See, the thing is that I don't recap Ben Stiller. I'm never going to do it, you know this, and you're not sweetening the deal with Hank Azaria either. The man looks like lunch now. These execrable Night At The Museum promotional appearances and synergy are the new I Will Not Be Seeing That Film After All ingredients. And then you got Bill Hader, who's untouchable, standing to a scary red blister that used to be Jonah Hill until he cut off all its hair, where apparently the magic resides. Jonah Hill is Felicity, apparently.
Did not see that one coming. Seth Rogan lost the weight equivalent of a busload of third graders and I didn't even blink, but Jonah! The hair! Over on the couches they're all wearing somber dark colors and Danny's staring ridiculously at nothing; down in the audience, a girl desperately makes the heart symbol Danny has decided to incorporate into seeing just how empty and fake-sentimental he can be. Pimpmercial: The boys become cartoons on a New York street, have rubber arms. The song is "Break My Stride," by Mathew Wilder, a song toward which I have always felt a certain warmth. This might happen during an eclipse. They are subsequently attacked by wild dogs.
Whenever I think that word "warmth" my first impulse is always to say it all weird like Sloan Peterson ("whumpth"), but I only lose control of it when I'm drunk. But you can bet if I ever type it, I've just said it out loud about ten times and I'm probably still impressed with myself. up... Oh Christ. Are you serious? Alicia Keys, too? This was already the worst thing that ever happened, with Katy Perry coming down the pike, we have to listen to Alicia Keys try to pull us into some kind of Ponzi scheme with texting on your phone and then a little boy from Rwanda sings some song, and it's hilarious because he has a crazy accent and is dressed in stupid American clothes and not dirt, and then he does a dance. This is ... racist.
I mean, I am checked out like a John Irving hardcover tonight. I'm really sorry if I'm being weird but I mean what the fuck? I can remember feeling like Wednesday night was mostly filler and that was when it was only a half hour. This is just like, fifteen unrelated bullshitty things they throw at you, and Danny Gokey talking and all that. The only way you can possibly render a Gokey/Keys/Perry triple threat is by having a Kris/Adam finale, and that's about as realistic as Jordin Sparks's single being awesome.
And when all he's getting is positive reinforcement for it from whatever numbnut retards actually find his shit to be appropriate, he's going to be stuck in a bubble from which he has no reason to escape. And it is going to harden, and it is going to get scary in there, and he'll have no idea why he's crying at random times, or suddenly suicidal, because we Americans have spent twenty weeks giving him a cookie for it, and telling him this is his story: not happy, not strong, just sad. That he gets more attention for being Dead Wife Guy than he ever did or will, in his life, for anything he himself did or ever does. And that's nasty of us.
"Dance Little Sister" was an assload from start to finish, involved shitty stupid dancing by shitty stupid Danny, and was still less offensive than "You Are So Beautiful," which GUESS THE FUCK WHAT, I found out today that he -- Are you ready for this? Can you guess what I'm about to say? -- sang that song to his stupid dead wife at their big stupid wedding.
Kris Allen is , and boy is he nervous. He went back to Arkansas and got some kind of free cheese dip for life at some restaurant. Let's check out his small Arkansas town while we listen to "Everybody Wants To Rule The World," and see if we can't figure out how it is that he managed to be in the middle of the Perfect Storm of genetics that caused him to be like he is. Well no, wait. I have some bizarre to relate, which is that in addition to being the most beautiful place in the universe, Arkansas also has really cute people. Like all of them are adorable. I didn't know that, that's great! Strike one for my weird biases. Big old hug from Dad, total tears-falling meltdown whenever he and his dad are in like ten yards of each other while "Falling Slowly" plays, and I'm undone. I love you, Kris's dad! I love you, Arkansas! Thank you both for Kris!
So he plays the song like a million times, and dad's still weeping and then there are great big hugs all around. They are the huggingest people, I love it. Even in the theatre, Dad's still crying, and Ryan's all, "OMG I wish your dad would hold me." "Apologize" turned out to be a weird choice, and a not-so-great arrangement. "Heartless" was the best thing that happened this entire season, and the judges agreed. He joins Danny on the couch, and Ryan's like, "Gurrrrrl I'm nervous." Danny and Kris make awkward chit-chat, and backstage they fire up the curious collection of sprockets and springs and steampipes and little brass engines that will soon spring to life as Jordin Sparks... After the break.
Season Six's winner is joined on piano by a OneRepublic person to sing her single, "Battlefield," on a stage that is 100% smoke and boobs. She kind of sings like a vocoder now. Remember that weird rant about the clockwork windup birds turning into car alarms and the boy turning into a machine? I think Jordin took it to heart... Holy crap, this song has everything I love. Yelling! Romance/war metaphors! A breakdown, a chorus! People going OH! Saluting! Hair flipping! Sparkly dresses! Smoke! Boobs!
This is my favorite song of all time, and nobody told me, and I had to find out from the unreliable data provider that is this show. We've known each other for a long time, you and I, and we've watched a lot of shit go down on this stage, but you had to know I would go apeshit for this. This song beats the made-up Janet Jackson lyrics about "I'm in love with the enemy" by about a billion, because it actually exists. Plus it's so dramatic! Imagine somebody on one of those dancing shows doing this song! "Get your armor!" BOOM. "It's a battlefield!" BAM! You could lose a fucking eye! I would perform this song dressed like Robin the Boy Wonder, my partner would be Rob Riggle as the Batman, it would incorporate the swan jump from Dirty Dancing, and the performance would be so intense that we would finally be interviewed by Ellen on national TV. I am going to get to work on this immediately after this recap. I'll keep you up to date.
Adam's like, "Some lady took her top off and came running across the stage in my hometown so yeah, I have effectively left the bubble." Ain't no crazy like motherfucking San Diego crazy. Those people will blow your mind. He puts makeup on some newscaster and discusses shoes with another one and charms the pants off the like three people in the world that still have uncharmed pants, and it's a whirlwind. Grandpas and people in wheelchairs and screaming teens with braces! Amazing.
This week's been weird for media coverage because everybody wants to talk about the gay thing and doing that weird millennial move of talking about how gay he is for 9000 words and then turning the about-face at the end like, "But who really cares? Let's all rise above the gay question and mourn the fact that we have come so far and yet have so far to go and blah blah blah."
Who really cares? Um, everybody that wrote the same article you did, dick. Adam Lambert is fabulously, intensely, brilliantly gay. That's not a topic, it's a word: he's also tall, wears too much makeup, and can make his voice do tricks you won't see in Thailand. More importantly, yes, he is awesome, but getting meta on it and saying you're not saying what you're totally saying is not only lame, but not actually writing.
You don't say, "Helen Mirren won't answer our question about her age, and isn't that interesting because women are held to an unnatural standard of beauty and youth, so read this article that makes you feel bad about reading this article." No, you say "Bitch is old as hell and still looks like a sex superhero." He's not being canny by avoiding the question, he's being incredibly polite about the fact that you have no social skills and are asking questions that A) don't need to be asked and B) do not need to be asked. If you have to ask the question, you are not prepared for the answer.
Gokey informs Ryan that his timetable is unacceptable, and that it's stupid to waste time with commercials and pimpmercials and Jordin Sparks and Katy Perry when we could all be finding out what's going on with Danny Gokey. Awesomely, somebody cracks Adam up during this whine speech by yelling "I WANT TO SEE KATY PERRY," calling Danny on his pointlessness and giving Ryan a platform to explain to Danny Gokey that this is not Ryan's poor planning or secret vendetta against Danny, but in fact reality that is the problem. Again. (I think it was actually Adam who said he wanted to see Katy Perry, which makes this so much more awesome. -- Angel)
"Waking Up In Vegas," by Katy Perry, who is wearing an Elvis cape with "Adam Lambert" stitched on the back of it, which is pretty awesome. Katy Perry has become something of an enigma to me because I got so into Diablo Cody backlash that I sort of thought they were the same person for like a year, and I honestly couldn't tell you who said or did what. But here in the post-Tara era, I am in love with Diablo Cody and everything about her, and can even handle the I ♥ the '90s crap in EW, which is a surprise to nobody as much as myself, so I find that I have no idea what Katy Perry is.
Except singing really sucky right now. A terrible song, sung terribly. Katy Perry bugs me because I know she can sing. She did a version of "Electric Feel" on Live Lounge that is gorgeous, I still listen to it all the time. And yet, outside that one thing, it's all been her singing this shitty way that isn't in her range or anybody else's, about lame freshman year experience after lame freshman year experience. She hops around making awful sounds and awful faces, and flipping her hair around and acting like an idiot, and then frankly going, "Give me some cash-out, baby." Because, as I've always suspected, once you've decided to put your fake bicuriosity on shout and dated a metrosexual, prostitution is the logical step.
I mean, at least Lady GaGa is trying to be interesting. Desperately, ridiculously, annoyingly, but she's trying. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally, especially the blind squirrel that constantly scans the yard in a grid of foot-by-foot squares, unsleeping, driven by the need to find nuts. Lady GaGa is a smart girl doing an impression of Paris Hilton, which it took me forever to figure out. She's the art-school girl that dines out on half-baked concepts that mean nothing, substitutes her weird hair and ugly glasses and funky clothes for having a personality, dates the shifty outskirt guy, and can be fun to talk to at a party once you're drunk enough to find her interesting. She's like ... Yoko Ono. Explain Lady GaGa to your parents by saying she's Yoko, and they'll get it.
But Katy Perry? I try to picture her in normal situations and it just goes stupid. I try to imagine getting like a pedicure with Katy Perry and boom: it's a Brazilian. I try to imagine getting coffee with Katy Perry and boom: absinthe. I try to imagine going shopping with Katy Perry and boom: ironic t-shirts at Buffalo Exchange and little plastic Japanese toys by the handful. Going to donate blood and boom you're getting an STD panel. Whatever's all about pulling back the skin mask to reveal the creepy-crawly insides that are better left hidden, whatever's trendy and weird and slightly yucky: she's on it, she's got that shit in check. She's like the Gwen Stefani of historical trauma.
Which I thought we finished with in the '90s after Girl, Interrupted and Prozac Nation signaled the end of Weetzie Bat chic, but maybe Twilight is telling us it's back. Or maybe I'm just jumping to the feminism waves because that's what I do, and in fact it's not even a girl thing. Maybe this is actually a symptom of the Danny Gokey factor, and we're all just having a simultaneous breakdown and our brains have been beaten to death by Wife Swap and Extreme Makeover to the point where we honestly need to have gotten assaulted or some weird disease in order to feel like we have the right to exist. TV hands you a lot of competition in the victim game.
But do we really have to cough up all this stuff again and look at it again and dissect it and play around in it again? This is the point in the Clinton cycle where Winnie Holzman and Jan Oxenberg normally step in and tell us it's going to be okay. Maybe that's why Diablo Cody was sent to us after all, because she's certainly capable of doing it. I just thought autopathology had given way to self-respect, maybe some therapy, and I don't want to go backwards. I want our girls stronger than that.
Okay. So the first person in the finale is... KRIS! AWESOME! Simon's a little teary-eyed, as am I. Dad's having a meltdown again, and Paula can't even believe it. She really looks beautiful. Thank God once again for Kanye West.
Except oh shit, because what does that mean for Adam? Danny's never been in the B3, and Adam has. Kara is on tenterhooks. Please God, Simon, please let your magic voodoo last night win. I can't even handle the concept of living in a world where Adam and Kris are the finale. I honestly can't picture... OH SHIT! Is this real? Am I having a stroke? What the fuck was I doing going on and on about Weetzie Bat when I could have been finding this out? Why can't I just shut the fuck up sometimes? I could have known this information minutes ago. [Ah, the beauty of a Gokey-free finale. -AC]
Wow. Okay. So the video journey is annoying, and I hated every second of it as it was happening so I don't want to do it again. He says another line, which I guess I'd forgotten, about how in fairytales the person goes through tragedies and ultimately triumphs, so I guess in the limo that was like a catchphrase. Which is everything, everything I can't handle about Danny Gokey. Because it's not like his personal tragedy ricocheted him into this way of being. His responses over the weeks has proven that he honestly is like this, which I find sad but ultimately lazy. So the fact that he will now have the chance to go do what he should have been allowed to do six months ago is not so much bittersweet as it is necessary, and very bitter. I think he can do it.
I hope he will use this time to do it. Because two have two life-changing experiences of this caliber, good or bad, in a year would kill most people. Just completely wreck them. And I think that by making it this far and no farther, he's gotten the best the show can give him. I've certainly felt inspired by his voice on more than one occasion, and it's one of the best things about him but not the only good thing about him. And now he's got the stuff he needs to get out of that story and into a new one, and a good kick in the pants to get started.
He has the downer of his life, right, but he also has the incredible support of millions of people, who for whatever reason reached down and pulled up a ton of love for him. And I've bitched and moaned about that, for a long time now, but you know what? Love is love. And Danny Gokey is not a person who needs any more bummers in his life, because he clearly isn't handling the ones he's already got. From the looks of things I don't think anybody ever game him any tools for that, and it's turned him into a particularly unexamined person. He's done some things that hurt, and I don't think he'll be proud of. But, also and more importantly, he has also done a lot to be proud of too.
Everybody's got their bedtime thoughts, the things you think about when you're trying to fall asleep. Hopefully they are good things: your accomplishment, your recognition, the project. It took me a long time to learn to use that to my advantage, and now I get a good half-hour of Mindy Kaling's company in my head each night (I think of getting a pedicure with Mindy Kaling, boom: dance party!), or the occasional croquet match against Dominic Monaghan. I'm a simple soul.
But sometimes -- and there's not a person who hasn't had these -- they are unavoidable, sad or scary things. They repeat over and over and over, and it's depleting, and it will break you. It's a trap and you get stuck in it. So you have to come up with an even bigger thought than your sadness, just to jump the track to a better world. What Danny now has in his bedtime arsenal is this, the cheering and the love and the applause that he is getting tonight: that's a weapon, a tool, and he's going to need it, and I'm glad he has access to it. What Danny Gokey deserves, and needs more than he can possibly know, is that love. Not for what he thinks it means, but for the ways it keeps him breathing.
Just don't ask me to say it, because I fucking hate that douche. So then he grins big and gets ready to sing the song again. And because sometimes Mercury in retrograde is a good thing, the DVR takes care of the rest.
week: I've been saying it's the best season ever since auditions, and you didn't believe me. Can you possibly join me now? Because check out your Top Two: KRIS and ADAM, which is the equivalent of winning two new cars in a raffle you forgot you entered. One of them goes really fast, changes from one just-invented color to another, gets its satellite radio from an unknown star, and takes you to wonderful, frightening lands of the future. The other has automatic transmission, sleek lines and touchable faux-leather interior, and always smells like heaven. And the biggest dilemma you face in your life is: which car am I going to drive today? That's a lot like having no problems at all. See you there.