Just four remain! Casey and Crystal and Lee and Big Mike, and Ryan with a big old goofy grin looking as excited as I feel that we're nearly done. These four, man, what is to say? Without Aaron Kelly it just looks like in-house suspension at a community college. Three stoners and Mike having been late to class one too many times because he was too busy saving kittens from trees and singing about it so everybody knows. In the audience: Taye and Idina! This mother is star-studded!
Jackson's wearing Izod, Ellen's rocking the keffiyeh once again, Kara's wearing a suit and Simon is wearing Simon clothes. More importantly, the Idols will be singing not only their Movie Week songs for our votes, but some extra Movie Week duets just for fun. I saw the song list they got to choose from and let me tell you, I am so excited about this week I can't stand it. I looooove these cheesy-ass songs. I can't even hazard a guess as to what they will sing because I don't care, it's going to be remarkable. I hope somebody sings the song from Titanic, in honor of Aaron Kelly.
Ryan explains the theme, starting with what movies are and then what music is and then what Movie Songs are, and then who Jamie Foxx is: "Jamie Foxx was here last year," Ryan says, while we revisit his terrible music once again. He was in some movies, and got an Oscar for pretending to be a dead person better than other dead-person impersonators once. In the mentoring nightmare he asks them who's going to win, and then explains that it is a trick question, so Crystal says cheerfully, "We're all winners!" He points at her like Jerry Maguire, because she is exactly right.
Music, Jamie explains, "really is the soundtrack to our lives." It also is "the soundtrack to our movies." Because we have heard songs before, and because we have seen movies before, the Idols are in a heap of trouble. Unlike every other week, when the annoying songs we've heard a million times before are the soundtrack to our lives but not our movies. Then he produces t-shirts for the Idols, which Ryan needs him to explain. This should be good.
"Obviously" they've "been through this" for "several weeks now," and he has devised a t-shirt lesson for them. On four shirts he has caused to be written CONTESTANT and on four more shirts he has written ARTIST. The challenge, and please do pay attention, is to earn from Jamie -- through singing songs -- the ARTIST t-shirt. But only if he feels you have earned it. Because, you see, if Jamie feels that you are a CONTESTANT, he will offer you a shirt that reads CONTESTANT. But if, and I hope you're following, America finds you to be an ARTIST, Jamie will give you a shirt reading ARTIST. He explains it one more time just in case your mind just got totally blown, and his gross chin-whiskers are coated in sweat from having to explain this complicated scheme on live TV. Should a person receive the ARTIST t-shirt, we will possibly see them in concert and buy their music from iTunes, but it's possible that even earning a CONTESTANT t-shirt might be okay. Just kidding. So then Ryan earns a CONTESTANT t-shirt and Simon gets an ARTIST t-shirt. Wait, start over.
Lee will be singing "Kiss From A Rose," which is I believe a song about kissing Chris O'Donnell after he is dead. Not really a win-win. Jamie explains to Lee that he has earned, on a probationary basis, an ARTIST t-shirt, but if in fact this proves to be premature, he will take the ARTIST t-shirt back and give Lee a shirt reading CONTESTANT instead. Got it.
Then Lee's beautiful voice attempts not to be incredibly dorky singing the incredibly dorky song about Chris O'Donnell's plastic nipples. This song, have you heard it? It makes no goddamn sense. It is one of the most mystifying songs in the history of words. Good thing it is so beautiful, and good thing Lee never makes sense anyway, because his general awesomeness and the song's general awesomeness add up to a completely content-free wonderful sound... Aw, damn. That last word he throws that Duritz on there so it sounds like the light is hitting the gloom on the grive. God, I hate when he does that.
Jackson wonders if Lee will ever earn the ARTIST t-shirt, and says that he did nothing with the song and that it didn't work and why didn't he sing "Blaze Of Glory" or something Jackson wanted him to sing. Ellen agrees that it wasn't really ARTISTed but that it sounded bad-ass, and how are you supposed to sing that song in an interesting way when the whole point of the song is the melody? There is nothing going on with that song at all that isn't the melody. You could do it with guitars I guess, like Cook would have, but I think there is not a way for that to sound anything other than wussy and lame. I don't know. Kara calls it "one of the most difficult songs," and I would agree insofar as it is one of the most difficult songs to understand, since it makes no sense, but not really with her point that it's a hard song to sing, because it is not. He hit nearly every note, even the high ones that were questionable.
Bottom line, though, Kara recognizes that he is awesome; Simon agrees with Randy that Lee picked a weird one for him to sing, and ended up in a karaoke place. Okay, I get what they're saying now: It was the choice that made it impossible, not anything he could have done after that. Simon offers him a t-shirt reading CONTESTANT, and then Lee babbles at Ryan for a bit. Fucking stupid America actually cheers when he goes, "I liked it, so I sang it." YEAH! AMERICA! Liking things is so ballsy!
What pressures has Mike been under lately? I don't know, but they have been on his "back" and also on his "heart and soul," and also his baby and America and the city that he comes from. He mentions his hometown several times, not really in any context at all, because that's how his brain works. Mike wonders if Jamie Foxx really thinks he should even be on this show, and Jamie decides that they should dance together, and also that Mike should hit him. Agreed. He gamely plays the stupid t-shirt game, but you can tell it hurts him.
Mike sings that Michael Jackson song about the River Jordan, and he does so poorly but with much drama. I mean, what was I going to say about Mike? Crummy but dramatic is his stock in trade. He does the best impersonation of a contestant on this show we have seen since Scott Savol, and with a much better voice. If Paula were here she would have climbed her rickety ass up onstage by now just to be closer to the unending puppet show jukebox of drama fakeness he's all about. She would just die.
Jackson hated it, once again because he didn't stay in his Jackson-invented box, which is even dumber when he does this on Mike because he still hasn't figured out that Mike is not actually an R&B singer and never has been. Ellen mentions Free Willy and then makes fun of him for saying his "goal" was to make Top Three. Kara brings up songs that Mike sang that weren't ridiculous and silly, or at least not in this same way. Mike whines that he will be singing once again, and Simon wonders at length what that movie is even about, and there are dick jokes on live TV, and he praises Mike for even trying and his ability to "mean" such a saccharine, silly song. Ryan asks Ellen to explain Free Willy to Simon and she refuses and Ryan says he'll find out eventually. Then Mike launches himself over the stage and back into the ocean.
Lee and Crystal making horrible faces, and then that annoying Kohl's commercial with Dr. Holland Kemble, and then the first duet. "Falling Slowly" by Lee and Crystal. This song is phenomenal and these two are amazing. They sing the song with their various tics intact -- he goes to the Duritz place at the jump -- but their voices sound fantastic together, and once it gets into the meat of the song, it's fairly wonderful. This is the best thing I've heard on this show in a long time, actually. I would buy this. I wo
uld buy the shit out of it. You got me, jerks.Jackson is impressed beyond measure by this and calls it an instant hit and wonders why Lee did not excel moments ago. Ellen compares them to the Captain & Tennille, which whatever, and Kara rightly calls it one of the best moments in the entire season. They raised each other's game, and made it look effortless. Simon says it wasn't a good song... It was a fantastic song. Everybody cheers, even though this judge round means even less than the nothing it usually means, and then Lee and Crystal act all geeky and are moderately funny, and we move it right along.
Casey, what hackneyed impossible bull will you foist on us this week? Oh, right, "Mrs. Robinson." I would expect nothing less than that, dear sir. That is exactly as thoughtless and Bo Bicerrific as you seem to love most doing in all this world. I cannot think of a single way this song could sound fresh or interesting in any way. I mean, it's a nice song, sure, but there's a difference between a song you like and a song you should cover.
I would say that Casey has not yet discovered this difference -- something even Michael Lynche, who is a big dumbhead, understands -- and though sometimes it works out despite him, even when he blows it out he's not really doing anything that amazing to it: Just doing it really well. Which is not what's called for, anymore. I guess what I'm saying is that I fear the Jamie Foxx T-Shirt Challenge will not work out in Casey's favor.
And OH MY GOD how gross is it going to be when they all start making Mrs. Robinson jokes about Kara when he's done? This is so fucking stupid. Even if it's "Sounds Of Silence" or "Scarborough Fair," they're still going to do that. It's marginally less awful if he sings any other song from that movie, but still super dumb. And you know fucking Randy Jackson will lead that charge like he's waited his entire life for this one chance.
Jamie claps for Texas and hugs Casey... Nope, he's doing "Mrs. Robinson," with that nasty vibrato, and then Jamie asks Casey to seduce him as though he were a woman. He props his stupid chin on his stupid hands on the piano and gazes stupidly at him, and then explains to us -- Jamie Foxx will explain some things to you once or twice, have you noticed -- that it wasn't really about Casey seducing him, but rather singing the song as though he were seducing him. I cannot believe I gave any of these bastards the benefit of the doubt that he might pick another song from that movie. I feel like such a dip.
He'll be doing the song in the style of a fingerpicked banjo cover like that Steve Zissou ukulele person, and he will be whine-shivering in the throat area the whole time, smarm-smiling out on a special dais in the middle of clapping people, and with extra Vedder noises thrown in just to make it seem even more interminable. I can't believe I was actually excited about this episode a half-hour ago. It seems like even "Falling Slowly" happened years ago, when I was capable of happiness.
Jackson laughs for some reason and then jumps immediately to why did he sing it. "A lot of things," Casey says, because he is the hairy avocado in the back of the fridge and has no thoughts at all, and then Jackson makes these fucked up noises deep in his throat that I've never once heard him make, like a bellowing, and everybody giggles and then it's all about Kara, suddenly, which has fucking nothing to do with the song and everything to do with the fact that Randy Jackson so rarely understands jokes or gets to be in on them that he wanted more than anything to be a part of this one. It's lecherous and stupid and seriously fifteen weeks late. I'm not even. This is what happens when you let Randy back into the recaps. I should have known better.
Kara acts pissy but digs on the attention; Ellen looks like she's going to murder herself. Randy says nothing of import and then orders Ellen to talk to Casey like it's his idea. Ellen feels that he did something different, after getting yelled at for being boring last week, and praises what little he did to make the song interesting. Randy orders the "Mrs. Robinson" to talk, even though she already is talking, and she says she appreciates the song choice and what he did with it.
More childish bullshit, Simon joins in, and Kara explains Randy's unbelievably obnoxious throat-clearing about the song and the parallels they're drawing, and I think she mentions Casey's "willy" at some point, and Kara tries to do her best as a human being even though everything inside her and inside Jackson is screaming not to. Simon calls it lazy and says he could've made more of an impact, and wonders if he will stay around. I don't care which of them leaves, honestly. I am so tired of both him and Mike that it's only Mike's total fakeness that puts him over the top. And his wife.
Crystal will be singing a famous song from Caddyshack, because she is such a unique person. I didn't even know there was a famous song from that movie. This is the weirdest, most desperate Movie Night of all time. Crystal loves the movie, and wants to sing something lighthearted from a lighthearted funny movie about gophers or whatever that movie is about. Ryan asks if she plans to suck yet again this week, and she says essentially that yes, she does.
Kenny Loggins wrote the song about gophers, I don't know what it's called. Jamie's words leave him entirely and he speaks mostly in grunts and gestures before offering her one or the other of the t-shirts, I no longer care. The song sounds like a song Crystal and Kenny Loggins might write together, and seems to be concerned mainly with -- and this is quite a coincidence -- being inordinately self-satisfied. I can't even tell if she's good anymore, because it all sounds like Crystal Bowersox, singing a song. Maybe you've heard it, maybe you haven't. But have you heard it with her boyfriend out in the audience wearing American flag-printed Hammer Pants and refusing to marry her?
The Judgery is exhausted and have completely stopped making sense, so I don't mind skipping over them talking. Simon says she's back in the game, which is valid. Ryan makes fun of her boyfriend's shitty dancing, and we take in the flag pants, and when you combine it with the million things going on with her face and head, you realize just how interesting it is possible to be if you try really, really hard. If you throw everything you've got at it, get some crazy pants and a million facial piercings and dreadlocks and feathers in your dreadlocks and writing things on your hand and wearing crystals around your neck and eating weird food you don't even like and dragging a didgeridoo around all over the place... You too could be this fascinating.
This is exactly why I hated Rachel Getting Married, even with Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie DeWitt, because their family was so fucking interesting that it was exhausting. It's not necessary to sing spirituals and burn flowers for Ganesh and leap over pits of fire and have a bluegrass band on your porch and plant trees for your ancestors and get henna tattoos and adopt disabled minorities and learn ASL and have High Tea at 3 PM and do presentations for each other in the parlor about open marriages and voodoo and preserve the oral history of every single person you've ever met in your life. It's not necessary to do all of these things in your lifetime, let alone on a regular old Monday afternoon, and I would wager at any point if your family falls into this trap a serious drug habit might be your only recourse. It certainly made me want to try hard drugs.
GOD DAMN IT. Casey and Mike singing the most all-time hated-by-me instructional song about the performative masculinity implied by loving -- really, really loving -- a woman. Seriously, a song I despise so much I didn't even consider they would sing it tonight. Mike sings about seeing "her unborn children in her eyes," and Casey smarmy-nods at him with a gross smile about yes, there are babies in lady-eyeballs and that's how you know you really, really really love a woman. REALLY.
You know what this song says to me? "I fear I may be gay." Nobody else is ever this excited about it.
Also, Casey fucks up the high notes. Ellen jokes around that yes, she has really really ever loved a woman, which is just as annoying as the guys doing it, and Kara says -- sad but true -- that even that shit was way better than any of the solo performances, and Simon agrees that we should give ARTIST t-shirts to the duets and not the actual songs tonight, and then we go through all of them one more time: Lee
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was awesome, Mike shook his dumb head all around, Casey sang like Eddie Vedder was lodged in his colon, and Crystal didn't suck this week. All I know is I'll be really disappointed if this empty episode didn't still somehow manage to eff up Glee. It's become a tradition in our house.Tomorrow Jamie Foxx will "sing," hand out some damned t-shirts or something, but first he says that they will never be as good as Fantasia, but that they are caterpillars of some sort of another, and then stares super-creepily at the screen while Ryan explains that also Bon Jovi, Fantasia and DAUGHTRY will be here tomorrow as well. Apparently Bon Jovi is or are still alive. Ditto DAUGHTRY. Jamie Foxx is understandably upset hearing all this news, because he assumed we were going to do like last week with Harry Connick, Jr. and spend the entire hour up his rectum. Certainly wouldn't want him to get lonely up there.
Find out how Idol reject Alex Lambert is campaigning against Crystal Bowersox.
Look back at American Idol's most underappreciated singers of all time.
Discuss this episode in the forums, and read what poor little eliminated Aaron Kelly had to say about what he's going to try to do !
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