Nothing to report of the megawattage they'd have us believe last night was made of, beyond Jamie Foxx wrapping things up by still being weird, and clawing at the camera like a cat, all "Let's shock the world!" You know what's shocking? Fighting with Miley Cyrus after you've won an Oscar. Anyway, Ryan shoots some finger guns after walking down the steps in a genteel fashion, and then who do my little eyes spy but Vanessa Abrams herself, Jessica Szohr. Maybe she's going to do one of her Dove ads about Kara DioGuardi's imaginary eating disorder.
Tonight, KD is wearing a weird silver neckline that looks like it was pleated and pinned by a Project Runway contestant about six seconds ago, while Paula's got ginormous earrings from the Renaissance Olde Tymes and a matching giant head broach right above her ear that makes her look like she's in a Star Trek religion. She looks lovely, so does Simon, and Randy is still classless. Simon says that he's amazed, on rewatch, by just how good everybody was, which they were, and says that it was the best Top 5 episode ever, which it was. He says any of them have the chance to win at this point, and he's sort of stunned by this realization.
Ryan then tells us that Natalie Cole will be singing, but declines to spoil us as to which dead zombie person she's chosen to accompany her tonight, and then Jessica Szohr's date shoots her a hilarious hateful withering look when Ryan says that Jamie Foxx will also be performing. But the first thing he says, which keeps all of this from registering at first, is how Taylor Hicks is going to be here tonight. Because that fucking sucks.
Pimpmercial: Everybody's in black and white suits in the black and white desert, racing toward something in slow-motion. The thing is a car, and the way everybody looks is: fucking fantastic. Just as the car is about to hit them like bowling pins, Jesus takes the wheel and it swerves in a slow circle around them, causing like cherry blossom trees to appear and grass on the ground and Kris's hotness to go from monochrome to technicolor. I must say, that was the best one of those I can remember ever seeing. Except for the one where they were Muppets, which for some reason I still remember like it was yesterday even though it was like in 1992 that that happened.
The group singing is two songs again that somehow meld into one song. The first one is about how a thing means nothing if it hasn't that swing, and the second is the song about how, having both rhythm and music, one truly cannot ask for more. Two fine sentiments, although I must confess the latter is closer to my heart. Allison sings about "that swing," and its undeniable ontological importance, while the boys snap on either side of the stairs, and then they all gather on the floor. Matt looks absolutely fantastic in a tight black cardigan over a white v-neck, but he's still got that zoot suit affliction from last night, and it's still disgusting to watch. Meanwhile, Kris and Danny don't take their eyes off the camera, to a spooky degree.
Kris sings the song in a fitted farmer shirt, everybody goes doo-wah, Adam looks pissed, Matt is horrible more, Adam and Danny get fifty times the cheers as everybody else which must feel great, while Allison pretty much is the only person even trying by the end, and does a great job. Adam's phoning it in, Danny gets to sing the lines, "I got my gal/ Who could ask for anything more?" and the backups do a cool harmony, and it's finally over.
Danny's b-day was last Friday, which I don't think we knew. Who cares anyway, because then they're all making a cake. Which I could swear they already did, in a pimpercial or something last week, but maybe I made that up. Whatever, it's all totally fake and they're all dressed to the nines making this cake for Danny and Allison's birthdays, and their hair is done, and Adam's wearing the obligatory fifty pounds of foundation, and then there's this retarded disingenuous food fight that never, ever ends, and is so insulting because what a coincidence that Fun Danny started a totally extemporaneous fucking food fight just as the cameras were arriving and everybody was dressed in performance costumes fucking doing some light baking, and then the farce continues with Ryan batting his eyelashes all "what a mess!" and everybody pointing at Danny like he's this fucking scamp that who knows what he'll get up to, and they present a birthday card to Danny that is actually the maid's bill for the highly coincidental food fight, and Ryan gratefully drops the bit, but Danny's too dim and too into the attention he's getting to let it go, and long after it's over he's still Anooping around like, "Oh man, do I really have to pay this?"
No, you dolt. Nobody actually believes that. Stop being such a fucking Randy Jackson and get with the program. That would only have been cool if, after the massive fail that was the fake food fight, he'd opened the envelope and it said U R GOING HOME DICK or AMERICA LOVES A DOUCHEBAG or whatever.
So Matt, my favorite, sang "My Funny Valentine," also my favorite, and fucked it right up the ass with a smarmy smile and a lecherous wink and a general bowlegged swing in his voice, trying on the clothes of other men instead of singing from anything like a personal place. The judges responded to it in different ways that all equaled out, but I'm still kind of pissed about it. He refutes claims that he wasn't emotionally connected to the song, and whatever, he's been waiting for the moment he can drop the whole "original" and "passionate" act and just perform the mash-up of Timberlake and Dino that secretly rests in his heart. So disappointing. Ryan... Sends him to the right side of the stage.
Oh, I am not feeling good about this. Did they put the PoV save in there so they could move the Huff Maneuver closer to the end? That is diabolical. At Top 7 the Huff is just to clinch a producer favorite, but at Top 5? That's a sandbag, because everybody's incredible at this point. Matt is probably going home, so who's the target? Not Adam or Danny, but then what? Kris isn't playing the "real" ticket, he's not Bo Bice, I mean he smells nicer for one thing, so who is it going to be? That person is fucked.
So now Danny. He's going to be on the left side of the stage, obviously... He sang the rain or shine song, and did a really great job with it. Simon loved his swagger and confidence, and called it outstanding. Ryan makes the mistake of asking Danny to tell them what he did differently, and it's pointless and retarded and overlong, all at the same time. It's like the stupidest thing Paula ever said met the stupidest thing Randy ever said and they had a kid that wouldn't ever fucking shut up. Anyway, stage left.
Allison was "rough" and "gut-wrenching," and Paula said she had an "alluring innocence" not unlike a young Corey Delaney Clark, but Simon called her mechanical and questioned her commitment to Sparkle Motion, foretelling "big trouble" for her tonight. Ryan once again pulls the douche move of asking Allison to speak, and once again we are treated to the wisdom of the ages. "I was like really? Okay. What am I supposed to do?" Yeah, for real. He sends her over to stand... with Danny. Wait, what?
They don't get it either. Allison's like, "Why am I standing over here with you? Are we playing Red Rover?" and Danny's like, "Don't you dare get Bottom Three on me, bitch." They wait patiently for Ryan to fix what is clearly a massive mistake, and he revels in their confusion, he wraps it around himself like a blanket and gazes at them through its misty haze, he drinks it in, he is their God. Kris sang the song about the way you look tonight, which puts me in mind of how nice it would be if Kris sang "Wonderful Tonight" at some point before he goes back over the hotness rainbow to whatever magical place he came from. I said they would say the word "contemporary" a hundred times and they did, and Simon says, essentially, wouldn't it be cute if Kris won. Then Ryan sends him over to stand with Matt. Which means something incredibly fucked up is about to happen.
So Adam sang "Feeling Good," and it was perfect, and all the judges loved it, and Kara was struck dumb, and Paula talked about Michael Phelps, which comparison Adam laughs about but I don't think is all that weird. People who are really, really good at a certain thing -- which for Adam is a category of thing that he invented but even still excels at -- all have the same craziness and drive, the same Not Quite Like Us factor, should they choose to accept and follow it all the way. And damn, but they're doing it.
"Take a look at both groups," Ryan says: Matt and Kris, or Allison and Danny. Which is to say, "Locate the group with Danny in it," which task Adam accomplishes immediately. Adam laughs uncomfortably, because this is disgusting, and because he loves everybody. Ryan apologizes, but there aren't any options at this point: choose. "Based on last night," he says, which is the best possible answer at this point, probably the Danny group. Good answer, neither dramatic nor self-aggrandizing, but you can tell there's more to the story that we don't know yet. "Adam, Allison and Danny are... Not your Bottom Three." Ryan literally propels Adam across the stage over to Matt and Kris, making Adam look even worse, and suddenly Allison and Danny are safe. They literally don't know what to do with this information, because everything just got weird.
Kara and Paula are so thrown they start twisting in slow circles in midair while poodles serve them refreshing drinks, and Paula finally says that she's so proud of them all that "with all these changes," she says without jutting a thumb at Kara, she wishes they could all stay together just like the Rat Pack. Ryan tries to turn it into a Simon Is Fallible thing, but Simon's not falling for it, because obviously somebody has to go, and why wouldn't it be Adam over Allison in this mixed-up world, and finally Simon tells Ryan to stop pulling focus off Allison and Danny, who deserve at least a moment of congratulations since this is going to go on forever anyway because we're not even half done. Kara says some innocuous thing which Randy turns into a joke about Kara sucking Adam's dick, which even Paula notices is hideously off-target and unacceptable, and then instead of immediately saying Adam's also safe, we kick it to the commercial.
Natalie Cole is, according to Ryan for reasons I can't explain, "very close to our genre this week," which she isn't, and now she's going to sing a song from her album Still Unforgetttable, which again she isn't. When I was a little kid I was obsessed with her jaw, and I still am. Her face has always looked broken, or unhinged like a snake eating its lunch, but between that and her weird Botox/stroke half-grin, and the fact that she's dressed like a gold lamé refugee from the Phantom Zone, I'm not even going to worry about it. She's singing a song about "Something's Gotta Give," which of course makes me think about naked Diane Keaton, which of course gives me a monster erection like always.
But why is Natalie Cole here? She sang the pink Cadillac song, and then the song with that dead guy, and that was it. That was fifty years ago easy. So why is it that she's here now, singing all crappy? I mean, I'd pay an arm and a leg to see Rumer Willis blowing up terrorists in the Die Hard movie, so maybe this is that kind of thing. But man, this song sucks. She just stops even trying at some point to stay on key, and babbles up and down the scale for awhile, and then tells Ryan she's going to be touring both Korea and Orange County, and then she gives a shoutout to Elijah and Jacob. (Isaac, Abraham and David stroke their beards like, "Well, fuck us then.") So Ryan's like, "Check out how nervous Matt, Kris and Adam are backstage," and they're totally not nervous at all, but we'll find out who else is safe after Taylor Hicks performs. That's what makes me nervous.
The Taylor Hicks song is called "Seven Mile Breakdown," off his new album, and then he comes out with every single fucking thing going wrong that always goes wrong. If anything, he has polished his horrible routine even further: random spinal twisting, shoes slipping around on the floor like he's wearing shoes made of butter, strange yipping, hands curling up like fists for no reason. He's wearing more makeup than Adam, but for some reason underneath all of this he's looking... I can't say it. I won't. Taylor Hicks's hotness has never been up for discussion and I refuse to go there now, when even the show has tried everything to avoid admitting he exists until tonight.
Woo! Yeah! Soul Patrol! The whole bit. Spinalling around, neck all crazy, eyeshadow and lipstick, screaming his ass off worse than Fantasia. Whatever, it's like Taylor Hicks, the serious crisis situation that is Taylor Hicks, but with a body and lots of makeup on. His voice sounds great, as always, and his eyes are still pretty, and his slippery shoes are very expensive, and I still and will always fervently wish for him to fall into a deep, deep hole and break both legs and be eaten by mountain cats in a mountain range full of cats. I don't have anything to add to that. Fuck Taylor Hicks forever, and his million tics and wriggles and random jaw snapping at the air like a sleeping collie, and fuck all his makeup, and most of all fuck the fact that he looks like they're cramming an entire McDonald's Playplace up his ass one piece at a time no matter what else is going on around him. Taylor Hicks, why can't you just be hot and leave it at that? Why are you acting like this? He's like the Mark Cuban of music. It's a choice.
Ryan asks how he lost all the weight, and he fully goes, "Touring, and hanging out with the fans." Translation: moving from pot to coke. Apparently moments before this performance, for example. He looks like a news correspondent for the most boring thing you can think of, like the peso. Simon literally rolls his eyes and gnashes his teeth the whole time Taylor's punditeering about the Idols, as if to say, "Your spastic ass is fifty years old, how is your experience relevant to any of this?" Answer: never was.
The boys come back onstage, and Adam is clearly safe, and all three of them know it. I started to say something about how maybe this little scare and the Huff will cause him to bring the crazy back, but then NO! It is Kris! KRIS IS SAFE! ADAM IN THE BOTTOM TWO! WHAT IF ADAM GOES HOME! WHAT IS GOING ON? I'd be all mystified by that. But before you start wondering what's going to happen , the answer is nothing. Now we have to watch Jamie Foxx be even less relevant than Taylor Fucking Hicks, which is suddenly possible, and check out how it's still only the 39 minute mark. What the fuck have they been doing this whole time?
Simon is all cute reading off the teleprompter and throwing Ryan off, but his mic isn't live so mostly it's just him making impish faces and Ryan stuttering, and then Jamie Foxx "sings" a "song" by pretending to sing into a microphone that is pretending to be connected to a vocoder that is pretending to be creating music. It's not even his voice, do you see what I'm saying, it's just some voice somewhere playing through a synthesizer. "I don't know, just make him say 'shorty' a bunch of times and they won't notice."
This is exactly what's up Billy Bob's insane ass, this nonsense right here. Tell me how this is substantially different from the "party all the time party all the time" song that Eddie Murphy sang. Tell me how this is different from the Superbowl Shuffle, even. How is it that watching Jamie Foxx -- who is famous at this point for doing an award-winning job of pretending to be a musician -- lipsync to somebody else singing through a machine while wandering back and forth and doing occasional squats, how is this music? The only way this could be further from reality is if he were joined by the Pussycat Dolls, or doing this performance for the benefit of Anderson Cooper, in the form of a hologram.
This is so stupid I can't even take it. First Taylor Hicks, and now this. I can't even evaluate the song, because the performance mechanics of this are so painful. He walks to stage left, then to stage right, and then does a little jig or a two-step, and... I mean at one point he has the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to hold the fake microphone out toward the crowd. As if they too will suddenly sound like robots. This is embarrassing, this is like a Tracy Jordan thing where his entourage spent sixty million of his dollars to make him feel like a musician, and this ghetto crap was the result. Ryan congratulates him on all his "success," and how great he was with the contestants, and Jamie tells us for the eightieth time how incredibly talented they are. And you know who is qualified to tell us that? Jamie Foxx.
Anyway, Matt and Adam. My two favorites. Hmm. Well, it's got to be Matt. Right? Yes, he is done. Everybody cries and hugs him, and Adam whispers something, but I find myself not that into it. I mean, he never pulled it together. He gave great performances sometimes, and had the benefit of not being Anoop, but after seventeen weeks I still don't feel like I know much about him. Sometimes he was R&B guy, sometimes he was Coldplay Muse guy, sometimes he was Billy Joel piano guy. I mean, that is fine because he is original, but I still don't actually know what his dreams or skills are.
I just wish, now that the save is gone, they'd let him sing "Human Nature" again instead of the crap song he sang this week. But no, and I won't watch it twice. Bleep-bloop and the end of the song is, again, amazing, and then we're somehow miraculously -- after all that bullshit -- a minute ahead, so Ryan has Paula tell him about how he has the headstart of forty million fans looking forward to what he does , and how proud she is to have helped find him, and Kara says the best thing they've done this season is save him. Which is true, I guess, but it would have been nice if he'd used that to his advantage in some way.
Simon laughs about how this week is not the week to ask him for advice, but tells the Final Four that week they should have fun, and above all, "always remember the people that picked up the phone." He's very philosophical this week. So time we're looking at Rock & Roll Night, which should be awesome, and Slash will be there, which I guess is exciting. I always thought he would smell really weird. Maybe we'll find out. And maybe they'll sing two songs each? Is that when that starts? And then Allison will go home, and then Kris will go home, and then either Danny or Adam will win, causing either a riot or a book-burning, and we can go back to whatever we were doing before this season started.