We remember when the top however many were just fireworks waiting to be lit aflame and forced into their little boxes and made to listen to Steven Tyler talking about God knows what, and it's all very nice to think about that time: Before Paul McDonald, before Lauren and Scotty proved to be so super creepy. Before Naima took it upon herself.
Casey hadn't had one single meltdown, physical or emotional, and just came in out of the dusky night like some kind of hoofed animal, Durbin was suckling babies at his teat, Jacob Lusk had only just begun the strangled, tense death-by-attrition breakup with humility. Now, of course, it's bombed and blasted out. J. Lo is wearing some kind of snakeskin romper and Steven Tyler is dressed like Ke$ha and Randy Jackson is still just Ranjo all over the place. But back then, it was nice.
THEME: SONGS FROM THE NAUGHTIES, BUT FIRST SADNESS
We remember then how there used to be girls on this show, including a couple I swear to God I've never seen in my life. Was Beyoncé a contestant on this show before? Was Thia Megia this year? The Judgery break into heaving tears at the sight of Pia, still having only figured out sleeves halfway. Much like P!nk the wr!ter of this song, they too believe they are rock stars, but we know better, don't we?
Paul McDonald doesn't even know the words of the song he's singing, of course, having so recently been born again on the stone tables of the doctorghouls; he never knew how to harmonize so this part isn't quite as sad as it might be, with Pia squatting all over everything and Naima forcing it, forcing it. This part is sad, like an infinity of Wendy Peppers forced to seamstress the work of infinite Kevin Johnns. Thia Megia and Pia drive around in a miniature Kia. They are forced one by one to rub Lusk's head with unguents and lotions and comb out the many silken scarves of Durbin's magnificent mane. By the end they are only husks.
Ryan: "Do you guys miss these little Aschenputtles?"
Tyler: "I'm happy they are back on the show! After the end of this season they send me back to the home! Let's start over with twelve again!"
Ryan: "Okay, but... Nevermind, TiK-ToK, we got about a hundred commercials to find time for -- including that awful, awful one where Zooey Deschanel goes vintage shopping and then rides a fixed-gear bicycle into an oncoming shark's mouth -- so let's talk theme."
SANGIN' & SWANGIN', OR: SMELLS LIKE TEEN MAROULIS
Ryan: "That's right, songs from the last eleven years. Perhaps this one will burn Lauren out finally, since she was not yet born during the Nowtimes."
The Idols perform their ideas about how to play the "flute," using a microphone as a prop, to comment on the slutty way Scott holds a mic and, thereby through metonymy, the slutty way he holds our gaze. So obviously this is an introduction to Scotty singin' "Swingin'," a song from ... The little-known 1983 part of 2000-2011. Obviously from the soundtrack of The Pursuit Of Happyness.
The song itself, I sort of love, but it makes me feel weird in a Scotty-face kind of way. You know how probably you have the occasional fantasy about your boss? Like, it's okay, everybody does that. And so but when you're a gay dude with a lady boss, that stuff sometimes goes both ways and gets real weird real fast, and this song was one of the ways we would take the air out the tires of that little trip through hell, so I smile about it. In the way you might smile about having narrowly missed marrying your cousin, of whom you were quite fond but did not particularly like "in that way."
Scotty: "I have no concerns about marrying one's cousin."
Tyler: "I love LeAnn Rimes! And tapping on things! Look at me! LOOK AT ME!"
Scotty: (Sings a little "Boot-Scootin' Boogie," because sure.)
Lopez: "Bitch, when Iovine tells you you're getting tired and on-the-nose?"
Stupid America: "We love boring things and lies! Safe is the new acceptable!"
Jackson: "No, she's right. This is getting ridiculous."
Seacrest: "Do you think you did well?"
Scotty: "Authority, ma'am, is a double-edge sword. I have to get back to licking the camera now, okay?"
Seacrest: "It's your integrity that I really admire the most."
Scotty: (More incomprehensible Boomhauer nonsense.)
After the break, Lauren comforts Scotty in a breezily racist fashion.
JUST SMOKE MY CIGARETTE & HUSH
Yeah, he was always going to do that, wasn't he. Durbin was always going to sing Muse. I hope that it's "Time Is Running Out," but what I know is that it will be "Uprising." Obviously.
Everybody makes fun of his wailing and his scarves, just like with Scotty's blowjobs before, and then he gets into it with Iovine, who honestly cannot have a problem with him singing this overmarketed, oversaturated song that was on every advertisement for every product for every one of us for a year. Of course, that part is what Iovine is into, and yet he still manages to bloviate for a while... And that's when the marching band comes out.
Behind them, Durbin is dressed like a gay general in the Glambert Army. Okay, so he's beautiful and super weird inside himself, which is pretty great, and also he's got the drummers around him doing like choreography, in those hats with the big beefeating drum major feathers sticking up? That's fabulous. Perhaps this is a commentary on DADT. Perhaps he is suggesting that we start our own, more fabulous army, using castoff wardrobe from Game Of Thrones. Something you can do at home.
It sounds just fine. I can appreciate that he does all kinds of tricks that, say, you or I cannot do. His control is impeccable. But he is also dressed like a Master of the Universe, so in other ways his control could use some tweaking. He finishes, and J. Lo laughs, and then she gets all excited as the drum people do their own little beating-it drumbeat off the stage.
Lopez: "The only thing you didn't do is set the things on fire, so that was amazing. And then also you made all those voices."
Jackson: "Muse is one of my favorite bands."
(Lie. Or hell, possibly true.)
Jackson: "When Jennifer said that was the most theatrical performance of the night, what I heard was 'best performance of the night.'"
(Something about how the Main Muse of Muse something something.)
Tyler: (Talks for ten minutes about himself, including at least four homilies and a few just vibrantly poetic feats of fancy. Does not mention James Durbin or the performance a single fucking time.)
Afterwards, more twitchathon dorkiness. When Durbin talks you can actually hear the twenty-sided dice rolling around in there.
MUMFORD & DAUGHTERS
What I'm loving this week: Scre4m, which was brilliant, and also The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which possibly has outdone itself the last two weeks. And I do include the classic Masturbation Club episode in that assessment.
Not loving: Hearing the Idols discuss Haley. Or anything, really. Lusk pulls some Rachel Berry shit about her gestures onstage; Durbin finds her repetitiveness annoying; Stefano loves her as he loves all women, which is in a sexual and romantic way; Lauren hates her. Just hates her ass.
Okay, so this Adele person is apparently here to stay. I remember I thought for the longest time that song "Chasing Pavements" was about chasing penguins. Much better song, back then. If I played you ten seconds of any Adele song, though, that wasn't the hook, you could not positively identify it. I know this to be true. I don't really like bands like that, or singers, although generally I have a favorite. Mumford & Sons are like that; Depeche Mode was like that and I didn't mind at all. But generally. It's part of the huge giant problem of Scotty. I never thought Adele would be the one to stick, out of all those ones they shoved on us that year. But she seems like a down girl, so it's cool.
However, it's not the problem with Haley, who pulls out a nuanced and affecting performance -- and much smaller, prettier, giant-face-framing hair -- than in the past few weeks. I'm so glad somebody finally pulled her aside and told her to stop thinking the judges were telling her what they were telling her. That was as authentically Haley as the rest of the truly good ones. Even Randy is impressed enough to stay away from the "get in your box" thing he usually does.
Tyler: "You know what I'm going to say."
(No, you halfwit. We don't. We just know you never actually will.)
Lopez: "That was awesome how you sang this very popular song, but did it in a very Haley way. Which can be hard, because Adele's presence is so ... heavy."
Lopez's grossly overweight husband: (Just shrugs. He's heard it all before.)
Ryan: "Haley, thanks for figuring it out and leaving Janis at home this week."
Haley: "I just couldn't bear the thought of somebody saying I did a worse Adele cover than fucking Gwyneth Paltrow."
Ryan: "Is it hard not doing exactly what you think the Judges are telling you to do, even though it always works out better for you?"
Haley: "My need to be liked is so deep that I would literally do anything for approval."
Ryan: "Um, have we met?"
I MYSELF AM STRANGE & ON THE DOWNLOW
Seacrest, verbatim: "After this, Jacob takes on the legend he's always compared to."
Hmm. Jesus? Bono? Who's better than those guys? Michael Jackson Of The Mirror? Who is he always compared to? I'm going to feel like a butt when they say it and it's something totally obvious, but here's my list: Mariah Carey. Ed Gein. Loretta Devine. Pepper Saltzman. Otho the Bio-Exorcist. Tyler Perry. Pol Pot.
Ah. Luther Vandross. My God, how did I not think of that. Might it be the complete disconnect and complete logical breakdown that occurs when you try to think of the two of them at the same time? Literally, I cannot think of a single thing that Lusk and Luther have in common. They both wanna dance with your father. That's all I got.
Everybody makes fun of his diva activities and melismatic crap. He and fellow drama queen Iovine have a big fucking breakdown about their dead fathers. If Jacob Lusk breaks down in tears during this performance I will actually call and vote for him. Even without this:
Iovine, verbatim: "Everybody knows Jacob can sing by now. Now, they're gonna find out if he can feel."
Or this:
Lusk: "This song is dedicated to fathers, and people whose fathers have died."
He sings "Dance With My Father," of course he does, and pretty much spends the whole time on the verge of tears. It's real clutch-play edge-of-the-seat stuff, whether he'll break down and lose his shit; if it were absolutely anybody else on Earth probably I would have a different reaction but since it's Lusk: Cry. Cry. Cry.
He doesn't. He does something that is simultaneously harder and easier to watch than losing his shit onstage. I mean, it's Lusk: He loses his shit. But in the usual way. He's such a greaseball of emotions and drama all the time that it doesn't really seem to make a difference.
Tyler: "You are so much like Luther Vandross. On an unrelated note, I have no idea what Luther Vandross sounds like. I do know that your dad is lovely bonesing his ass off, up in pretend heaven."
Lopez: "It's nice to be emotional, or so I have heard, but time keep it together."
Jackson: "Emotionally that was a great performance, but just in terms of critique, maybe you could sing better."
Lusk: "Perhaps you all are afraid of looking at your own dead fathers. And then pimping their tragic deaths out on a game show."
Seacrest: "Honey, just say your shitty singing was because of your feelings."
Lusk: "No, the band fucked up. That's all that happened. It wasn't my fault."
Wow. Just wow. I can't believe he actually managed to blame the band, when his dead dad was right there, ready to get used. Indian Chief tear rolling down your stupid face. Talk about Masturbation Club.
Seacrest: "up, Casey will be singing Maroon 5."
(Say that shit to me again.)
Seacrest: "up, Casey will be singing Maroon 5."
Interesting. Let's use our imaginative powers here. There's the one with all the swears where he's on the bed with the girl looking skinnier than Mr. Lopez but still fine as hell. More flower petals than a Faith Hill video. And there's another one I can't think of right now. That first album had like fifty singles that all sounded the same.
Or there's the recent one that sounds like the other ones, where he is in misery. I bet it'll be that one. It has reflected halo from some person that was involved with the song, right? Some kind of extra talented person? Let's Google... Mutt Lange? That can't be it.
No, you know what, I bet it will be "Harder To Breathe" because of the opportunity to growl and make those insane faces. Also because it is the only one I love unreservedly.
Seacrest runs out into the audience to make some time with some hot gay dude I don't know who he is, and then Scotty and Lauren strap on a fake beard and lick the melodica. I hate it when they have personalities, don't you? I just fuckin' hate it.
HARDER TO BREATHE
My record goes unchallenged! That is a nice feeling. So he'll be playing guitar, and then he has like five other guys with guitars or basses on stage, just a whole hootenanny up there with him, and it's super great. He's just so amazing. I am mesmerized each week by this Casey Abrams. He makes me feel like I took Ambien and I might wake up with my face in the refrigerator, every time. Usually I just stop typing at some point.
I have tried to stay frosty about it, probably you haven't even picked up on the subtle hints and clues, but I'm going to tell you now, Reader: I have developed quite the sneak for our young Mr. Abrams. Quite the sneak indeed.
He kisses J. Lo on the forehead and Tyler makes it about himself sexually harassing J. Lo and J. Lo tries to get back on track and talks about how amazing it was and how soft those lips of his are, and I don't know. It's all very Sliding Doors, this business of Casey Abrams, like, what if I have actually had a stroke and there is no Casey Abrams and I made him up in my coma: The perfect person.
Tyler: (Rebellion. Profanities. Nothing sadder than an aged rocker trying to shock you. Nothing sadder at all, ever.)
Seacrest: "That shit makes me feel really nervous. Please don't try so hard to impress us."
What happens , I sort of fell out.
Ryan, wearing the fake Casey beard in a rare display of whimsy: "Casey, you have just kissed the Most Beautiful Woman in the World."
Casey: "You wanna do it too? Because you've got the beard on?"
Ryan: "There's a joke there, but I'm not going to it."
...Pause for Suppositions.
1) Ryan Seacrest is suggesting that he is gay and Casey Abrams is gay. Maybe even Marc Anthony, maybe everybody. Maybe Brian Wilson is involved, even. This would also prove my Sucker Punch/coma theory about myself.
2) Ryan Seacrest is suggesting that he, like Steven Tyler, would appreciate the opportunity to sexually dehumanize Jennifer Lopez because he, like Steven Tyler, is jealous of Casey Abrams's cuddly goodness and total sexy confidence.
3) Ryan Seacrest and Brian Wilson are possibly the same person. Toss in David Petraeus and you've got yourself the whole package, m'man.
4) Ryan Seacrest immediately thought of merkins. First thought that popped in his tiny golden princely nog.
...Continue.
Casey: (Tenderly peels the fake beard off Ryan's face.)
Ryan: "Is this what it feels like... To be a man?"
...Suppositions.
1) No suppositions forthcoming, for you see my brain has just exploded. WHAT? Ever since like the Village People -- no, since Sparta -- there's been this amazing thing where the manlier you get the gayer you are. I support it, Casey is the child of it. And without it, there would be no beard humor. I honestly think beards are to the '10s as bacon was to the Aughts. Just everywhere, just manly beards everyplace, all up in ur zeitgeist, gayin' ur d00dz.
Follow-up Question: Where is Stefano in all this?
STEFANO IS UP
It's gonna be Ne-Yo, for old Stefano. I hope it's another one of those running around hyperventilating disco ones he does, we haven't had one of those in a while. I mean, he's manic as shit every week so it's kind of on the edge, but nothing like that one time early on. That was some Sanjaya magic, remember? He ran around cleaning the stage with a toothbrush and calling taxis at 3AM for no reason and talking to Rollergirl about their kinship feelings. Oh that was good.
The thing about Ne-Yo songs is that they all have titles like "Stay" and "So Sick" and "Sexy Love" and "Do You" and "Can We Chill." I mean, none of that brings anything to mind. I know he did that other "Miss Independent," but I can't name a... Oh. Oh! The "Closer" song they all sang in Hollywood! I love that song! I hope he does that song. There are so many awesome ways to arrange it. I wonder what will happen. I wonder if he will lick his lips.
The reason I love Taylor Swift is this one performance of this one song she did this one time, "Shoulda Said No," where she ran upstage and did half the video while krumping in the rain. Indoor rain. Just like Naima. And somehow, that's all it took. I watched that video so many times, with her elf-ears sticking out of her wet hair, and it went like this:
Jacob: "Brad, you know all kinds of musical knowledge. Does she have other songs where this happens?"
Brad: "No, but she sings a lot about normal girl problems. I know you like that."
Jacob: "Like she likes a guy, but the guy likes a different girl?"
Brad: "So much of that."
Jacob: "That sounds delightful. Brad, I need a guide. A Sherpa. A Swerpa."
Brad: "Okay, first of all, who do you like the most? Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Mayer or Owl City."
Jacob: "This game is not fun. Owl City is Postal Service fan fiction, I'm pretty sure Joe Jonas is the scarfy one that looks like Babe in the City, Taylor Lautner is so gay it hurts to look at him in his Shazam-looking big gay body, and Jake Gyllenhaal is related to Saggie Baggie Gyllenhaal, my mortal enemy."
Brad: "So, John Mayer?"
Jacob: "...She needs to date even more people."
Brad: "Question two. Do you identify more with Romeo, Juliet or Hester Prynne?"
Jacob: "Mercutio. Duh. Nobody else matters. Dash Mihok, kind of."
Brad: "Almost done."
Jacob: "You're like MySpace, remember MySpace?"
Brad: "Final question: Short skirts or t-shirts? Cheerleading or bleachers? High heels or sneakers?"
Jacob: "What am I, Avril Levigne?"
Brad: "You already know the answer to that one."
Jacob: "Why do you have to make things so complicated?"
Brad: "Your Taylor Swift song is 'Love Story.' First you will listen to this amazing cover by The Scene Aesthetic, and then the real song. And then eventually you will find yourself drunk at karaoke, singing it in your Garth Brooks voice or possibly to the accompaniment of Nine Inch Nails' 'Closer.' They will not know what to do with you."
Jacob: "What were the other choices?"
Brad: "There were no other choices. Obviously this is the Taylor Swift song for you. It is from like ten years ago, I don't know what you've been up to, but then this would have been when Sparks was just coming onto the market. It was a trick question, I just wanted to get you to say you thought Joe Jonas was cute."
Jacob: "Dash Mihok. Dash Mihok. Dash Mihok."
IT'S JUST SO FUN TO SAY
Casey: "I'm so sweaty! I was sketched out that I kissed J. Lo and made Steven Tyler swear. And it's exhausting to be so wonderful all the time. Even more exhausting to be unaware of it, like I'm being followed around by a big shaggy something."
Tyler: (Holds up a magazine with Ryan's sweet little face on the cover and then sticks his nasty carbuncular tongue out of a slit across the mouth. Maybe I quit this job. Maybe I'm done. Tyler is jealous of just everybody, isn't it.)
They all talk about how Stefano flirts all the time, with women, in a romantic way. Oh, I remember why I started talking about Taylor Swift: It's because I think Stefano should get wet. Maybe not this week, but soon. I think it would really help.
Yay! He's singing "Closer!" I guess I actually have been paying attention the last eleven years. That makes me feel like Adele should not continue to keep coming as such a surprise every time.
Or maybe it's just that this show is all about the lowest common denominator and I -- having lost all interest in everything but red wine, The Good Wife and Downton Abbey, and thus might as well go pick out a fuckload of cats from the shelter and start forwarding my entire family emails about like, how Kennedy and Lincoln's names both have six letters in them and both their middle names were "Nixon" or whatever, Ziggy cartoons -- am... Finally the audience for this show. At least this week. Jeez.
When you don't listen to the radio, very little makes it through, but it's the stuff that makes it through that happens on this show. The top of the top of the heap of crap. I used to watch the TRL while doing my handicrafts each evening just so that I could stay in touch. Now it's just a blur of Featurings, songs about gay kids, and presumably Rihanna.
Stefano's "Closer" has all the earmarks: His sexy little body dancing around, the winking into the camera that doesn't feel gross as Scotty -- because it's unthreatening, you know instinctively that no matter who you are, between you and Stefano you are never going to be the one squealing like a pig -- and then some tricks he's refused to be doing the entire time until now. He got some kind of B-12 shot or something, that was amazing. All his usual stuff, times ten, plus a whole bunch of new tricks, also times ten. Proud.
Ryan too. And for our last dance with the aughtsie-janes, let's go with precociously waving, crummy little Lauren. Every week she gets harder to take. And I mean, we had Naima on this stage not two hours ago, so the bar was pretty high on being hard to take. But I mean, in a week where somehow Stefano joined Haley and Casey in the automatic Top Three, that's kind of zero-sum.
Stefano: "I was able to... Get my swag on. Thoroughly enjoyed it."
That's nice, because we enjoyed it too, for the first time in a while. The cast of all Fox shows are in the audience -- or so we are told, if not shown beyond a quick shot of Emma Pillsbury -- and then we get to see old Mia Tyler out there, with the bright pink hair of the criminally overlooked, sitting to John Noble, wishing he were her father.
STAND BACK, GRANDPA'S RUMINATIN'!
Lauren's package involves her falling down the stairs, and Casey calling her a stupid hick, and once again Durbin becomes British for no reason, and Scotty, for fuck's sake -- showing just Lusk amounts of much-needed self-industry -- makes fun of her for being fake-folksy down-home fraudulent.
Tonight she will be singing a song I've never heard by a person of whom I am not aware. Jimmy brings in some random people and Lauren gets nervous, and Iovine yells at her about that, and then she talks about how she just has no durn idea what road is ahead of her or what she can really do, and just rainbow fountains of vomit stuff like that, and that's the Climb.
The song she sings, in cowboy boots with a cute blowout and denim-heavy teenybop outfit, sounds like the kind of song Lauren likes to sing. But in the grand scheme -- especially considering her makeup which is the most painstakingly Miss Piggy look I've ever seen on a person that is not a puppet -- it's a fun song. Her "false," as I'm positive Randy will say, is very pretty. It's there for about three seconds, and then back to the shoutin' and stompin' and birthin' and cornholin' and flip-floppin' and whateverin'. Matryoshka dollin'.
Tyler: "Anybody who doesn't know that they can fail is bound to win."
He's like this infinitely large trashy grandma refrigerator, covered in the sort of magnets one might buy at a truckstop; he's the back bumper of an eighteen-wheeler driven cross-country by a deadbeat dad so Scotty will have something to sing about; he's the infinite t-shirts on an infinitely obese State Fair-going family with powdered sugar on their cheeks and jorts, funnel cake in their colons, foamy plastic cups of beer dribbling over their sneakers. This Ain't Burger King, You Can't Have It Your Way! or Don't Write Checks With Your Mouth Your Ass Cain't Cash! or Young At Heart, Slightly Older In Other Places! or like Stand Back, Grandpa's Grillin'!
Whatever, he's the ass worst. J. Lo gives her the usual faint praise and asks her to grow some balls as usual, and tells her to actually experiment with her voice where nobody can hear her. Jackson, same deal. I bet Jackson can really blow, when nobody's looking. The last thing he says is super creepy and weird, this babytalk deal that I think sounded different in his head, and then Seacrest runs with that ball about how she just needs to believe in herself, because guess what, she's this year's Lee DeWyze.
DIDGERIDOO V. BAGPIPERS II: THE DIDGEPIPERING
Scotty: Sang a country song from the '80s for this week's Pop Songs of the '00s theme, predictably enough, and it was cornpone and it was full-retard and he is never, ever going home. Durbin: Auditioned to be Lambert's First Leftenant when the lizard aliens come. Haley: Was absolutely wonderful, of course. Lusk: Sang about Danny Gokey's dead wife. Casey: Sigh. Made it difficult to breathe. Stefano: Became a man, and also finally noticed he's on this show. Lauren: Ugh. I don't know who's more annoying out of the two of them, but she did worlds better than Scotty so whatever.
I'm actually starting to get nervous about this DeWyze thing. week they're going to be like, "Lauren now also works selling paint, to buy formula for her mom, to whom she has just given birth."
Then the Judgery basically request that everybody try to be as good as Casey, even though they never will. Durbin stares at the wall picturing ladies in steel bras riding dragons into lightning storms, Scotty thinks exclusively about anal sex with cheerleaders in the back of pickup trucks because that doesn't count as sex, Lauren thinks about not a fucking thing, Haley thinks about whether or not she will fuck up week and has not yet decided, Lusk thinks about launching a line of religious-themed footwear, and Stefano thinks only and forever about the ladies.
Not one them has their eyes on the ball, comparatively, and it's getting stranger and stranger every week to watch it happen. At some point Casey is going to lap them, and that's when the super weird Nadia Turner/Blake beatboxing shit is going to start. I hate to say it, but I'm sort of afraid of when that happens. But I mean, Bowersox totally pulled the greatest/most cynical coup of all time, just when we thought she was irreparably burnt out, so it's possible to pull out of the nosedive... I don't know, nervous.
Anyway, tonight: Cookie Monster. Sounds good for now, but I'll probably have grumped out by then.