By M. Giant
Because tonight, one finalist's triumphant top-three homecoming parade will be snatched away, the pre-credits sequence starts with an Instagrammed montage of past finalists' hometown events, segueing into how much all of the final four want just that. Of course they do, because after one of them wins, he or she will never see his or her home again.
The judges come out all dressed like dolls in their individual ways, and then Ryan makes his entrance with no tie and no vest, and gladhands an artificial rope-line crowd arranged on the stage in a totally unconvincing way. Then he flogs tonight's show and claims that buying tickets to this summer's American Idol tour will help fight heart disease. Not mine. He also breaks the news that everyone in the house gets tickets automatically, to which they react like an Oprah crowd getting cars. Then the top four come out to sing "California Dreamin'," I guess because someone figured they should finally sing something having to do with last night's theme. They all take turns singing the lead while the other three pretend that the entire choir's worth of harmony we're hearing on backup is only coming from them. The blocking is as slow and ponderous as an RV rodeo, but the audience applauds anyway. Perhaps they're already thinking about how much they can scalp their free tickets for.
The Ford Music Videos have gotten so embarrassing that now they spend a bunch of time showing us the shoot of it. And then they show part of the video, too. At least it's more boring than embarrassing this time, showing the finalists minus Phil driving an electric car and magically fixing the environment at the same time. That was innocuous enough that Phil probably didn't need to pretend to be sick to sit it out this week.
Speaking of Phil, he's the first one called to center stage. During the clips of his performance and feedback from last night, it sounds like Jimmy's setting up to mock Phil for picking "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?," a song by an acoustic guitar songwriter, and then putting a sax and no guitar in his performance. But then he says it was Phillip finding his voice. As for Phil's second song, "Volcano," he says Phil sang it like he wrote it, and it all came together. "If I had seen that in a club on a cold night one night, I'd sign him right there." Phil stands with his hands in his pockets on the stage and talks about how blessed he feels just to be there. "I want to go home for the good part," he adds. So maybe not entirely blessed. The lights come down, and Ryan says that after 70 million votes -- ten million more than last week -- Phil's heading back to the couch to wait for a while longer to find out whether he's safe or not. The audience is disgusted, as are the judges, and Phil, and probably Ryan with himself, if there's anything inside that suit above room temperature.
Then Ryan calls Hollie up, and Jimmy says that Hollie's usual weaknesses actually worked in her favor on "Faithfully." He agrees with Randy about Hollie peaking at the right time. "Unfortunately, it was in the wrong direction." After the clip of the Bonnie Raitt song from her second round, Jimmy says he stayed out of the way on song selection this week, and Hollie's ignorance of the song made her crash and burn. But what about Hollie's results? She doesn't get any either, and has to go back to the couch. On the bright side, she almost never gets to do that.
Ryan introduces David Cook to sing "The Last Song I'll Ever Write for You." Promise? No, actually I don't even know this guy, although his left-handed guitar and oddly-shaped head look familiar. As for the song, it sounds a lot like something Colton would have sung, only David Cook doesn't do it as weepily.
Ryan calls Joshua over to get "the news," and Joshua slowly comes over because he knows there won't actually be any news. Jimmy says "You Raise Me Up" didn't work for Josh, with the "full, glorious, gospel rendition... he can't use that trick on every song." Since when? Then, after the clip of him singing "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," we see that Joshua actually leered over Jennifer speaking Spanish during her comments. I don't know what anything means any more. Jimmy says Josh's performance was something rarely seen on the American Idol stage: "Great song, great singer." Agreed, particularly with the "rarely" part. His favorite bit was Joshua singing in tongues, and he says he wants to put it on Joshua's album. Ryan sends Joshua back to the couches without even messing with him at all, and then it's Jessica's turn. Jimmy says she did a great job on "Steal Away," but it wasn't a good idea, even with the growl she learned as a toddler. "Everyone knows the rabbit is going to come out of the hat," he says. But as for the Dreamgirls song, it was flawless. "She murdered it." And then he shares that Tommy Mottola e-mailed Jimmy to say he was going to Jessica's first concert. Jimmy wraps up by saying that he knew all along last year that Scotty would win, but doesn't even know who will make it to the final this year. "Any one of them, with the right song, and the right note, can steal the show." Well, except Hollie. Back to the couch, Jessica.
Ryan, Steven, and Randy sit together in the audience to introduce Jennifer Lopez and plug her upcoming tour. And then she takes over the stage with her army of male strippers to perform "Dance Again," which his apparently a number-one smash, even though it's the second time I've heard it. And when I say "perform" I mean "lip-sync while intermittently dancing and dressed like your great aunt at her Jazzercise recital," because she's not actually singing it any more than I am. She seems to be having a good time, though, as is her partner in the dance breakdown who gets to grope her on cue. Afterwards, she thanks everyone, and when he helpfully picks confetti out of her hair she says, "He's so cute." Do I really have to follow the gossip sites to recap this show knowledgeably?
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Finally, the top four are waiting front and center, but Ryan needs to kill a little time by asking Steven's opinion of fellow singer-songwriter Phillip. Steven says, "Things don't change unless you do," and says Phillip's attitude has evolved "from 'I don't care' to finding out who he is and still not caring." He says Phillip's going on no matter what. Then Randy gives Jennifer a chance to defend her support of Hollie, for which she has to go back all the way to last season, but gives her credit for coming into her own. Ryan asks Randy about Joshua, and says he's glad they told him not yet at his first auditions but then saw him come back. Ryan asks Jennifer for her response to Jimmy's comment about Jessica's trick, and all she has time to say is that she wishes she could use that trick (or indeed had any kind of singing voice at all), before the lights go down. Ryan says the first person to win the trip back home "is... a girl... who comes from... ChulaVistaCaliforniaJessicaSanchezyouareinthetopthree!" Jessica's the only person in the room who looks surprised, and she takes her second trip back to the couch. The other three huddle while Ryan says the person is "the pride... of... Westlake, Louisiana, Joshua Ledet!" That leaves Phillip and Hollie waiting to find out which of them gets a private plane ride home and which of them will be on the Greyhound.
Coming back, Ryan reminds us of Daughtry and Durbin leaving at this stage of the competition in years, and then the lights go down. Hollie visibly knows what's coming, but Phillip is actually so nervous he stoops in relief before hugging Hollie. Her farewell montage goes all the way back to Season Ten, her non-crying audition this year in Galveston, and a picture-in-picture of present-day Hollie finally allowing her lack of emotion its full reign. "Man, have you grown up on this show," Ryan says when we come back to the studio. She sings us out with, what else, "The Climb," interspersed with close-ups of her biggest supporters. Jennifer looks sad, but Joshua's more like, "Had to happen." At least until Hollie comes over and hugs the top three without missing a beat, at which time the end of show becomes less about Hollie's singing and more about Joshua's crying. She finishes the song, gets hugs from the judges and Ryan tells us we should keep it on Fox, because Touch is . Well, both of those statements can't be true.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.
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