Top Five! Full of surprises, that little group. Lee, the sudden standout. Casey, the down-home full of potential big brother. Aaron, our little wiggling Yoda. Mike, the theatrical schmaltzer. And Crystal, who better fucking bring it. And why, oh why, are they all dressed like pimps from the jazzy nightclub of your nightmares? Why it's Harry Connick, Jr. This is not going to be pretty, folks.
Sir Anthony Hopkins is in the audience, representing whores. Maybe he just thought this was an open audition for literally any old trash and that's why he's here. I was about to say I missed Tony Bennett, but I guess he's here on his behalf. Kara looks pretty, with shiny hair, and Simon's 3/4-sleeve tee is quite flattering, given that you can see all the way to Oklahoma how far it's unbuttoned. Maybe this won't be so bad.
The Idols mostly look pretty great in their Idlewild finery, except for -- weirdly -- Casey, who looks incredibly stupid. Lee looks like he's hunting down aliens with Tommy Lee Jones, everybody else just looks like a particularly weird theme party from Gossip Girl. And then we learn about Harry Connick's horrible fucking mushface. He's got a certain thing, I call it "That Face," that puts him in the company of Tom Cavanaugh and Zach Braff, two people whose work I'm told I would love but simply cannot enjoy because of That Face. (Also Ed Chigliak, but there's a plethora of workarounds there considering everybody else's face.) I like Connick in Copycat, and in Bug. Basically anything where the role was written for that face. He's like the anti-Chris Isaak in every possible way, isn't he?
So yes yes, HCJ loves Sinatra, which is his business and not something I'm interested in judging anybody for. I like all kinds of obnoxious things myself, so I'm not throwing stones. But I wonder how this episode is going to go, because Sinatra is one of those things I have learned to keep quiet about. You know how people always say they like "all music except rap and country," which means "I don't actually have opinions"? That's how I feel about Sinatra. I will listen to literally anything else before I will listen to that. If I were on a desert island with the entire works of Frank Sinatra, I would make up my own songs instead and burn that wax for a cheap toxic high.
HCJ would like us to know that he has fussed and muddled and messed with all of the Idols, taking away from them their God-given right to arrange their own songs into total messes that we can jeer at. "You think Shania was up in here doing this?" No, no I don't. And for once, that speaks in her favor. He comes strutting down the steps on the stage, still cutting a fine figure in his hired-killer suit at the age of 67. Standing to Ryan Seacrest he looks like a lighthouse lit by fake tanning to a smaller fake tanning lighthouse. He informs Ryan that in addition to arranging the songs for them, he's also I guess going to play with his own band while they sing. What did he like about the Idols? Their humility.
See, here's the deal with singing. "You have lyrics and melody," Harry Connick Jr. says for those of us not in the business. "That sounds like a basic thing," Harry Connick Jr. says, but in fact it's not. It is shockingly easy, even for him, to get on stage and somehow "forget that you need to be singing words." Thanks for helping, Harry Connick Jr. He explains more about "words" and how you should remember that you are singing these "words," and finally Ryan -- realizing that Harry Connick Jr. has apparently forgotten as we speak that his job right now is to say words -- cuts him off, and says that Aaron is the first one through this particular woodchipper.
The little girls in the audience smile so hard as Ryan walks by! He introduces us to Harry Connick Jr.'s daughters, who seem to be about seventy... Oh, they're Sinatra's daughters. The Real Housewives Of New Jersey look makes a lot more sense now. They give Simon a monogrammed hanky that once belonged to their dad, and Simon couldn't give a shit, and it's hilarious.
"Here's what happened when Harry Met Aaron," Ryan riffs, as though anybody here is old enough or hardcore enough to know that was HCJ's big breakthrough, and then Aaron sits on the bench with Harry and sings super pretty. I hope Pianist Michael is in Boca this week, drinking Mai Tais and getting rubdowns from towel boys. He deserves it. I couldn't handle it if HCJ came into my life and did my job for me for a week. Harry tries to explain harmonics to Aaron about a particular note he's hitting wrong/for too long, and it's nice that he gets it. When he wishes Aaron well at the end of the package, it would seem that he is about to barf. Seriously, watch it back. He swallows some puke at the end there.
Aaron sings a reedy, lame "Fly Me To The Moon," and the amount of adorable that he is looking clearly has not helped his nervousness. I mean, it's a very pretty song and he clearly wishes he understood what the words were about, but instead of standing still and jutting his notes, he struts around and tries to have man-type feelings and forgets the whole "singing words" thing altogether. On the other hand, the way the band is rocking out behind him, tossing their string-section middle school hair with abandon, is awesome enough that you don't even have to listen.
The crowd goes way too nuts for way too long, given that bullshit, and Jackson says that the point is who's "in it to win it," and that he was worried about Aaron, and then lies that he did a really good job. The audience shit themselves, and then Ellen's intense fauxhawk wars with her crowsfeet in some kind of head-located bird fight. She's a lovely, youthful woman! Something has happened here, and I hate and fear whatever it is. Kara asks Aaron to pull it together and have some kind of damned charisma, pointing out that Sinatra wasn't even much taller than Aaron, and thankfully leaves Ryan out of it. Simon agrees with Kara, after thanking the Sinatras for his Sinatra-sweat piece of fabric, and says that Aaron was corny and like a mouse version of Sinatra's lion. "You do try hard," he says lamely, and prays as hard as me that Aaron finally goes home this week.
Casey -- looking smarmy as fuck -- will be giving us "Blue Skies from Old Blue Eyes," per Ryan. Well, that sounds perfectly horrible, thanks for the warning. You know what about Casey? He himself has That Face. Now it all makes sense. The first thing that happens back from commercials (including one with Colin Hanks: That Face) is that Harry jumps out of nowhere and does jazz hands in Casey's face for some reason, shouting "Don't screw it up!" I bet they got along like a house on fire. He makes fifty smarmy faces at the crowd, and Ryan gets him to tell us a really patronizing story that goes like this:
His buddy called and said, "I need you on Tuesday for a $50 gig with a free meal" and I had to tell him I was busy, because he doesn't watch TV or maybe own a TV, he don't seen me on the TV, and isn't that hilarious how he could be actually playing music like a normal person working on their career, but has instead has jumped into a big fake game show in an attempt to not have to do $50 gigs at the Circle M, because cement ponds and movie stars await, and his stupid lame friend doesn't even know it? Isn't that so fucking funny? The crowd loves it, but what they don't know is... The rest of the story.
That young man on the phone? Was a little-known musician named Bo Bice. And you will never be doing another gig with him, you hillbilly giant fucking phony, because you have fully forgotten where you came from. And now we know the rest of the story.
Harry gives him about a million miles of bullshit and they kid around and kid each other and it seems like a virility issue that Harry's having, frankly, but finally he settles in to talk about the music and they groove and jam with each other and Harry realizes that sometimes, in fact, it is not about the words like he told us before. And the whole thing is very weird in a particularly Donald Trump way, where you kind of feel like HCJ has looked at Casey's mushy butterface and felt a certain kinship but also a certain eclipsing and thought to himself briefly that he could eat the testicles of this young one and gain his power, and then realized that sounded crazy, and went back to noogies instead.
Hey, this song is not that bad. I mean, it's TERRIBLE with Casey singing it, but that's not the song's fault. It's like a weird quasi-Sinatra that's got the goat-throat of Casey mixed in and sometimes a bright, clear, amazing tone that combines the best of both, and HCJ looks on with testicle-chomping jealousy, but those notes are only occasional. It's real bad.
Jackson, verbatim: "This is your worst performance ever. You made the orchestra sound out of tune. This song was too complicated and good for you to ever understand or perform it." I mean, he nearly exactly said that. Ellen hated it also, calling it "stiff" and basically retarded. Kara says that the last note was good, and that at least he showed he was able to hold a note, except the weird vibrato ruined even that. Man, they are just beating the shit out of him. Good. Simon is like, "Damn, you guys. I am uncomfortable." But he agrees, saying that the band was great and Casey was not fantastic: He was embarrassed and awkward, but at least he can go sing at the Circle M week for $50. Which is somewhat hilarious, but wonderful for certain given that Casey just equated that with sucking truckstop dick. Which is essentially what he just did anyway.
Harry says that it's possible he sings well, and he's sung it well before, but that tonight was real bad; Ryan has nothing to say to him about it at all. Man, that was worse than Aaron! What are we going to do? Move on to Crystal. If Crystal sucks again this week, I will point to it as proof that I am right about Frank Sinatra and/or Harry Connick Jr. And if she doesn't, even if she's awesome, that's still on her, and still proves my point. I just feel disgusting having watched Casey do that on TV. In front of everybody like that.
Ryan says hi to that old whore Hopkins, and stomps around to talk about how great the new Coke glasses are the judges get to have. Then Crystal explains she has "personal reasons" for wanting to sing "Summer Winds," and refuses to tell Harry what they are. I have taken a gander, and I think they have to do with women loving women. He continues to hammer at her about them, but she's not giving up shit. Don't worry, though: Ryan will be twice as annoying about it in a second, I'm guessing, because he's a regular Nancy Drew when this shit goes down. It's how he drove Didi Benami into the nuthatch.
Harry understands two things: One, there's nothing he can tell her she doesn't already know, and two, he wishes he knew why she likes that song so much. She starts the song at the bench with him, tinkling one key before smarming his shoulder and taking the stage. Her dress is a vision of beauty, and her hair looks really great pulled up in back with pieces everywhere. They have silk-pursed the shit out of that mess, and I'm at a loss as to when it happened. It seems like she just became hot at some undeliverable moment. There's a weird split-screen where they show her against the horn section onscreen, and it looks like something from the Children's Television Workshop, and then before you know it she has finished with this trifle of a song, smiling brightly and blowing everybody's minds.
Jackson calls it great, but subdued, but okay, but sleepy. Ellen seems really troubled and thinks she needed to loosen up at the beginning and that this boring side of her shows impressive versatility. Is the song five seconds long? What just happened? Kara says it's out of her element -- she disagrees -- and Kara goes on to praise her phrasing and rhythm, saying several times she "kind of" liked it. Simon likes the song, is weirded out by the song choice, calls it indulgent and "too jazzy, too small nightclub" to start, but says it eventually got better. He wonders why she didn't do a good job this week after sucking last week, and hopes that she's "in it to win it," to quote Randy. They are all flummoxed. Kara asks her not to lose herself, and I say, that happened a bit longer ago than any of us are prepared to accept. Crystal's defense is that she was quote singing softly to her lover. Barf. Me. Out. Simon reminds her that they're giving her advice to help her and for no other reason, but somewhere in there is a light that has gone out and she no longer understands this. Oh, Crystal. We miss you.
Harry Connick Jr. gives Lee DeWyze a blowjob and then makes fun of him behind his back to the camera, because there really is zero difference between him and Tony Bennett, and then they sing, and the whole time HCJ is mugging for the cameras while Lee sings this annoying song with only about 30% Sinatra-faking sounds. I'll give him that, he mostly sounds like himself -- in the same way that Mike Patton was still Mike Patton when he sang "Easy." Actually, Lee sounds like Mike Patton singing "Easy."
It's great! Lee is awesome! And he's starting to figure it out, but the crushing self-doubt that defines him keeps him from becoming horrible like the other good ones. Jackson loves that thing we were talking about, how it was like a rock singer covering the song like that, and then Ellen says she was distracted by HCJ's "organ," because he was playing an organ, but me too. Because he's been swinging it around since Casey and finally just started hitting Lee with it. She says he could have won this show with that one, and I sort of agree, and then Kara (little work done, maybe?) asks him if he thinks he can win.
I think he could win, but I don't really want him to. What does that tell us that DAUGHTRY and Cook didn't already tell us? I'm still on Crystal's side, even if she sucks three more weeks I will be on her side. Simon thanks Harry for helping everybody, but especially for making Lee less obnoxiously boring to watch perform. Harry tries one more time to suck the life-giving elixir of Lee's blood and limbic fluid right out of the tender meat of his throat, and we review the night. Such as it was.
Aaron was a cute little mess, singing the best song of the night with by far the weakest voice of the night. Casey is, I think, still a virgin. I think he just never got around to it. Crystal did an effortlessly perfect but not that memorable job, and she'll be fine. Big Mike, whatever. Tonight was his night because he's cornier than everybody else put together, just like these tunes and Connick himself. And then Lee gave his like fifth solid performance in a row, and once again it was shocking to the judges but not anybody who actually watches this show. Tomorrow night, Connick will no doubt sing something, and somebody will go home, but God only knows what else will happen. Lee's bagpipe player and Shakira will play with some Christian band nobody's ever heard of, while bellydancers wiggle and Crystal's boyfriend proposes a certain kind of marriage.
Should we expect the unexpected? Find out which singer might really turn out to be this season's Kris Allen.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see our guide to the most insane performances.
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