By M. Giant | Season 13 | Episode 18 | Aired on 03.12.2014
M.K. is doing a song she did at a high school recital and has loved ever since. Coincidentally, it's also from the movie Hope Floats, starring our own Harry Connick, Jr., and Ryan's brought a stack of DVDs for Harry to sign. Before M.K. sings, we have to watch all the other contestants imitating her by wearing -- you guessed it! -- hats and slouching a lot and saying "hella." The song is "To Make You Feel My Love," which was on the Hope Floats soundtrack not once, but twice. M.K. has gone all glam, with bleached hair and a sequined jacket, and her voice sounds even more pleasant than usual. Plus, in her ongoing attempts to reach out and connect more with the audience, she walks forward and sings directly to the judges' table. Jennifer loved it, and compares her to k.d. lang, but only because of their vocal tone and not because they're both kind of butch or anything. Harry agrees with Jennifer's comment about M.K.s subtlety, and says that while he's thought before that M.K. could do more than sit or stand while singing, he's since realized he was wrong. But he wants her to either cut the runs or nail them every time. Keith sees that she's still working on the performance side of her thing, but the she's really, really good. Ryan remarks that she proved she wanted to be here, points out former contestant Emmanuel in the audience supporting her, and sends her off to the lounge along with a clip of her reenacting the pottery scene from Ghost with her voting number. Which is a little creepy.
Ryan points out Gordon Ramsay in the audience to help plug tomorrow night's Hell's Kitchen premiere, and crap, now I'm plugging it, too. Ryan said before the ads that Alex is going to "dig deep," but I'm not sure the Academy Award-winning song "Falling Slowly" from Once is quite the deep track Ryan thinks it is. Anyway, the others imitate Alex by rolling up their pants and percussively strumming various stringed instruments and generally being twitchy and awkward. This is obviously exactly the kind of song Alex does all the time anyway -- only happier and more hopeful -- so obviously he does well with it. Even including the bigger notes at the end, which he normally avoids in favor of ending on the nine. Harry says it's nice to see something like that on American Idol without all the theatrics, and that this was what he was hoping for when they first saw him. Keith says Alex always holds Keith's attention because of how raw and real it is. Jennifer agrees with me that it was a perfect song and adds that he sang it beautifully. Ryan asks Alex why they all seem to be doing so much better than they did last week, and Alex says that they realized that they need to step it up if they want to be in it, allowing Harry to interrupt once again with "his" catchphrase. Awesome. Alex's vote number clip shows him holding it over his head in a Lloyd Dobbler trenchcoat like in Say Anything. And with his pants rolled down, no less.