Out in the audience Ryan is talking to his wonderful adorable beautiful mom, who is winking and wonking into the camera -- what, like his mother wouldn't also be a born mugger? -- and dressed in the best costume for the day, a salute to Libby Dole by way of Julia Sugarbaker, RIP. Two things: I've decided to dedicate my forthcoming book to Ryan Seacrest, for reasons that are too obvious to list, and thing two is that I miss Julia Sugarbaker. The greatest of the Sugarbakers.
Adam drinks in the sight of Tim Urban singing "Can't Help Falling In Love," the most obvious possible, perfect song of him. He sings at Adam with those eyes blinking, and Adam tells him many times that it sounds "pretty" and tells him to end on his head voice. That could go either way. Mostly I just want them to hold hands in a park somewhere. Ryan then introduces Tim Urban as "Turban," which makes sense because his relationship portmanteau has to be Tim + Urban, if you think about it. Collectively, he is all of our boyfriend, and Timerica sounds kinda dumb. (Great job!) The song is lovely but not so describable. He is dewy, and believes in love.
Jackson loves on Turbanerica while a girl screams; Ellen talks about how much tequila she can drink, and says that he is a slippery slope just like tequila shots, and she has fallen in love with him. Nice. Kara agrees that it was the best Tim performance of all time: Authentic, real, current, and other words she likes. Simon says that the most beautiful part was watching Ryan dance to his song, which is amazing, and that he has gone from Zero to Hero in the last two weeks. This makes Ryan do a little freestyle rap I didn't catch, and guess what Tim's face is doing this whole time?
Lee takes the "Little Less Convo" carrot, as seems inevitable in hindsight, and Adam points to his entire head when explaining that Lee's got nothing going on. He says that means the face, but he really means his whole entire stupid head. I hope this rocks, because I hate this song and I always forget to not hate Lee until he's actually going. His voice sounds as beautiful as usual, and he's on acoustic to start. Lots of smart changes to the song, electric and full band kicking in... This is great! This is the actual artist's rendering that he thought a bagpiper would accomplish. Well done. Up there with Crystal, in both concept and execution, to be honest. Not to mention the fact that, again, I absolutely adore it but only in the context of this show.
I hope that he does not lead her over the edge into Crazytown. I hope that he leads her over the edge into Crazytown. I hope both.
For Siobhan, the outfit is demure, by which I mean her hair is gigantic and all the clothes she's wearing started as clothes and not industrial materials. She's perturbed as usual by Ryan's aggressive Hollywood normalness, and he's perturbed by her normal weirdness, and we finally kick to Siobhan singing, awesome, "Suspicious Minds." Adam loves her pipes, but asks her to kick it up a notch instead of being boring like the last two weeks. She loves the faster tempo, which Adam knew she'd love. Siobhan thanks him for being her template on the show, which Adam is mostly okay with, and they hug. How do you not hug her all the time? I would be picking her up and putting her down more than a bunny at a birthday party. More than Mike Lynche squeezing Ryan too hard all the time to make him squeal.
Her choppers are insane and her outfit gives her a shape, two things I've never noticed. Oh, there are the chicken legs. She's just so adorable. The song builds to that one slower breakdown part, and she does three separate amazing screams, and then ends on a seriously showy drama breakdown, pretty pretty makeup in the spotlights and swoopy cameras amazing us, and her "friends," who look like a daytime AA meeting, and Adam so proud.
Jackson praises her "Supremesish" intro, and the slower bestest part. Ellen loved the second half, when everything went sort of insane vocally, and apologizes for the Judgery's ongoing mixed messages about that. Kara talks about how Siobhan divided her performance into Pretty Voice and Scary Voice (Randy likes the latter), and that she doesn't really love Scary Voice, not because it's not awesome but because it's too awesome. I love when they give that critique, and I'm not being snarky, because it's so true: I can't think of a single artist in Siobhan's lane that would succeed on this show. Not thinking about it too hard and there are way better examples I'm sure, not to mention the salient fact of What Is Siobhan's Lane Anyway, but: Björk, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Bat For Lashes, Marina Diamandis, Kate Bush would all fail this show. Epically.
Simon gives such a weird critique involving a time machine that nobody understands, but calls it overall "erratic and screechy," and says she lost her way two weeks ago. Agreed! One hundred percent agreed. Ryan asks Simon what the hell she should do, and he replies that Siobhan needs to pick songs that make sense, which she stopped doing a while back. Seriously, I don't know a better way to say it. Siobhan goes to the personal mystique place we hate to see them go: "I mean, even I can't pinpoint who or what I am, and I've always kind of taken pride in that..." No, that's the problem. America cheers, because shit just got mavericky.
"If I can't even label myself -- I don't think it's necessary to be labeled -- but I just love to sing." Um, bullshit. You're on the same show as everybody else, sweetheart. They're not saying to get in a box, they're saying you here in this season have officially been given permission by the Judgery and America to create your own box. You're the only person ever on this show (maybe Adam?) to ever be given that pass, and watching you refuse to do so week after week is really disheartening. Own it. You could tell us anything was Siobhan Box and we would believe it... If you believed it.
Think about your brand and get back to us, because you seemed really dedicated to working that shit until approximately the moment Crystal started talking about how she won't change for anybody no-how. At which point you turned to mush, for some reason I don't entirely understand but I guarantee I have a better handle on it than you do, and that's a fucking problem.
Dear show, please be over. Glee. Thank you.
Ryan makes a mean joke about Dunkleman that turns into a meaner joke about Queen Latifah and then there's this hilariously uncomfortable moment where Big Mike explains that Siobhan suggested he sing "In The Ghetto." And then he ate her, starting with her head.
Just kidding, he was totally touched by the song because he is Hootie and doesn't even know what the ghetto is or where it is located. Adam tells us Mike deserves redemption, and the singing a song about newborn ghetto babies is the way to fucking do that. If you ever wondered how I really truly felt about Gokey, it's kinder to say that he ranks somewhere between Mike and Andrew in terms of the unthinking dedication to kitsch and the unthinking dedication to not thinking that they represent respectively. So in that way, you know somewhere Andrew's like, "Exactly. I totally understand this song because I gave birth in the ghetto while I was being born in the ghetto. It's like I'm singing it when he's singing it, transmitting it to him, from me, through the ghetto, by my neck tattoo. And I am doing great."
Well, "great." What was already boring and offensive becomes more boring and less offensive as Mike strums, strums, strums, weeps, ornaments, peace-outs, smiles and smarms. Jackson loved the pretty vocals. Ellen says POV was the right choice. Kara calls it a beautiful and well-sung performance. Simon actually has a thought, calling it a brilliant choice and a million-billion times better than last week. I guess so. It was pretty but the most boring thing ever, after everybody else going crazy on their shit. At least Andrew was worse.
Who is left? Somebody small, probably. No, Aaron's already gone, and the Turbanator. Casey and Katie have not, that's who I'm thinking of. Katie is small. And you knew Casey was going last the second you saw Elvis's hair rising over the stage like a greasy ray of sunshine.
Katie and Adam, I presume, got along famously. "Baby What Do You Want Me To Do?" is the song, which I don't know, but I love that she went straight to him and was like, "Get the fucking judges off my back before I hurt somebody," and Adam was like, "Act mad and be believable." He then blinks and you can see him forget that they ever met, because he's so high and so doesn't care about this shit.
The song is pretty cool. I don't know what the song really sounds like so I have no idea how much is a revision. She does the angry thing pretty well, and it sort of informs her whole deal. She's very sassy walking down the stairs, and then pretty much yelling at the judges for disquieting her emotion chip every week. It's the same mix of hardcore and tissue-thin we've come to love, but with more necklaces and neck-snapping head-shakes.
She should play like an evil queen in one of those tremendous original movie films they show on the SyFy. "So you've come to the BoXsprinG Zone to discover the Ancient Silver Pea of Grammarye? Bow down, Princess Zydeco! Our ways are not your own, foolish interloper! For I already have the other Ancient Peas, right here in the Peapod of the Ancients. It was only a ruse to gather the last of the Peas! You brought it right to me!" And then laugh hysterically as Princess Zydeco -- played, obviously, by fucking Felicia Day -- is manhandled over to a three-dollar lucite box by the whimsical Mattress Men, which is full of plenty of magic Peas. And then Kathy Bates and Max Headroom do a little dance for everybody, because no matter how much Idol Gives Back it will never equal SyFy's commitment to entertaining those among us with special needs.
Jackson was entertained; Ellen calls it a "horny" performance, aaaand bleep-bloop, and then Kara's talking, with some weird gay snaps of her own, about how Katie has shown us all. Let's just talk about Adam's tongue, come on; I get that he's here and it's making everybody weird and crazy, but you gotta leave Katie -- who doesn't blush, and just laughs like the forty-year-old insurance broker and father of two that she is -- out of your Adam-infected sex games. Simon talks about how dumb and boring the song was, but that she was adorable and who cares what he thinks, and Ryan thanks him for being so sweet this week. Katie is wicked cute/kind of annoying, and Ryan laughs at her for begging the camera all adorable, and she puts on a little weight right before your eyes, and then Casey looks like the bad guys in Boys Don't Cry even more than usual.
We get a special shoutout to the cast of Glee, which is interesting especially because the principal is dressed like Williamsburg, and then Casey does his best to impress Adam with his skillz, and they agree to build a dramatic arc. Casey likes but does not love Adam, which is good enough for Adam because that bitch is hard. Ryan's squirreliness busts its own ceiling, and Casey sings with a heavy bassline and smooth harmonies some song about not telling your momma something having to do with misery. It looks and sounds very professional, as usual, and his vocals are pretty great even for him, but the dramatic build is nowhere to be seen. It's all breakdowns and chorus, but very pretty and right in the box of Casey. I think he sang about ten words total and the rest was repeating and vibrato, like an iTunes sample of the real song.
Jackson says it's solid, Ellen says he looks good -- not to mention comfortable in a sea of ladies -- and agrees that it wasn't exciting. Kara says it was disappointing given his talent, and Simon says that he wasted his opportunity, good vocals or not. That wipes the smile off his weird tanned face, and Ryan calls him "brotha," and we go through them again.
Crystal did her usual thing, which is to say she was very impressive and there's not much else to say, while Andrew is a fucking joke and I need him off this shit. Tim Urban continues to walk the long road to wherever he's trying to take us, and it continues to be a weightless and airy journey to somebody's binder covered in his name and a bunch of XO and ♥. Lee did a great job but not hugely memorable, because of the obvious song choice, and Aaron Kelly? What are you still doing here in any way? Siobhan's identity crisis has officially become our American problem, and Big Mike continued to believe that schmaltz and talent are enough. Katie has finally accepted that she is Sanjaya with even prettier hair, and Casey did the thing he does, at the lowest possible level.
Thanks to Adam, whom we'll be seeing tomorrow -- and for which performance Ryan just cannot freaking wait -- and then a sweet, sweet double elimination. Ryan puts on Schue's hat and we all start hyperventilating and thinking about Glee and we out.
Watch Crystal Bowersox perform "Saved" from this episode.
Is Simon deliberately sabotaging Idol?
Want to immediately access TWoP content no matter where you are online? Download the free TWoP toolbar for your web browser. Already have a customized toolbar? Then just add our free toolbar app to get updated on our content as soon it's published.