sing-in-Ryan's-face youth. Sometimes it's dressing up like Mrs. Griswold. The nice thing about Paris lasting this long in the competition is we've been able to see that inner classiness shine through. As for her Bocelli/Foster tutorial, she does what she's done to every single celebrity guest all season: render them speechless with how preternaturally excellent she is. I don't think I'm making this up. Even the guests who have been prone to shit-talking -- Manilow, Queen, Foster -- are pretty much reduced to "She's great!" in Paris's presence. Then? The best thing Paris has ever said. ["Word! I kept saying it to myself for like ten minutes afterwards!" -- Jacob] "This song is a great song for me, because I have memories, I don't really have love thoughts." What the hockey? I have no idea what that even means. If she's too young to be having "love thoughts" (and...she's not), then what are the memories of? Back when she sang at the Cotton Club? Fond recollections of King Solomon's tender side? I think she just admitted to being for-real reincarnated. You had to figure someone on this season was. I'm still not convinced Taylor Hicks isn't the result of a lab experiment designed to allow Brother Ray to live forever.
Do you think Taylor is just fucking with Simon at this point? Because for as many times as Simon has spoken of Taylor in the "drunk dad warbling at a wedding" context, he certainly looks like he's gone out of his way to dress the part tonight. The tie has come off and the cummerbund is lying on the bathroom floor somewhere, but Pop's had a few and he wants to sing something nice. To his credit, he sings the song very well and with almost none of the tics we've come to know and loathe. In a show of solidarity with the rest of his cast, Taylor makes sure to throw a whole lot of "boring" into the mix, which speaks well of him. Love songs don't have to be sung like this, to this degree of boring. Katharine was on the right track, at least. She just didn't pull it off. For someone who is supposedly so often "moved" by the music, to the point where he can't be held responsible for the damage his limbs inflict, Taylor certainly seems capable of a dead-eyed snoozer as much as anyone. Gosh, it's almost enough to make you think the Tourette's stuff is an affectation. Y'all, Tori Spelling is in the house. Hi, Tori! I wish I liked your show better than I do! I feel like I'm missing out! Randy (Jackson, not Spelling) acknowledges that he may just be in a crabby mood tonight, but once again, he's not feeling it. A quick cut to Taylor has him shifting his eyes northward; not a proper rolling, but a good enough indicator of, "Here we fucking go again." Yes, Taylor. Once again the judges are being assholes by not recognizing your greatness. Yeah, Randy and Simon can be dicks when they tell you to do one thing one week and the other the week, but you think you're fucking special in that regard? Ask Chris whether he's being "uncompromising" or "indulgent." Ask Paris if she's acting too young or too old. Ask dear sweet Ayla if she should attempt to move about the stage or stand perfectly still. It happens. They're not out to get you, personally. Paula puts all her words into a salad shooter and the entire kitchen of her mind is now a mess, but she manages to spit out something about Taylor being a born performer. This passes Lord Taylor's standard for kissing his ass, so she avoids the exasperation. Simon, however, calls the performance "uptight" and likens it to a hotel lounge, and there go the eyeballs again. Grin and bear it, dickhead. Simon's actually trying to put it in something of a constructive context -- that it's not a "winning" performance and he'll have to do better if he wants to win the show -- but Paula is busy assaulting him and grandstanding about the love for Taylor in the room. Fucking enabler.
Chris will be performing last this week, because last week the producers saw what happens when he doesn't. I have absolutely no delusions that the show probably wants Chris to win -- particularly when the alternative is Taylor. I don't trust America either, so American Idol and I are on the same page with that. Chris and I, however, are not on the same page. At least not this week. Because this week, he'll be singing "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman," which was on Bryan Adams's album Music for Fake Lotharios. You might also remember it from the Don Juan DeFucko soundtrack, where it got to underscore the cornea-damaging prospect of Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway having middle-to-late-age sex as their plastic surgery scars glistened in the soft light. I'm sorry, Johnny Depp isn't a miracle worker. So, but Chris thinks this is a really great song and all, and that kind of sentence never does anyone any favors, because it makes you look stupid for saying it and it makes the rest of us feel stupid for hearing it. The song is one of those "You think you’re smarter than me?" questions which tend to answer themselves, and not in a way that flatters the asker. If you're asking me if I've ever really loved a woman, my assumption is that you indeed have never loved a woman, period. And do you know how the song says you should love a woman? "You tell her that she's really wanted," and you "tell her that it's gonna last forever." Yeah, but about the loving? No? That's all? You feed her some bullshit and then you're on your own? Gee, thanks, Bryan. Not like I was planning on loving a woman any time soon, but you could have at least pitched the idea to me.
Anyway, Foster gingerly approaches Chris's whole "sounds like a goat" issue, couching it in a head-voice/chest-voice thing, but when David Foster is pointedly mentioning how Andrea Bocelli always sings from his diaphragm, brother, you better take heed. Chris is all, "Diaphragm, eh? I'll have to give that a shot." Because Chris don't need no fancy book-learnin' when it comes to his voice. No. No, that's not really fair. Chris isn't coming at it from an ignorance-is-bliss angle. It's more like, with the music Chris listens to, you don't exactly have to be the most proficient singer. ["Or literate, frankly." -- Jacob] As it is, Chris is probably a better vocalist than 90% of the artists in his chosen genre. But this show isn't going to let him rest on that, because Chad Kroeger would be bounced from this show so fast. So when Andrea Bocelli shows him how you can lie down on the floor and still belt out something good and strong if it's coming from your chest and not the Belinda Carlisle living in the back of your throat, Chris needs to listen to that advice. Because the difference between "lead singer of Fuel" and "the American Idol" is these four weeks. It sucks, though, because Chris sounded really good singing from the floor, and yet I think he saw that more like a cool trick rather than one to grow on.
Before Chris gets to perform, Foster interviews that "if he gives the performance of his life, he'll do amazing." And then the audio cuts out but you can still clearly lip-read Foster throwing a big ol' "but" into that sentence, and you have to wonder where that was going to lead. "But, if he's merely okay, everyone will be forced to recognize what an annoying song he's singing." Chris now has two guitarists to accompany him, because indeed he is special. He looks, as ever, totally hot and fake scary. I get where people are saying he's overly intense and whatever, but...it's Chris. What's he gonna do, adopt your kids? He sings it nice and boring at the beginning, but throws the whole wheelbarrow full of rock-voice stuff at you once the bridge hits. It's an average Chris performance, which puts him at the middle of this week's pack. The judges finally seem to realize that if they don't get a move on, Hugh Laurie's going to be reading the 1-866 numbers for us. Ryan is already onstage, because this shit needs to happen down to the nanosecond. Everybody's reduced to exclamatories. Randy's all, "Dude! Yo, yo! Love the jacket! Dude! Amazing! Dawg! Dude!" Paula...Paula is the best. She's standing, because maybe she's a little like me and thinks things get done faster if you're standing. She's totally flipping out: "We love you. Love! You! LOVE! Loooooove! You!" Lady is playing to the back row at this point. I needed to watch that back several times. Her arms are just all over the place and her eyes kind of bug out. I take back what I said about an intervention. I wouldn't trade this Paula for anything. Even Simon gets into the spirit of brevity, saying simply it was a "very good choice of song" (that is an untruthitude), and that the performance was very "sexy." I wonder if that comment would have made it past Simon's internal censors if he had more time to think about it. Ryan moves faster than the speed of sound into the rundown.Rundown! Katharine bursting through her clothing and being not all that bad. Elliott's eyebrows going very Ace on us. Kellie asking us politely to let her go home, even if she's not realizing it. Paris tapping into memories she just uncovered at Dionne Warwick's house last weekend. Taylor looking for an escape hatch. And Chris doing that Chris thing where he sings a bad song very nicely. Throughout that whole segment, Seacrests's mic was still live, but I couldn't make out anything good, so there's one more area in which this evening sucked balls. If you're gonna give me geriatric themes, at least let me eavesdrop on the coffee klatch afterward. Jerks.
Wednesday
"Last night was all about romance," says Ryan. "But who melted your heart and who left you cold?" Speaking of cold, check out Taylor's face as we pan down the line of the final six. Dude is hardcore pissed about something. Still about the judges? Because I can guarantee you they don't remember it anymore. Did he find out half of week's theme is "the current Billboard charts," meaning "songs by people who aren't dead yet"? Maybe that's it. That scary little cartoon man in the credits always makes me think of Simon, even when it has boobs. Ryan makes mention of the many signs in the audience, one of which proclaims its love for Chris acrostic-style. Man, third grade was so cool. Nothing could not be expressed as an acrostic. Ryan tells us that a record-breaking 47.5 million votes were cast last night, which was the most votes in a non-finale episode ever. Fucking why? Who could have even had the strength to lift a drowsy finger to their phone after last night? I blame the conspiracy to keep Elliott down. Ryan directs our attention to the "six very nervous" finalists on the comfy couch of uncertainty, and once again, Taylor is the only one who looks like he's smelling a fart. There's no possible way he's going home tonight, so I don't know what he's all bent out of shape about, but he's not hugging himself, so I guess I should be grateful. Ryan then introduces the "emotionally unstable panel" of Randy Jackson (chronic "dawg" syndrome), Paula Abdul (hyperdrunktivity) and Simon Cowell (borderline asshole disorder). Ryan (buggery) points to Randy and says, "You're the only sane one this year." I'm sorry, since when has blabbering nonsense words over and over when no one is listening been considered "sanity"?
Now we get to the damage control portion of the evening, as Ryan tells Simon about the big gay outrage over how mean all the judges were last night. Simon says he thinks he was "unfair to one person last night," and then he takes a big ol' pause as I try to remember if he accidentally said something self-deprecating last night that he could now retract because he's simply more awesome than even he gave himself credit for. But no, he actually says he wants to apologize and take back what he said about Katharine, because watching it back last night, she really wasn't that bad. Randy and Paula look archly over at Katharine, who has a giant smile on her face for which she will be forgiven/indicted depending on how you feel about her, which is about how it should be. Kellie reaches over and pats her on the leg, Paris and Elliott are both happy, Taylor is inscrutable, and Chris looks like he could give a shit. Awful Mama McPhee effing stands up and applauds, and I think it's some sort of Electra thing where I'll forgive Katharine everything and yet continue to hate her mom, even if they're probably the same person just with different hairlines. Randy also agrees he was "a little harsh" on Katharine, but Paula stands firm, because she's only rendered incoherent with human emotion for the boys.
Couple things to consider here. First is that Kat experienced the shit end of this stick several weeks ago after "The Voice Within," when she wound up in the bottom two and Simon was starting to look pretty dumb for saying she was almost as good as Xtina. I think the motive on Simon's part is essentially the same tonight: to make himself look good in the face of overwhelming public sentiment in the opposite direction. Which leads me to my second reaction, which was "Woo hoo! She's safe!" Because no way Simon and Randy back-track like this if she's going to be eliminated anyway. And then I go to the "aw, Paris" place, because Elliott got cried for and is thus safe, and Kellie will be bottom three this week but surely her support hasn't eroded that much. Lastly, if the intention was to double-dip with Katharine and make a play for sympathy votes on Tuesday while shoring up her reputation as a good performer on Wednesday, I'd tip my hat and say "bravo," but as I said before, I don't think these guys have that in them. And at this point, I'm not sure Simon cares about Katharine (or anyone this season) more than he cares about himself and looking like he's smarter than everyone else.
Then, Simon asks Ryan if he and Paula are still not talking to each other. Awesome. Ryan says they are speaking to each other, with a face that says, "My locked dressing room door is, at least." Paula says, "We love each other," without taking her eyes off of Simon. Oh yeah, they're just peachy. Ryan says, "There's love at the core." Oh my God, I didn't realize they hated each other this much. If Ryan Seacrest can't convincingly be fake about something? Holy crap, you guys.
Ryan tells us all about last night. Andrea reminds us that if you're not actually in love when you sing a love song, you are well and truly fucked. Foster uses a microphone analogy to describe the fleeting nature of AI fame. Katharine made her daddy cry, and then the judges were mean to her, but that's already been nullified, so who cares? Paris's lone comment is Paula's "you oversang it" sound bite, which pretty much seals her deal as bottom two. Elliott's fearsome weeping powers are transferred temporarily to Paula. Simon thought Kellie was the one who really gave them something to cry about. Then the music cuts him off and it's, "Well, I never!" Ryan VOs about Simon's "maturity level hit[ting] an all-time low." When did the contestants become the Sideshow Mel of this program? Tabloid fodder is wonderful, but that's what inside jokes are for. Stop making yourselves the lead story. Simon and Paula bickered over Taylor's disinterested ass, with Paula hauling out some majorette moves. Chris "turned the night into one big love-fest," but that was maybe just because no one had any time to do anything but scream "Love!" at him. Back to live action, Ryan and the judges are huddled around the table, trying not all that hard to make us think they don't hate each other. The levels of fake on this show are like a nesting doll. And what's at the center is really so small and unimpressive.The pimp-mercial this week is to the tune of Blondie's most excellent "Call Me." We see those two words plastered on a number of missing-dog fliers that the Idols are handing out. See, Ace has reverted back to puppy form, but now that he's been voted out, he doesn't want to live with people like Kellie or Taylor anymore, so he's run away. Ace as a puppy, by the way, is a lot uglier than you'd think. They're using hi-tech equipment like oversized walkie-talkies and binoculars to find this thing. It all looks very washed-out and gritty, like a Michael Mann movie. There are frequent cutaways to solitary Idols standing in a dead-end alley. It pisses me off that I even know this, but it looks a lot like that Matchbox 20 video where he wants to push you around. ["And he will, Joe. Don't be flip about it." -- Jacob] They chase this ugly dog through an outdoor café, ruining everyone's otherwise pleasant breakfast. The stand-alone shots are sort of telling: Taylor makes a telephone hand signal and is jackassy; Chris points a solitary finger at your soul like he wants to eat it, but he's still just cute ol' Chris so it's not even a little menacing; Elliott actually looks very good as he and Katharine both dance cutely; Paris looks super-cool and imperious; and Kellie is a wild child. They finally find the Ace-dog and discover it has secretly knocked up another dog (who may or may not be Essence Atkins -- I've never seen her before so it could be). The Idols are all very happy for Ace, because though starting a family at his age is a big decision, he does seem to be settled down in a nice abandoned warehouse with a brand new Ford. Ace-dog is so happy that he even winks at us. Aw, Ace. We knew you'd find your way.
Ryan tells us about the tour and I phase out, because no fucking way. He then introduces "two industry giants" to the Idol stage: Andrea Bocelli and David Foster. Andrea broken-Englishes about how the final six are "good, good singers," and now he's fake-nervous about having to follow them onstage. Ryan asks Foster about being Mean Mr. Grumpypants with the contestants, and Foster says he treated it just like it was his studio. So, lots of blow and tantrums, then? Ryan asks if he acts the same way with Whitney and Celine in the studio. Well, no. With Whitney, replace "blow" with "rock," and with Celine, replace "tantrums" with "a palpable desire to kill Celine Dion." Foster futzes around for a second, giving Ryan a look like, "What do you want me to say here?" Ryan clearly wants him to say that he treated the Idol kids exactly the same as real singers, and Foster eventually catches that snap, however unconvincing he sounds when he finally does. Foster then talks about how his newest protégé follows in the footsteps of his work with Josh Groban and Michael Bublé. So, fairly warned be ye about this "Renee Olstead." The song Andrea and David perform is called "Because We Believe," and it's exactly as generic as it sounds. Except for the singing, which is fairly exceptional. It's one of those dramatic songs with sound effects that mimic airplanes and shit. Like Pink Floyd, but without the hideous scars of wartime Britain and mad drug use. The lyrics are all "we were born to shine" and such, like this could have been the winner's coronation song if only the lab rats at 19E had thought of it first. Everybody loves Andrea, of course, because as Jacob said last week, everybody loves a blind man. Nobody loves a jowly meanie, though, so Foster gets less love. Back from the break, Ryan directs our attention to Lisa Tucker, who is in the front row and conveniently mic'ed. She reminds us how awful Wednesday nights are, especially if you're her and you never got a break from the bottom three. Ryan reminds us that -- oh, right! -- Lisa got her ass on The O.C. just in time to see Samaire Armstrong return for prom. I almost watched that episode just for the enjoyment of seeing actual teenager Lisa look like an adopted pre-schooler to the social-security-collecting Ben McKenzie. ["...Which is exactly what happened. Are you psychic?" -- Jacob] This week, Ryan will be breaking up the six contestants into three groups of two. Katharine got lambasted, but Simon and Randy took it back. She starts the line at the far end of the stage. Elliott -- have I mentioned? -- made Paula forfeit control of her tear ducts, and is asked to start the line at the middle of the stage. Kellie was hella boring and the judges have abandoned her for good at this point, and Ryan asks her to start the third line at the near end of the stage. It's notable that Kellie does so without a word or anything else but a little wave to the fans cheering for her. No Lucy faces, no cornpone, nothing. Paris was good but old-fashioned and is asked to join Kellie. The presumption among my circle of interested parties was that whichever of the three groups had two females would be the bottom two, so at this point, Paris was already dead in the water. Poor Paris. She doesn't deserve to go home. Taylor is expressionless in either direction as he's given his mixed reviews and is asked to join Elliott. That's a perfect storm of something, right there, and I fear it. Chris gets mad love and is asked to join Katharine at the far end of the stage, which makes a perfect storm of something else entirely and I love and fear it. I see the producers are all too willing to further the Kat/Chris (pretty/pimped) versus Taylor/Elliott (plain/conspired against) dynamic. Of course, perhaps I should place the blame squarely on you, the voting public, for preferring talent-show contestants in an easy-to-generalize pecking order. Shame.
Ryan says one of these groups contains the top two, one the bottom two, and one the middle two. He takes a look at all three groups and sends Taylor and Elliott back to the comfy couch of uncertainty, but doesn't tell us whether that means they were the top vote-getters or not. Taylor makes finger guns or whatever the fuck while Elliott gives an appropriately dorky double thumbs-up. After the predictable commercial break, Ryan tells us that indeed Taylor and Elliott were not the top two, which shocked the hell out of me -- Kat was top two?! Simon must have scared the hell out of her fans. Ryan dispenses with the formalities, because we already know: Kat and Chris are the top two. Katharine, who hasn't had time to work out the Simon math in her head and probably thought she was in huge danger of going home, is appropriately happy. Chris never seems to know what to do with her. Too much drama. They're the two finest-looking contestants by a country mile, but I'd be surprised if they had more than two things to say to each other if they were locked in a room together. "So, you...were in a lot of school plays?" "Yeah, you?" "Nah, I was getting blazed by the baseball field, mostly." "Oh. I drank half a bottle of schnapps once and sang 'Makin' Whoopee' to our faculty advisor." Kat tells Kellie she loves her as she passes, though the non-verbals tell me she and Paris have gotten closer these last few weeks, which makes sense considering how similar they are. Paris and Kellie. Paula, of course, has no problem with this bottom two, because all the Y chromosomes are safe and sound like they should be. Paris, once again, had the best vocal "of the females" (read: fourth best), while Kellie pretty much deserves to be there. To her immense credit, Kellie doesn't disagree. And this isn't the self-pity "ahh butchered eeeyit!" stuff like last week. This is Kellie saying she's ready to go home because everyone else severely outclasses her vocally. Ryan confirms that it's Kellie's first time on the seal ("first time for everything"), and he asks Paris how many times this makes for her. She's like, "First time in the bottom two, fool." Paula loves this response even more than I do. Don't let them make you look weaker than you are. Ryan thanks both girls for their patience and then tells Kellie that she's going home tonight. I'm very pleasantly surprised. That was exactly the right thing to happen, and that happens so rarely. Kellie is resigned, and Paris does her very best to look sad and keep from leaping into the air. Her family makes no such promises and fall out all over themselves. Kellie's fake Grandpa is disappointed.
Kellie's video journey is set to the special sad-girl remix of "Had a Bad Day." We see how she used to be far more prone to tears than she is now. "I'm just now getting to the point where I'm not ashamed of where I came from." Aw. Though perhaps she could bone up on her vocabulary so the reverse doesn't become true. Albemarle is conveyed by a shot of a cotton plant. Her skuzzy dad is conveyed by a photo of her skuzzy dad. We see the "calamari" clip, which in retrospect is a billion times less egregious than "what's a ballsy?" Rod Stewart took a load off her chest. Lord. Simon calls her a "naughty little minx," which still sounds eight kinds of inappropriate. Simon was really bailed out by Kellie's lack of reading comprehension skills, I think. She's maybe a little bit retarded, but lovably so. Now that she's out of the competition and no longer siphoning anyone's votes, I wonder if the backlash against her will soften. Grandpa Clyde and Little Eric are tearful and full of love. They'll be at the finale, I think.
I'm still in the time-crunch mindset of last night, so while Ryan is lazily chatting with Kellie on the seal, my mind is freaking out, wondering why he doesn't sign off already. The clock, Ryan! The cloooooock! He asks how Hollywood has changed her, and of course it hasn't. She has learned a lot, though, and it's different from Albemarle. She's very professional, all of a sudden. She even shouts out to all the behind-the-scenes people who make this live TV show happen every week. In the final analysis, I don't think the dumb thing was an act. I think it was a manifestation of a nervous girl trying to give this show what they clearly wanted. "Calamari" was a hit, so she followed it with "mink" and "ballsy" and "on paper." Now that she's been eliminated, all that pressure is off and she's free to be chatty and spacey without forcing the vocab issue. Katharine and Paris are dewy in the eyes as Kellie vamps about how she doesn't have much time left, "'cause the commercial's comin'." Whatever, she's cute. Elliott's crying, which we already knew by virtue of remembering that Elliott is alive. She blabbers on and gets to yell "Cut!" just before the show signs off. Farewell, Kellie. Stay far, far away from Constantine.
week: Songs from the Billboard charts and from the year these old-ass people (and Paris) were born. Jacob gets two straight weeks of monotony as we bullet-train our way to the finale. Who won't be speaking to who by the time we get there?