Two hours, for what I'm told is going to be a small number of the Top 24 revealed. As long as they cry and have relatives with diseases, I'm in. Some girl can't believe how amazing it is to have the chance to be foolish on TV and not do much more. Jaren is doing things, the guy with the neck tattoos, fake grey hair, the Tyler guy. People dying onstage, the Castro falling asleep. An awesome black teardrop of mascara. Amazing. But remember, Ryan asks, 6:50 this morning? We don't, but we will. I'm guessing we'll enjoy the memory.
People yawned and were talking to themselves and us about how amazing they were about to be. That pianist I'm obsessed with was supportive but not really. Pink hair, some guy we've seen... All of them were shitting it. And now the deliberations begin. Wait, I thought this was a memory. Then we watch the Judgery talk about it and they have them all in various rooms. This is just like that movie Memento, but I care even less.
They call them into the three big rooms. Oh, I like this part! Katie Stevens, Tyler Grady, Alex Lambert, Casey James, Andrew Garcia, Tim Urban, and that little shit Todrick are all in Room One. Mary Powers and a bunch of people who don't matter are in Room Two. Three includes tragic Angela Martin, tragicker Maddie Penrose and Haeley. We revisit tragic Angela Martin's just-fine "American Boy" audition in more detail, where she goes flat and sounds hellish. I don't understand why this episode is happening this way. Like, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is great, and it's nice to remember when Brad Dourif was beautiful, but you do NOT want to live there. Angela talks about how amazing it is to be auditioning for this show the 37th time, and it's going to be okay. Kara likes her. But then in the future of the past, Angela breaks down. Maybe she's just trying to figure out what happened to the fourth dimension.
Casey's working that ponytail and learning to dance, in the past or the future or something, and then Ryan's surprised that he made it, and then cried way bad after singing "Bubbly," which is dumb. And then Jermaine Purifoy sang "Brick House" in a stultifying non-soul way. What the fuck is going on here? Was this before, or in the future? Ryan has once again spun my mind like a carousel. Casey sings... Oh, "Bubbly" is that song about how it starts in your toes and continues to your nose. And then ended up in Room One, while Jermaine -- who besides this paragraph has nothing to do with Casey -- ended up in some other room. It's actually more effective to have all this shit happening at once because I barely care as it is, and then time goes all UES and I have no idea what's really happening and what's a dream sequence or a memory or like brunch, so no matter what happens it's exciting.
Flat right out the gate, nasal through the rest... And does not save it. But if she's in the room with Didi, I will not be having this, so let's hope the judges didn't notice how shitty she was. to her in Room Three is another word-forgetter, Aaron Kelly, who has a mushy face and a crunchy-haired Real Housewives mom. Oh, right, he's the one whose aunt adopted him, so we're rooting for him. He sings that "arms of the angels" by Sarah McLachlan, and does a much better job today or yesterday, or this one time, and sounds great.
People make weird faces, including Ashley Rodriguez who I love, and sang "Battlefield" which is a song that I very much love. I wish Teddy Pendergrass or whatever his name is from OneRepublic would only write songs like that. So many possibilities, and the people are so young these days they wouldn't even know. Like you know how "Battlefield" asks the eternal question "Why does love always feel like a battlefield?" You could have a song called "Is Your Daddy Rich Like Me?" where the issue is "the time of the season" and whether or not it is "for loving," or a song called "(No One Wants To Be) Defeated" wherein the apostrophe of the song is invited to "just beat it," or even "Huckleberry Friend" and you could sing about crossing Moon River "in style someday." I mean, I just came up with this out the box so imagine what a real songwriter could do there.
Super white Lee Dewyze, who was apparently named by people knowing he would one day be a stoner and wear just this hat, sings "You Found Me" or whatever it was called; some random called Joe Munoz sings "Mirror" again; wonderful Haeley sings that same phone commercial song about how she's yours, and is just amazing. Ryan has to kick back and watch her with her mom, and she finishes it so awesome and sticks the landing, and is just delightful.
Also sitting there is Janell Wheeler, who continues to be beautiful but whose voice has crashed and burned, and whose Taylor Swift cover suffered a certain amount, but not as much as Ryan would have you believe. I just think that I care absolutely the least about this show than anybody who has ever seen it, so if I remember the people obviously the show wants us to remember it. But on the other hand, Kara agrees with me that this was a terribly wrong song for her to sing. Janell's feeling horrible, though, right afterward, which means she'll be okay. Plus she's in the room with Haeley, and I don't know if I can do this season without Haeley and A-Rod, so... Oh no! John Park is feeling weird, too, in that same room! And in that room or another room, there is annoying Jareb feeling feelings, and he still looks like a ranch hand, and still I mean that in the unsexiest way imaginable.
"Now," Ryan says, it's time for one of the rooms to get cut. Oh, so I bet what will happen is that they'll cut one room right away, and then... Wait, I had this figured out. What's one-third of 71, like... Nine? That can't be right, did I just catch dyslexia? Three times 24 is 72, okay. So if one room goes home right now, that's half of them TBD. So it'll be half from the remaining rooms, but then I heard that we find out a few of them tonight, so how will that work?
Ryan shows us the Judgery dividing contestants into the gone room, and then we do the thing where they go to the rooms and fuck around. This is a lot less fun without Paula. At least with these guys you know they know it's just pretend, but with Paula there was always that crazy sense that maybe she really was just deciding on the spot, based on no information whatsoever.
Room One, more stage auditions: Tori Kelly sings some annoying song -- the Katy Perry one again, apparently -- very annoyingly, then obnoxious gray-haired Lilly sings some soul song in a whiny way, then Andrew Garcia plays guitar and sounds totally smooth and lovely some more; but also the guy who bitched about the band is in there, so who knows. Room Two is Mary Powers with yet another asshole retrospective, trashy Hope having a meth meltdown, and... that's it. Room Three had a guy, Haeley forgetting that stupid Stefani song, Shelby, foster home guy, Janell... Obviously Room One is done, they're fine.
Ellen goes in Room One with the judges and dicks them around adorably, and it's great -- how does she do that? -- and finally tells them all that they have star power: Todrick, Tyler, Siobhan, Lilly, Thad, Big Mike, Katie Stevens, Casey, a girl with lots of blonde hair, the guy with carrot top albino hair, and then... Another room will get kicked after the break. Wait, so then what the fuck is going to happen for the hour? This is so annoying.
It's 11:30 and Rooms Two and Three are just about out of their minds. Mary Powers is hateful about the cheers of Room One, and scary skinny dreads is lying possibly dead against the wall, and Hope is just tragic either way like it matters, so let's go visit them. Kara stares and smiles, White Cop is there, pink-haired girl I like is there, Simon gives them a whole speech about how "most" of them were better than expected, which is sort of nice but not really. He dicks around even longer than Ellen did, and then tells them they're out.
Thank God. So now Mary can go back to her Silver Lake apartment with Jackie Tohn and have jam sessions with Bitch & Animal or her Red Hook Freeganarchist Collective where they can sign their names in lower case and write slam poems or her stalker lair with the darkroom where she processes and hangs the pictures of herself that she takes of herself when she's not looking.
Lee nearly barfs, and his stupid face goes crazy, and he continues to talk and talk and talk about nothing whatsoever. But at least Lee getting through pisses off Jareb, so that's something. I don't know which of those two bugs me more. I would like for them to fight. Joben and Dweezil, to the death. Totes McGoats.
up, Jessica Furney continues to act a mess. Just like every other time we've ever seen her. But first, Glee promo! I act all self-righteous and offended when they talk about gay guys making that gasping noise, but guess what I just did right this second. About Glee, which makes it so gay that I think it comes all the way back around, yeah? So really, I made the gasping noise a gay lumberjack would make about a new Glee promo. Totally different.
Everybody celebrating California style: Jam sessions on hillsides, jumping in pools, getting bi unexpectedly. Meanwhile Todrick is going for bi from the other side of the line, bothering sunbathing girls and talking about how he's a dancer and has never had singing training, and we remember how he sang his own original song, and how he was with Fantasia in Color Purple and how you can't act this awful and be on Broadway without a wonderful mom and something about Fantasia that doesn't really make sense in context, and then he gets humble for one moment before sitting in the Chair, and Kara puts him through immediately, and his fake-contact eyeballs well up, and it's sort of awesome for a second, and he dances around and gets lukewarm hugs and applause while some dumb song plays.
Jessica Furney is a ticking time bomb. Out there in the room, after her getting dropped last year, after "If It Makes You Happy" where her timing was all off, and then she was with John Park and Haeley singing the awful Stefani song and Simon stopped them, but she begged to be allowed to sing her part of the group song, and she nailed the hard words of the song and everybody was happy with her for getting ballsy and actually backing it up. Hope that positive reinforcement causes her to once again boss the judges around in the Chair! She talks at length and finally they cut her, once again. She gets more and more hyped up like the sister in a sitcom until Randy finally drops it, and then she starts lecturing them like a crazy pathetic begging person, which she acknowledges before continuing to beg pathetically and crazy, and they all stare at her and wait for her to stop yelling at them, and she never, ever does. They don't care.