Tuesday
A mostly boring but extremely accessible evening with the King. The Idols head to Graceland, where they meet the dead thing masquerading as Priscilla Presley and the nasty beast called Tommy Mottola.
Taylor sings "Jailhouse Rock" as a weak and needy pastiche, including a whirlwinding move we'll call the "Row The Boat" with the mic stand. However, his suit is excellent and the color of an eggplant. His "In The Ghetto" sounds great, especially for being such an inherently offensive song. Sometimes being disingenuously "wacky" and oblivious all the time has its upside. Example: Chris goes on at length about how freaking boring he is, and then brings up his boxer briefs to scare the gayness out of Ryan Seacrest for good. It does not work. He sings "Suspicious Minds" well, and in the usual way, then "A Little Less Conversation" so low that nobody can hear anything, but all over Hollywood car alarms go off. Who knew that song could actually get more obnoxious? Thanks, Chris. You're a boringness astronaut.
Elliott "Misery" Yamin's continuing emotional breakdown causes him to almost hit his head on a piano in front of Tommy, then he goats his way through much of "If I Could Dream." He gets back to baseline Elliott by the end, but the only way you'd care is if you've heard the song before, and chances are you have not. The faces he makes while singing are particularly gross this week. Later, Elliott sings "Trouble," which like all songs in the key of "Mannish Boy" is not so much a song as the musical equivalent of playing with Lego. So he does as well as possible there. And Katharine...sucks. It's weird. The overlookables are not overlookable, and she doesn't stand out in any way at all except for the awful singing. A medley of "Hound Dog" and "All Shook Up" amounts to a bunch of screaming, and there are more notes off in "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" than notes that hit.
Best of the night: Taylor.
Should go home: Kat.
Will go home: Elliott, with Kat on the Seal.
Wednesday
A surprisingly touching results show, featuring the longest and best group sing in recent memory, features: Taylor's talent, Katharine's humanity, Elliott looking kind of hot, and Chris's "Kryptonite." The presumptive Chosen One is forced to sing his "Interstate Love Song" as he's sent off into the future to be Creed or Fuel's new front man. Baby, it's time to come home. Home to Hot Topic and an extensive collection of leather wristbands and stupid sideburns and zero thoughts or personality. After an attempt at "Selling The Drama" in Graceland, and a stupid pimpomercial that gets it "All Over You," Taylor and Elliott are named the Top Two for the week, flipping the script on Kat and Chris from weeks past and proving it's a "Mad Season" after all.
Door Number One: Elliott, proving he can goat-sing his way into your heart. Door Number Two: Taylor proving that karaoke is just "Throwing Copper" to the masses. Door Number Three: Katharine has boobies. But "3 Doors Down" from there finds Chris "Unwell." As Chris and Kat stand on the naked stage, "Lightning Crashes" in Kat's tummy, while Chris prepares to be the fly in her "Vaseline," but nobody is more shocked -- or seemingly "Bent" out of shape -- than Katharine, when she's told she's safe. Paula loses her mind thinking about Chris leaving, but the most shocking thing about this shocking elimination is the way it happens: suddenly, without pretext or prelude, with a boot to the stomach no matter whose side you're on.
Your Top Three: Elliott, Taylor, and Katharine. Remember, America will always get the Pickler it deserves, even if the Pickler it deserves is a gray-haired drunken lawyer, in this case.
Tuesday
Ryan in a lovely slate-gray three-piece lets us know that in two weeks, two "ordinary" people will sing for 50 million Americans, the show will be broadcast in thirty-four countries, and the winner will be a "superstar." I can't argue the numbers, but the rest of that is lies. Everybody boos Simon again; Randy is an idiot for involving himself in those stupid cartoony games. We'll be singing two Elvis songs tonight; I'm guessing a fast one and a slow one. Here's the thing: I love Elvis. His music, I mean. But "fast," with Elvis, can often go to the "For The Love Of Money" place that I hate so much. And that this show likes to visit as often as possible. So I'm a little scared, because I want to enjoy myself moderately much, and I can't do that if we're going to get Taylor singing crap like, I don't know. "Jailhouse Rock" or "Heartbreak Hotel." I don't like listening to them as songs personally, but I don't have a problem acknowledging their purpose in this world. But that doesn't mean it's all that cool to sing them on this show, where the whole point is that we see you singing songs. If you sing an obscure song, you run the risk of getting us lost in it and trying to figure out its shape, but if you sing a played-out song, you're going to be overwhelmed by it, like a paper-plate mask of Elvis's face in front of your real face. That's like the Mariah Carey Corollary.
The Idols flew to Graceland after Paris's cute little ouster, and Chris acted like a prat on the plane, all, "Graceland, Baby!" And whatever, when you put a person with this little reality or personality under any kind of stress, they're going to react by digging deeper into whatever fake persona they've cooked up. They arrive -- in a very glamorous minivan -- and give autographs to some people, and Taylor says in a robotic artistic voice as they're driving up, "The birthplace of rock and roll." I don't even know what he fucking means by that. I do know that Priscilla Presley is so fucking scary, I can't even believe it. She creeps around the house like a cat burglar, with the hunched back and the dangling Nosferatu hands, and her hair is the color of blood, and her eyes have no irises, and she's terrifying with a scary grin, and she's all points and spikes and creepiness. But that's just the visual: she's totally sweet and down to earth and kind of hippie-ish about how she watches the show so she's "kind of" been on their "journey." She laughs kind of desperately and takes them in to meet Tommy Mottola. Who is now John Waters. The two of them being all, "Come into our parlor!" is so scary to me. Priscilla tells them Elvis would love American Idol. I agree. Kat hides behind Taylor so Tommy Mottola won't marry her. The only people he didn't marry were Hall & Oates, and I can't even confirm that for sure. Be smart, Kat. Marry Tommy Mottola, end up in your underwear on TRL. I learned that the hard way.
Tommy says that this is going to be the best episode of every show ever, or something, and then Taylor disproves his statement. "When I heard it was Elvis week, I thought: 'Now I'm going to have some fun!' Heh-heh-heh!" Fabulous. What I'm sure will be another fucking gimped-out freak-out by the...oh, look. "Jailhouse Rock." Fucking excellent. Tremendous. In the prepackage, Tommy interrupts Taylor's practicing the song to transpose it up, and Taylor, who I really do think might just be a dick, makes that awful fucking egg-sucking face he makes when anybody criticizes him or otherwise doesn't play the Taylor Is Great game that Taylor plays with himself every second of every day. Then interviews: "We changed the key to a higher key and it worked."
So. "Jailhouse Rock." Some fool on the stage with a guitar, and Taylor out in the audience wearing a fantastic and flattering pinstriped eggplant suit, with a black shirt and crazy crotch action. This is not a song, not a vocal one, so I don't know what you expect me to say: He's acting like an idiot, there are gay boys with fauxhawks pretending that this is music, it goes on forever. This is a song about how much fun it is to be in jail, because of all the dancing. Explain that to me. He's incredibly self-conscious at the end and nervous about this. I don't know why; obnoxious grandstanding is like his calling.
Randy says he's in his "element" now, which is vastly and mightily true, and that he started off the show by doing a good job. Which is true, actually, because it was Taylor doing what Taylor was born to do, but without the singing part. And he did a great job. Paula tells him he looks "fantastic" and that he was as "original as ever," which is like the coolest, truest, most insightful thing she's ever said. He was exactly as original as he always is. Which is why people love him: the consistency of his karaoke. On the other hand, he's got an amazing voice, so it's not as bad as it could be. Simon: "There are four people left? Can we get real? In the real world, that was a terrible impersonation of Elvis Presley. And the dancing was hideous." That's my girl. Paula gets all drunken-irritating about the dancing, and he tells her straight up and without a smile to shut it. Whoa. "Shut up. It was karaoke with a capital K." Ryan comes onstage, and Taylor screams "Soul Patrol!" like a hundred thousand times, and then Ryan goes on a stupid rant about how Simon's never been to the real world, because he has a Rolls-Royce and a staff.
A few things here. First of all: Like Ryan Seacrest has ever been close to the real world? Secondly, that's a cheap shot off of a semantic hairsplit that has nothing to do with the point he was making. Thirdly, it's actually just a substitution jump via the transitive property for the actual symbolic logic here, which is that it doesn't really matter what Ryan says, because Ryan is just saying X thing to "defy" Simon. Either because the producers want it that way, because it makes the audience feel more powerful, or because -- and this is what I honestly think -- being in the "big brother" protector role with the contestants puts Ryan in the perfect emotional position to work out his power and sex issues, with Simon and generally, under the cover of being a nice guy. He's always had authority problems, and it's part of what makes him so good at his job, but it also gets him into trouble when he rebels too strong and can't read a room, as we'll see a bit later. But even here, where the joke isn't funny and it's pretty stupid and it ruins the flow -- except for Paula, of course, who's like "Good one!" Because the "real world" is at the bottom of a bottle of pills now? -- and his face is not jovial when he says it either. But anyway, everybody wins, and we can continue.
Ryan asks Chris what his fan clubs are called, and -- as you might expect, they're just as intriguing and clever and original and well-thought-out as the man who inspired them -- there's a sad, sad list. "The Daughtry Gang, Chris's Crew, Chrisaholics. The list goes on and on, so..." Oh does it, Chris? Does it just go "on and on," that list? Does it even really have an end, that list? Actually, the Daughtry Gang one is acceptable, in that Young Guns kind of way. But it's still no "Soul Patrol." It's not even the "Care Bears," for Pete's sake. Okay, now I'm just being grumpy for no reason. Sorry. They send him all kinds of stuff, like junk food, and "cologne, so they know what I smell like." GROSS. This is a person who Googles himself even more than I do, and doesn't even know that he has joined his own fan club. Hail of bullets, I think. This story will not end well. I hope we get to keep checking in with Chris from time to time. He refers again to the legions of "Chrisaholics," and how there's this fucking massive debate raging about a certain question, a certain divisive and polarizing fan question that I'm sure is really intellectually stimulating, like, "Is Chris actually singing or just mimicking the sound of famous singers, like Scott Savol or a bright parrot?" Or maybe: "Does Von Dutch make that in a small?"
But no. "To answer the question, it's boxer-briefs." Ryan jumps up and shakes the gayness right off, but it's actually Chris that is the most embarrassing thing about this conversation: "They know what we're talking about." Yeah, hate to break it to you, genius, but we recovering Chrisaholics just may have cracked your secret clubhouse code. I've never seen someone so very willing to show how happy he is about having a fan club. There's little poise in it. But then, it's Chris. We'll see his total lack of poise a bit later. Chris -- whose vocal tone Tommy loves as much as I do -- will be singing his all-time favorite Elvis song, "Suspicious Minds." It's mine too. ["And mine." -- Joe R] There was a four-day period in 1994 when I locked myself in my bedroom with that song on a loop so loud I couldn't even hear the phone ringing and refused to eat, or sleep, or go to school, or stop crying. It was very, very dramatic.
I can't even remember what that wobbly was all about. High school, I'm guessing. It could have been anything from disappointment with the Cranberries' second album to ennui over the state of the Middle East or Kurt dying or the IRA pussing out or Reagan's Alzheimer's. The attack on Nancy Kerrigan, for all I know. Probably some admixture of them all. High School = Feelings. Feelings and Tori Amos. No, no, I remember, it was a boy. God, that's stupid. So, "Suspicious Minds" in poseur sunglasses and his stupid Dickie's bullshit lifestyle. Sunglasses indoors. You know, I think, what that does to my heart. That's the equivalent of picking your nose in public. However, he sounds like magic, and this is, I think, maybe the best he's done ever. Maybe better than that wrestling song from last week. He takes the glasses off and winks during the talking part, which is gross, but I think based on the vocal stuff he does here that he actually does understand music, like a musician, which makes him That Band Guy, which is why he's weird. But he's also personally uninteresting to a kind of mindblowing degree, also like That Band Guy, so...
Randy calls it a "nice tender moment" for his dawg Chris, man, and says it wasn't his best but it was nice. Paula finger-paints with words about how great the song is, but how you don't know that until Chris Daughtry sings it, because something, and she'll see him at the finals! She drunkenly nods at him, and I think that she attempts to wink. Simon: "Sunglasses aside, that worked." Then Ryan and Chris hate touching each other, again, and Chris stares completely vacantly into the camera as Ryan kicks the numbers and refers to Chris's underwear as "hybrids." People don't call them that, Ryan. "Your hybrids are totally fetch." Stop making up words and slang! You are not Mary J. Blige!
Elliott looks like crap, and he wants to show us his "love me tender" side. I would like to see the side of him that got a facial. Tommy says something about not sounding like he's at a Bar Mitzvah, which of course makes Elliott laugh hysterically like everything else that doesn't make him cry and sob. Tommy then says that Elliott sucks and that God cannot help him, basically. It's weird and not true and the only not nice thing he says about any of them, that Elliott needs to get it together and start practicing more. Then he sings "If I Could Dream" and is flat the entire time. However, his suit is quite natty. It's gray, and he's wearing a white shirt with bold black stripes and a black tie. He looks great from the neck down. From the neck up he is making some effed up faces. Double the usual horrific face action at least. This song makes me wonder if it has a melody of any kind. I don't get it. Nobody gets it. Nobody has ever heard this song. Did he make this song up himself? Is he making it up as he goes along? Why are you Nadia Turnering on yourself when you should be Picklering up to us? This is for all the marbles!
Paula tells Randy off-camera that Elliott is the best, and then Randy does a lot of "Yo yo yo Elliott Elliot so yo my man" about how he wasn't so sure about him tonight but he "laid it out," and it turned out "hot, baby," and he "made it [his] own." Randy would be doing what we call "phoning it in" this week. Elliott is very graceful accepting this critique. He's a good boy, I'll give him that. Paula says about how according to Simon, this was a big closer for Elvis's shows, and that this was his best vocal performance of the entire season. Simon says that Elliott is retroactively the "underdog," and that he was dumb to choose a secret song, but that it turned out to be the best performance so far. Which just goes to prove that I don't know what I'm talking about. There is "massive" footage after this pronouncement of three people standing up to applaud at different times. Ouch. Ryan tells Elliott he has "really evolved in this competition," and Elliott loses his shit and starts with that creepy smiling and wiggling and laughing for no reason like George Bush, and he looks really tired, but then he winks at his mom, and how cute is that?
Joe R couldn't do it. Kathy Griffin couldn't do it. But this "Lovely" commercial? I now officially hate Sarah Jessica Parker. Get your head out of your ass, SanDeE*. That's really a shame. Well, I guess as long as Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Julia Roberts don't come up with stupid fragrances, I can still keep loving a few people against the advice of everyone in this world ["Also, Ryan Seacrest." -- Joe R]. Plus, imagine what they would smell like. Julia would be the smell of a saddle blanket with hints of leather and musk and the giant teeth of a citrus note. It would be called "Relatability." Gwyneth's would smell like the inside of a camera. Maybe Lemon Pledge a little bit. "Precious: for the ivory tower pancake-dinners princess in you." And Angelina, well. It would smell like crotch, basically. Like the Dirrty video. And it wouldn't have a name, just like a scary graffiti symbol. "Crossbones." And the tag line could be: "What nourishes me destroys me ... so why not smell like crotch?"
Katharine is going to be singing "Hound Dog" (hate) with a "little bit of a twist" in the form of "All Shook Up" (haaaate) in there. This will suck. She calls "Hound Dog" a real "rocker" song. Tommy says this is a hard one, because it's a signature song for Elvis. He was very impressed with Kat and found her to be a "much better singer" than anyone he's heard on the show. She starts with dancing and stuff behind the judges, and being harsh on the ears, and running around like a five-year-old showing off way after bedtime. She's like...you expect her to throw her dress up over her head at some point. Girlfriend needs a nap. I love her, and whatnot, but it's just hard to listen to. Painful. And the lyrics, she destroys. At one point she's "itchin' like a girl on a fuzzy tree," okay, and then there's an entire line that she mumbles into her hair as she dances around madly, and then she makes a truly horrific sound with her voice, and then it's over. Wow, I fucking hated that.
She and Randy talk about the dropped lyric, and she apologizes cutely, and then Paula tells her she was a genius for whipping around on the stage to distract us from the words. Simon calls it a desperate, manic audition for something like The Mickey Mouse Club, basically: "I can sing! I can dance! Look at me!" "It was manic, it was shrieky...it's tough. It wasn't great overall. I hope you've got a second better song." She is taken aback and goes all, "Um, okay." She tells Ryan she was worried about Elvis week, but that she's having a lot of fun. Ryan tells us that her song is beautiful, and she makes crazy faces, and the adrenaline of running around like a freak causes her to babble while he says the numbers. "McPhans? McPheever? Kat Pack...?" She makes really cute, silly faces while she's doing this, but I think she really just needs some sugar, stat. This is clearly all due to a loss of glycemic equilibrium!
up, as Ryan says, it's "Mr. Soul Patrol" and "Mr. Rock and Roll." What's Elliott? "Mr. Mole on a Roll with a Goal"? "Mr. Vole on the Dole"? Taylor tells us a rambling, boring, stupid story about how they went on a "magical golf cart ride" with Lisa Marie. A more distressing set of concepts I cannot imagine. The story takes for fucking ever and like, basically: they drove the golf cart around, and he'll never forget it. Ryan asks if he asked Lisa Marie out, or was that a rumor, and also that he loves In Style. Mm-hmm. Meeting Tommy was the highlight of Taylor's time on the show so far, he says, and that he thinks Tommy's a "mastermind." Taylor promises to "let the people feel the song from his heart" and "leave the dancing out of it," and then...immediately starts dancing around like a dick and making fucked up faces as he sings "In the Ghetto." There's a bass drum going crazy like the drums of war the whole time, and it's distracting. I fucking despise this stupid song. Isn't the best time to get pregnant commonly known to be when you're a black teenager? And what better than a fat white guy singing out about that, and about how rough it is for poor people, and making billions of dollars and platinum albums by doing so? Phil Collins made a homeless video, you guys, so we can all go home. The fight against poverty has been won!
Okay, but on the real, it's the best performance of the night. Sucre loved it. AND he thinks it's funny to be on TV when he's clearly just standing there in the audience at the same time. Randy says it was "the right key" for Taylor, "finally," which is a hilarious shout-out to Tommy. If Taylor were to make a record, that's the record he should make, is Randy's opinion. Lex loved it. He loves the camera, that Rosenbaum kid. I like how he has hair right now. That's a sexiness renaissance. Paula thinks the song was "great," and that Taylor is "well rounded." Simon says there's a "world of difference" between the silly first song and this one, and that it was the perfect song for him. "What you have just done is sung your way into the semifinals, young man." Taylor is very adorably happy at that. ["The 'young man' part, particularly, no doubt. Last time Taylor heard that phrase, 'twas from the lips of Rutherford B. Hayes." -- Joe R] Ryan talks about how you have to vote and about the numbers, and you can see the strain in Taylor's face at having not spazzed out this whole time, and it's like three...two...one...keeping it together...BOOM! "Soul Patrol! Whaaa! Whaooooaha! Soul Patrol! Soul Patrol!" Just couldn't do it, could you?
Chris jokes about how much pressure it is to sing "A Little Less Conversation" in Graceland. Of course he's going to fucking sing that song, since he's heard it before. Like on the loop at every Old Navy in the world, and every commercial, and every single stupid... Whatever. Gross me out. Tommy tells him to practice in the mirror, but no matter how many times you tell him that, he won't listen. Tommy calls him "intense in his performances," and says he can "rise to the occasion." So he flounces down onto the stage with the mic stand, and sometimes it looks like he's wearing false eyelashes and it's like he's turning into Perry Farrell right before your eyes. And the way the song is arranged, he has to sing the first two thirds of it so deep that if he were leaving it as a voicemail, it would cut him off. I can't even hear him singing, so I don't know if this is great or what. He sounds like Keanu Reeves in Speed, when he was still pretending to be straight, before he just turned into that full-time. He makes these creepy Patrick Swayze "I can see into your soul" faces and stares creepily around, all about how sexy and stupid he is, and then runs back on stage. The lights go a moderate amount of excited, not crazy, just pleased with themselves. Much like Chris. At the end, the vocals get better, but he starts "getting hardcore" and "rocking out," and it's a whole bunch of very embarrassing bullshit to watch. I assume this is what Rockstar: INXS was like every single week.
Randy says it was "hot," and that Chris "brought the rocker edge," and Paula reminds us that she adores Chris, and that she loves that he picked a song with more personality. Because to Paula, personality is something that only comes along when you've heard the song a million times, and it's totally played out, and you can feel confident clapping along. Simon says that the first strong was a lot stronger, and that the majority of it was flat and boring. Paula and Simon fight pointlessly as Ryan asks Chris if he was holding back at the start of the song, and Chris stupidly replies that no, he just respects Elvis. Way to keep it real, rocker dude. He stares stupidly into the camera for awhile, and Ryan says it's a "hot race to the finish," and then over in the corner, Elliott does a creepy little goblin dance with his hips and a scary face. Fabulous.
Elliott practices with Tommy, and it sounds kind of crappy, and Tommy calls him "real." Elliott tells us that he wants to show us his "rebellious side," and Tommy calls it "rough and tumble." None of this makes sense. Then Elliott sings "Trouble," which is one of those unending "Mannish Boy" blues songs that just goes on and on. Like in Adventures In Babysitting where she had the Babysitting Blues. My most hated part of that otherwise likable movie. ["Recapper vs. Recapper. Now. -- Joe R] Elliott looks nice this time around, though. Pink is a good color for him. He has a boss eye or something; his left eye keeps having this lime-sucking tic. But it's Elliott, you know? He's so very Elliott all the time that you can't really poke fun. Then, suddenly, the song is over. Randy says for the eighth time that "something's going on tonight," and that he thinks Paula and Simon are crazy, and that this was the best performance ever, and maybe it was. Mostly I'm just proud of the confidence with which he performed it. He really kept his back straight on this one. Paula "reserves the right" to change her mind, and says that now this song is the best performance of the season, having supplanted the one from a few minutes ago. I don't have to tell you that Paula's entire life is like this. Simon says he's "come out fighting" and that he's "showing personality," and decrees that he deserves to continue this week. Ryan describes it as "playing for the win," and Elliott gets bashful with Ryan. He looks like he's half dead.
Ryan says that Paula's moves were intense, and that he feels "obligated" to "give her a dollar." Everyone is horrified, but like, that's what Ryan does. Thirty-odd episodes of pure professionalism, and then he drops the ball and grosses everybody out. This cycle has played out a hundred billion times. Like ripping open Kathy Griffin's Badgley Mischka top that time. Honestly, when he's not on TV, which is like 90% of the time, he's on the radio, and most of it is live, and that would drive anybody crazy, so sometimes he goes to the self-sabotage place, and shows the gaps in his ability to read a room. Simon is like, "The fuck you say?" and Randy's grossed out, too. Ryan gets very cutesy-huffy about how it's fine, Paula still likes him, "Mr. Cowell," and it's just exactly the Mikalah Look come back to bite him in the ass, so he is going to be jumpy and squirrelly for a few minutes like he always does when he goes too far, and we'll just ignore it and move on. Poor Ryan, embarrassing himself and messing his drawers on TV.
Katharine is now going to wrap up with the only other Elvis song I like, "Can't Help Falling in Love." Ryan's giggly and self-conscious in the booth, introducing the package. She tells us it's Elvis's best romantic ballad, in her and my opinion. Tommy is very cool here, actually, and insightful. He tells her to project and emote and listen to the way that Elvis feels the song, and tells us that because the vocals come so easily and deliciously to her, she often forgets what the song is actually saying. That's the best criticism I've seen on this show that didn't come from a guest judge. He's a smart old goat. He says she's magical, and has a gleam, and can do incredible things with her voice. This is the most exciting singer/song combo of the night, of course, for me personally. Especially after that steaming pile she delivered earlier. She really can just do full-on acrobat shit with her voice. I think that she is one who will have success independent of the stupid game show. There are some missteps, but I don't know, not making excuses but maybe it's partly because she's doing so much at once, and doing most of it well, that the fuckups stick out more. I kind of can't be objective about that. But then, that's not my job. Katharine RULES! She ends on a not-so-interesting note and whatever, she's wearing prairie garb, but at least she made up for the earlier mess.
Randy notices that she ran out of breath at the end, and Paula...talks about how before, she danced around. And how fun that was for Paula. Thanks, P! Randy and Paula admire Kat's shoes, and she screams at them not to look at her toes, which is funny. Simon says that it started off beautifully, but in the middle it turned into "apple pie with a gallon of cream on top." Paula mumbles about his analogy, and he tells her basically to shove it. He says she chose the wrong songs, and the arrangement was too much. That's valid. Ryan puts his arm around Kat, and we get to watch her lose her mind some more. Precocity comes from a need for approval: remove the approval and she falls apart. My friend Karen's theory is that this is a question of striving and the reasons for striving: if she's doing this because of her stage mom, then there's going to be a point where she fails on purpose, because actual success isn't something she understands, just this neverending pushing, but that also maybe there's a little anger at McMommy in there as well. Basically, I think, she's too young to have separated out her own desire to succeed from her mother's desire for her to succeed, which means the process and the end result are both tainted by ambiguity, but she rocks and I have high hopes for her.
In summation: Taylor doing Wedding Elvis near a much hotter gray-haired dude in the audience, then singing in a heartfelt manner about the ghetto. And busting out an amazing falsetto. Chris being a total poseur but rocking "Suspicious Minds," and then being irritating and boring on "Conversation," but still having that very good Chris voice. Elliott smarming around on two songs I don't know anything about, but having an amazing voice and looking the best he's looked in weeks. Katharine being very nervous and jumpy and using the microphone properly, and then glory-noting all over the last song. And then Ryan called Paula a stripper, and she was insulted for like five seconds, but then saw something sparkly, so the guys had to take up the fight because she couldn't remember what Ryan even said.
Wednesday
Gotta say, this one got to me. I don't know if I've been "into" an episode this season, really, because it's such an assembly line now, but I liked this episode a lot, as an experience. The camera pans across the Top Four, and it goes: Happy faces, happy faces, happy faces, Kat looking scary and scared. Ryan comes out in all black, looking great, and we see that Jerry O'Connell and Rebecca Romijn are in the house. One hated, one beloved. I love that girl. I have never seen Pepper Dennis, of course, but I love Rebecca Romijn with a fierce kind of love. On the bench, Taylor is subdued and smiling, Chris is grateful for the applause, Elliott is hysterical and on an emotional rollercoaster as usual, and Kat looks she has a gun to her head. Down below, Randy looks quite nice, Paula looks lovely, and Simon has an idiotic haircut. Simon gives Ryan a look when he calls her "the dancing Paula Abdul," because why would you bring up the stripper thing ever again?
Short recap of the performances and Simon's overwhelming vileness and Ryan's weird resentment of Simon under the guise of protecting the contestants. I truly hope we get to see more of them in Memphis, I think that would be fun to watch. (See what I mean? When did this show get me?) And during the recap, there's Chris singing, and you know? That's now two tracks I would listen to on purpose from this season, and they are both Chris Daughtry: the one from last week, and "Suspicious Minds." And you know, if you listen to the song itself, in mp3 form, you don't have to look at him being a poseur bullshit dice-and-flames Daddy-O tattooed bullshitter. In other news, I bought the album Songs For Dustmites a couple of years ago, because I've always kind of thought of Steven Michael Burns as my boyfriend, and he's an excellent one at that, because he never bugs me when I'm working, and he doesn't have any bothersome feelings or emotions or abandonment issues, because he's only in the TV. He's like the hot, cooler version of Wil Wheaton; I think he's super-great. And let me tell you, I finally remembered to put that album into rotation, and it's awesome. I really, really like it and I wish I'd been listening to it the last couple of years.
Pimpomercial. The song: "What A Wonderful World." The concept: stupid. The execution: irritating. Not the best moment in the history of the pimpomercial. So Kat drives up to a house, protecting this Wonderful World, by driving a Hybrid. No, not Chris's jock. The very fetch Ford SUV by that name. See, even SUV's can be ecosensitive, if you just use your ecomagination. But alas, the garage is full of crap. She turns a gimlet eye to the boys, who are all three wearing Dickies onesies, so they clean up the garage, and it's dumb. Then they turn it into a jungle room with ecofake grass and flowers and spend the entire time acting like ecojerks. Taylor ecospazzes out with a parrot, and it's irritating, and then Kermit T. Frog is in the car with Kat, and says that as a matter of fact, it's "easy being green" after all. So...you mean I can drive an SUV and not feel like I'm damaging the environment? Wow, Kermit, I'm glad you sold your entire frogly soul to tell me that huge lie. It's easy being a whore, you stupid puppet. Kat fake-smiles and scratches his head. Shut up. This is so stupid. So of course, back in the studio, Elliott is cracking up to a ridiculous degree, like he might give himself a hernia from how fucking funny it was. Just like every week. Why does that bug me so much? ["Because no one wants Leprechaun in the Hood laughing at them. It's fuckin' scary." -- Joe R]
Oh good, Graceland. Some really disheartening people of Memphis meet the Idols in their minivan at Graceland, and Priscilla shows them around, laughing politely at Taylor's inability to keep his shit together or his Tourette's under control. She shows them the room that Elvis used to sit in when he was shooting at the television -- his favorite room -- and a creepy room where all his dead man clothes are on mannequins, and Kat tries desperately the whole time to impress Priscilla so she'll be her new mommy. Elliott would seem to be bone-crushingly bored the entire time, which is great. She takes them to a room roughly the size of a sports stadium where they keep all the gold and platinum albums and other useless junk, and Kat's all "This was a racquetball court?" just so she can keep talking to Priscilla and being Head Girl, and it's clear Priscilla's getting fed up with the neediness. Or maybe she's just fiending for her infusion of the blood of an innocent. She takes them out to his grave, and it's raining, and they stare, and then they go back inside to meet Lisa Marie, whom you'll be relieved to know is still a gigantic lesbian. She drives them around boredly in a golf cart at around 6 kph, and hates the AI fans. They drive out into the street, and you can see Taylor thinking: "I will never forget this moment." Then she drives them to Hooters, I presume. She loves the wings, what can I say?
Then there's the longest fucking group sing in the universe, but it's pretty good. Elliott looks just lovely, for him: tip-top, best-case, no-foolin' Elliott. He's wearing a dusky rose shirt that does for his skin what lavender does for his eyes. I have no idea who typed that last sentence, but I know I'm way too hardcore to be the culprit. In the part of "Blue Suede Shoes" where they sing "Go Kat Go!" she executes a sexy little belly-dancing turn, and it's great, and then all the boys wander off into the audience and Kat twirls around with abandon, hair all over the place, alone on the stage. I'd like to remember her that way if she goes tonight. Taylor does yet another stupid Elvis impression, with the hips and the creepy eyes, on "Heartbreak Hotel," and Katharine way overdoes "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" She does the twang well -- she should have done more country at some point. Not my favorite either, but her vocal quality would be cool mixed with the stylistic stuff of country. Like how Carrie was best with "Alone" and "Love Is A Battlefield," only in reverse. Chris sings "Love Me Tender," and it's obnoxious, because he has no feelings, just fakeness, and so he furrows his brow and finesses it all over the place, and for someone with so little charisma, he sure does think he's a sexy little thing. Too many jerks telling him so, I guess. Heh.
The other Idols don't know what to do with their hands, singing backup. It's a running theme. Elliott hits a really lovely, husky harmony that I love...and then forgets the words. The One Step Back tragedy of Elliott. Then there's a long rest where nobody sings, just wanders around, and that part is weird, and then they sing "the girl is going to stay," but pretend that they're talking about Paula and not sending me secret messages about Katharine's chances tonight, which they obviously are. Or maybe it's to provide a black fly in the chardonnay when Paula is fired and publicly humiliated week. That would be funny too.
Randy dances around, and I feel obligated to give him a dollar, and then Taylor and Kat get on the catwalk and do "Burning Love," and it's not sucky but instead awesome, and then Chris and Kat sing to each other about their hunks of love, and Taylor and Elliott absolutely do not, because that would be gay. (I mean "gay" here in the awesome way of dudes kissin', not the usual way this show American Idol is incredibly gay.) They end up pointy-posed with Kat bent over Taylor's arm backwards, like they are rocking out. I...loved that! What a nice little show they just put on for our enjoyment! Why do I like this episode so much? What have they done to me?
Ryan welcomes Rebecca and Jerry, and notes like a lady always does that Rebecca's engagement ring is missing. She laughs and says she just got off work. I'm glad she's working. She plugs her mutant movie, and behind her lurks a creepy, creepy group of people. Several people with Dick Tracy villain features, and angry eyebrows, and evil agendas. Speaking of: she tells Ryan that she can't pick a favorite, she loves them all, but could Taylor perform "Jailhouse Rock" again? As though this weren't anything but totally fucking planned. The gall of this show, to assume that we can't do the math here. Yeah, these live shows are just so loosely planned and fancy-free we can totally make time for Rebecca Romijn's bad ideas. I mean, I won't stop loving Rebecca for her part in this, but it's fucking insulting. Ryan fake-asks Nigel if they're allowed to do that, and Nigel fakely approves it. And I guess Taylor's votes weren't quite what they needed to be, this week. Bah, of course not, I mean, he was only the best one of the whole show. And simultaneously gave my least favorite performance of the night. Which thanks to the flights of fancy of one lovely ex-Stamos, we're going to reprise. Of course, Taylor immediately drops his monitor in the attempt to run around and have an appealing personality. Fuck this. Fast forward. He's even more impressed with himself than he was last night. I didn't know that was possible. Where's the ceiling on that? How long 'til his hand cramps up?
Melissa Rivers has had some work done, which isn't a shocker to end all shockers, but she looks really lovely tonight. Go Melissa! I'm sorry your mom stopped being funny or interesting! Ryan brings the forgotten Idols back down to the stage with him and Taylor, as they wonder in the silence when the show's "equal time" clause is going to fucking kick in, and he makes Elliott and Taylor stand on one side, and Chris and Kat on the other. Top and bottom two. Sheep and Goats. Now, at this point in the competition, I've noticed, the voting really does seem to be based on the quality of the performances themselves, week to week, so the results get a lot wackier, and you don't have the ongoing front-runner stuff happening. Well, that's one explanation, that America has the sense to vote based on quality. The other is about the show being a joke and the votes just going right into the recycle bin with the rest of the garbage, but I don't honestly believe that. So anyway, I think that Taylor and Elliott have to be the Sheep, meaning that Kat and (fittingly) Chris are the Goats. Kat's already on the verge of tears. Break.
Ryan stands behind the two groups for the audience's applause, and here's what's going on with the kids: Chris and Kat are both flipping out. Taylor and Elliott are making really stupid, disingenuous modesty faces and acting "scared" in an unbelievably overdone way. Kat really is just at the end of the rope right now. Man. So Ryan sends Taylor and Elliott back to the bench, and Kat can't even control herself and her disappointment a little bit, and practically starts with the secret cutting right there in front of America. She really has no poker face at all.
Simon says that, based on last night, Katharine should go. And he's right. She continues to almost cry, and everybody boos. Then Ryan does a crazy thing that doesn't ever happen except to Josh Gracin: "A lot of people thought you two were going to the finals. That Chris was the American Idol." Lots of Chris signs in the audience, and cheering.... "Chris, you are going home tonight." Just like that! Cruel and shocking all at once! Kat's jaw drops in horror, Chris goes dead, Paula goes slack and falls to the floor, and Kat continues to wig. That was shocking! The way that happened was fucked up!
Kat freaks out all the way to the bench and then loses control of her limbs, putting prayer hands under her chin like she's a sleepy baby. She's all elbows. Ryan asks if Chris is in shock, and he is: because he knows he's the best, and also fuck you. Nice. On the screen, he gets the Pickler Memorial "Bad Day" Emo Remix, and his video journey lasts one million years, and it's all about how he's Aaron Eckhart in Erin Brockovich and incredibly boring but nice, while in the bottom corner he just looks pissy. I think that he's trying not to cry, plus pouting, so it makes it more intense than it really is, but man. Still the least classy exit probably ever. In the days following this, he'll return again and again to harp on the fact that his fans are lazy and screwed him. Even though the show did exactly what I wanted it to, which is get him a job offer from Fuel. So...he won.
His singout of "Suspicious Minds" is really great. Chris is a funny old bird, because if you showed me a picture of him in a week I don't know if I could tell you his name -- but he's the only person in the history of this show that I like the songs of, other than the prenominate Underwood classics. The two most uninteresting contestants ever, and I like their songs the most. Well, and some Nadia stuff, but nothing like this. Like I might actually follow his career. Chris is like his own little band, to me. The band of Chris: no soul, but a lot of a nice-sounding voice. Don't let the door hit you in the chain wallet on the way out, buddy.