Oh, and that's another thing I've never been able to figure out about this show. I think that "semifinals" refers to the Top 12 or whatever, and "finals" to the Top Two, but this year they've been saying "finale" and "grand finale" sort of interchangeably, and I don't know that they used "semifinals" once. Perhaps a background in sport would afford some perspective on this question, but alas: There is none.
Tinkle-piano, because it is grim no matter what happens. Fake-cracked and -faded film to illustrate the idea that what we are watching is archival, that somehow it matters and will matter forever. That it is anything but disposal.
Iovine on Haley: "Mmmmmaybe."
Iovine on Lauren: "Prrrrrobably."
Iovine on Scotty: "[Let me just tell you that it involves the word gravitas and, um, leave it at that.]"
Iovine on the finale: "Not to give anything away, but it is not going to be two women."
IT IS GOING TO BE SCOTTY & WHO CARES WHO ELSE
Seacrest: "I am tickled pink that we're going to find out the Finale Tally. I am also very excited about the voting numbers, as usual. More people voted last night than ever voted on other than a finale."
Which is: Wrong. A bunch of wily trailer girls with burner phones does not equal more people. Kind of it equals less.
Last week they took the Top Four kids to Santa Monica to meet JJ Abrams, it would seem. James Durbin tied a little something 'round his neck, so he would look like James Durbin. He put on his Durbin costume, for his meeting with Dharma. Abrams is wicked awkward, which I don't know if that's his thing. I just think he has a beautiful nose and I liked Alias and Dr. Juliet Burke and I enjoy Fringe a great deal, that's all I know.
Abrams: "You know how Spielberg likes to make movies about nerdy kid filmmakers over and over?"
Kids: "Nope."
Abrams: "Okay, let's just go be a commercial for Super 8."
So they do. But they don't even get to watch the whole movie, because it's Bad Robot and he put things in their brains so that if they even talk about what they did see, he will know about it. The cooler part is that he gives them Super-8s to film themselves going home for their visits/shame, and so everything looks all retro and sexy and Lomo whatever. Durbin probably will become famous in this way.
Seacrest stands to Elle Fanning for a second so you can get a load of that visual, and then Elle unloads a bunch of her hyperactive Fanning Family/Gwyneth Paltrow dorkiness all over him, and it's so awkward and weird and West Elm like always.
"Is this how people act? Am I doing it?"
She sounds like she's literally about to inhale her own face. She sounds like a SNL sketch about a girl who is about to explode from the sheer force of her own awkwardness. It is like watching that one movie where bad stuff happened Dakota Fanning, but real.
Gross, no! I'm talking about Push. What is wrong with you.
Before the Fannings I thought Gwyneth was the Last Unicorn and the only person who would ever have this much trouble being alive, but the Fannings are right there like "No, we also climbed out of the forest fully formed and looking like people but completely helpless and home-schooled acting all the time. We're here for all of the money." Which, I don't mind, I adore all three of those darling little aliens as you may well know, but damn if it doesn't make you feel like that story of the centipede who stopped to think about how walking works and then could no longer walk.
What I'm trying to say is that Elle Fanning makes me feel like a human centipede.
PUSH: BASED ON THE NOVEL PRECIOUS BY SAPPHIRE.
Haley went back to old Chicago Area, where she's from. Freakily, the song for this segment is "Gimme Shelter." The song that Boomer people have used so often to indicate in television that a storm is coming or that somebody is going to need shelter -- from the Mob, or demons, or the Vs or whatever -- that now the song makes me just incredibly nervous. So while Haley's being adorable -- at one point she thanks the people explicitly for acting balls-out crazy -- all I can think is Damn, I hope she uncovers whatever police corruption killed her partner before City Hall comes after her. I can't believe she confided in that IA guy when he's clearly on the take.
"Ya too close, Reinhart!" the grizzled Captain yells, all the while remembering the deal he made to keep her safe long ago, in the honor of his old partner who started with him on the Force all those years ago and never failed to keep the faith and eventually got killed for being just this kind of cop: A little too honor-bound, a little too curious. He thinks about taking her badge and gun, but he knows she'd just go that much further. That rookie never called the Captain out, because they were closer than brothers, but it's true their paths diverged. Captain did what he had to; Reinhart did what he must. And now it's Haley that's gonna pay the price.
Oh what, like I'm actually going to talk about the visit? The mayor of Chicago Area where she's from gets her ass Super-8ed, and she signs a girl's broken finger, and then has a bunch of fun with her security guard, a big ol' side of beef named Aaron, and that's cute. Then the music turns into "Secrets" by my favorite band of Imagineering my future, OneRepublic. Tell me what you want to hear, Dawson Leery! Is it that I know who really killed Reinhart's partner? Fine. It was the IA guy. Obviously.
Then she goes to her high school and the music for that is some kind of Nickleback crumbs music, and then she is yearny -- and the whole time, literally the entire time, it's been raining -- she stands on a racetrack and wins a big bouquet in the shape of a horseshoe and then does a little concert in the rain and sings songs about Sweet Home Chicago Area and the whole time she tries to educate them about how stupid it is that they are standing out in the rain listening to somebody from a game show.
Back in the studio, Giant Aaron dries his eyes and Ryan marvels, just marvels, at the size of him.
One thing I think we all can agree on, Wonderwall included, is that Security Aaron needs to pick Ryan Seacrest up and carry him around. Maybe on the forearm, like a parrot or a ventriloquist's dummy -- viddy Ryan Seacrest nodding his head, smirking out, all "I'm no dummy!" -- or maybe like on his back, like the Fellowship of the Ring on a particularly hard day. And then lay him down in a wee frilly bed, and stroke the bridge of his nose until he falls asleep, like the Jack Russell terrier strain that makes up nearly 85% of Ryan's genetic matrix.
L'IL DIVO
Back from a technical, Ryan's being adorable with some little girl that may or may not be named Rihanna. I love it when he talks to kids. It does a thing. The video is them just having a great time on the beach and then taking digital photos and videos, then plugging their cameras into the guts of the automobile so they can point and smile at what they just did. What awful people they are pretending to be.
Then comes whatever the Italian hipster Jonas Brothers equivalent of a mariachi band happens, and those dudes are nasty inside and we are done. One of them looks like he'll take your wallet without even waiting for you to be distracted, like central casting of the guy that hit your sister; one of them looks like Adrien Brody playing the dorkiest dork serial killer that ever serially dorked, redundant; the third one looks like Greasy Bear, but fatter and oranger, and that's it. That is just it.
Nicole Scherzinger singing a song, you say? With Fiddy? Oh, I can't wait to fast-forward right past that in every way available. Knowing that Lauren's home visit is , I'm saying, I would prefer to get there rather than deal with gross Nicole Scherzinger and her ownership of zero outer layers or wear apparel, and then even-grosser 50 Cent, whom... Watching Fiddy try to form thoughts, and then do that Frankenstein "give me a kitten" dance, is so fucking nasty and it makes me feel like I'm watching Secret Life Of The American Teenager and I have something to feel guilty about. He is the Lauren Alaina of rappers. He looks like you could literally not have a simple conversation with him about everyday objects. And okay, I don't know anything about Nicole Scherzinger, she seems like she might be the kind of Dolph Lundgren Bond villain-assistant where you're like, "Actually Nicole Scherzinger has her doctorate in Biochemistry" or something, and I would believe it... But it wouldn't really change my stance.
CLOTHES ARE NOT THAT COMPLICATED OR UNUSUAL THAT YOU CAN JUST OPT OUT OF WEARING THEM AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION. IT IS NOT THE SEVENTIES.
Lauren starts fucking crying before the airplane even lands. She's like, "You want me to act excited? I will act so fucking excited that it makes no damn sense."
The fever pitch does not ever slack off. She screams and cries and makes an ass of herself even more than the episode of Hee-Haw that follows her from cowfield to dude ranch to Lane Bryant, forever, and then -- oh, this is nasty -- she forces herself to pretend to weep -- dry-eyed, completely so -- at all the devastation. There are touching run-ins aplenty, and her mother seems actually touched by everything that's going on, but Lauren needs to give us a giant fucking break. Even the little kids aren't fooled by her fake caring. It's such a worthless exercise.
And plus, how scary, because what DeWyze showed us that excellence -- which, I'm sorry, but Scotty is now the person who is carrying that flag -- is not important. Juxtapose Lauren fake-crying enough times with tornaded houses, and she will win this show. That shit trumps excellence every time. I think the only thing that would gross me out more than Scotty's inevitable win would be Lauren somehow corpse-fucking her way there. I will Team Scotty on you so fucking fast.
"I'm just happy to be here, in the wreckage that was once my hometown. Or at least a town near my hometown. Or at least what they tell me is a town, because I was actually born en route to Hollywood back in January."
Ugh. Lauren's still crying when Ryan and Keiran dim the lights... And then he goes fully After the Break on them, which I don't remember the last time that happened this year but I can't think of a finer trio of people to get the rug... Not even yanked, just like suggested that it might be yanked, underneath them. I love Haley and I talk to God, but she's no less self-satisfied than the other two, which is why we are where we are right now.
WHERE TENDERNESS LEADS
Scott is the first person named to the finale, which duh, and then quickly it's Lauren. Haley does not... Um, Haley does not deal well with the noise. You know how she's ungrateful and wears her worst feelings on her sleeve? Well, that's what happens. I would love to hear her blame it somehow on the judges. You know that's what's going through her head. Which is why I could never root for her, because she will leave the stage tonight thinking it was because the judges were mean to her, when they were actually telling her, out loud, explicitly, that they wanted her to win and that they could tell her how. And just like Lisa Loeb, all she heard was negative: No, no, no.
How much sympathy I have for that is: Zero. To the point where it's hard to really care, because it pisses me off. Obviously she's the best one, obviously she should be winning Wednesday, and the only reason -- don't talk to me about Red states and Blue states, she could have kicked this year's ass -- is her. The inability to separate her self from her criticism. That makes me so much angrier than the ghoulish Lauren shenanigans, or the vile propaganda Scott barely knows he's doing, because the expectations for those fools is so much lower.
Because what if instead you said, "She was robbed!" Maybe that's what you were thinking. But I mean, robbed by whom? To what end? I know it's the Team X response every year and it never makes sense to me: To win, you need the votes. To get the votes, you think about who's voting and why. To understand who's voting and why, check out who's getting the votes. To grab your slice of that, change up your shit. To do better, actually perform better. Shoot for as close to the LCD as you can personally feel okay with, because if you're thinking about it in those terms at all you're already about five steps ahead of the competition, which is five steps closer to the grave, Abrams.
I mean, it's not rocket science: Nobody gets robbed. Not ever, not in the entirety of human history has there been a complete 100% unforeseen fuckover that you couldn't have avoided by being better beforehand. And if there were, it still wouldn't matter and you should stop feeling sorry for yourself anyway. People simply use the system better, or equally, or worse. And there is no shame in that, because you've already signed on. Look at Bowersox. She figured out that late, but fuckin' fast: You can't be a part of this and also too cool for it.
Obviously, this was not really Haley's problem, though it's part of it: Haley's problem was that she thought she had a plan but her plan made zero sense, so instead of working with her beauty and her wonderful voice, it worked against her. Which may have turned out okay, if she hadn't rejected all guidance out of hand simply for sounding like No, which is the part that pisses me off so much. Even if something is No, you take it like it's guidance. Not the other way around. You keep going, and getting better, adding more good things and losing whatever doesn't work. And she did it backwards. Like what, like your days are so very busy that you can't take a little moment to work on it? You can't tell me they don't spend at least two hours a day trying to teach Lauren Alaina to read. Use that time, Girl!
He: "Whoa, you're actually... Really upset. Sometimes it's like you have serious OCD? But of people."
Me: "It is not ABOUT me this time. I am right."
He: "You're honestly saying there's no grand statement about America at the end of this rant?"
Me: "rrrrrrRRRRRRRR"
I mean, can you imagine -- can you squeak your way to accepting as a theoretical possibility -- that Haley had everything she needed to win? Because I do honestly believe this -- I'm not, like, nursing a pet theory -- I believe what I'm saying, and it makes me feel like a rat in a cage. It makes me so goddamn mad, to think about. Does it not drive you fucking insane? How does that work?
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