Okay, that was ridiculously long and overpadded and stupid, so I want to just give you the highlights, but, like, there weren't any? So let's just get through this. First thing is that the final twelve are dressed like idiots, like a hometown Community Center version of Up With People, singing a Beach Boys medley. You've heard of the Beach Boys, right? The ones whose songs all rely on harmony? Which these people have been demonstrating is beyond them since like January? That, plus the fact that apparently none of these people can sing, which I don't think we really knew, makes this part kind of awesome. Lindsey in particular makes the worst sound -- a honking, mooing kind of moan -- but she's not the worst singer. They're all winners there.
Then there's a Video Journey for our own personal selves, with some audition things that make me happy (Adam Pratt, that girl that got cut at the last round and couldn't find her way off the elevator, Leroy) and some things that make me sad (mostly that woman who might die without music but turns out to be kind of an asshole). The overwhelming majority is things that make me bored.
Ryan goes to see Bo Bice in his dressing room. Where he is wearing sunglasses. We check out Alabama, where it's all happening, and everyone in frigging Alabama is also wearing sunglasses, in a concerted effort to piss me off. Then we go see LaToya, crazy in Alabama, not to mention drunk and dressed like a crazy idiot and calling him "Bo Brice." Then it is announced that, from now on, "Every day is Bo Bice Day" in Alabama. Droll. Then Bo Bice sings "Vehicle," and he has more energy than last night, when he had food poisoning. It's awesome. I watched it twice. Twice for Bice.
Matt Rogers and Mikalah Gordon are the exact same thing in every way. I don't have a good reason to hate him, and I'm pretty sure I like him, a lot, but he also makes me so angry I can't see straight, so when he's onscreen there's this, like, grimacing rictus of rage, but also affection. Just like Mikalah! He's wearing the largest watch I've ever seen, is dressed like Tony Soprano, and is still kind of gay even in Checotah, where he's not so much drunk as overcompensating a bomb. He and the First Lady of Oklahoma (The jokes! They come too fast!) talk about Carrie for awhile, and then Carrie sings that awful "Angels Brought Me Here" song. Bo is just a lot better than she is. At singing, I mean.
Ryan hangs out with the three judges in their separate dressing rooms, and the Randy and Paula parts are pretty dumb, and the Simon part is crazy uncomfortable, and then we remember some train wrecks, and Leandra Jackson, the first thing we saw this entire season, comes out and ruins the "America, God shed his grace on thee" song again, and again it's maybe not so funny. Then Bo and Carrie sing "Up Where We Belong," and it's not enjoyable. Then there are credits, again, for no reason, so I guess we're halfway there. Is it like this every year? This is insane! Nothing has happened!
Bo and Carrie gets some new red Mustangs, anticlimactic, and Carrie won't shut up, embarrassing, and then (with an equally embarrassing "Little Bit Country" musical intro) we see more goddamned footage of the two of them than you could ever imagine. Most of which we've seen already tonight, and some of which is from five seconds ago. Then we remember some auditions, and then there's Adam Pratt. What happened? We rewound. How weird. Look! Adam Pratt! And again! For one hour! Then he and Dirk are in the audience, and David Hasselhoff comes out and hugs Dirk, almost making up for the cruelty this show enjoys so much. What does Adam get? Nothing. But seeing Dirk happy is good enough for him, because he is perfect.
Then there is a three-hour parody thing about the Corey Clark deal on ABC, tied in with jokes about everything that made this season so fucking enjoyable and fun to watch, and there are parts that are very funny, surrounded by parts that are not funny at all, and it's kind of like tapioca: something kind of icky in a suspension of boring, and you can never get to the bottom. This goes on almost literally forever.
Carrie sings that song I like, "Bless The Broken Road," with Rascal Flatts. I do not know this Rascal Flatts person, but he cannot sing at all, and also looks like a girls' basketball coach with a hair gel problem. They sound like hell. Then: an apocalypse of gay! Here's a list you might enjoy: A-Fed. Anwar. Kenny G. "I Believe I Can Fly." I could not make that up if I wanted to. It's amazing. Anwar sounds like shit, A-Fed sounds like A-Fed.
Kenny Wayne Shepard plays guitar as Constantine, Jessica, and Nadia sing "Walk This Way," and Jessica is pretty much the only worthwhile thing there. For three hours I expect a little return, in the form of Nadia Turner, but no such luck, just a humping bad time for everyone, and Constantine embarrassing himself as usual. George Benson backs up Nikko and Scott for "On Broadway," and it's unending and crappy, and -- I'm still freaked out by how they all sound horrible. Did they rehearse this at any point? Eventually George just takes over, because it's so embarrassing. How many fucking people were in the Top Twelve, anyway?
Vonzell and Billy Preston sing the most boring song in the world, and they don't worry about hurrying that shit up either. I don't even know what to say about it. I don't remember if it was pretty. I think it probably was. I mean, it's playing on my TV screen right now and I can't remember what's happening. Like while it's happening.
Then the biggest nightmare of all -- Lindsey and Mikalah singing with Babyface, and he can't even look at them because of the awful noises -- followed by a most beautiful dream: Bo Bice, singing with Lynyrd Skynyrd "Sweet Home Alabama," which song I've been dreading, and now I don't even know why, because it is fantastic. He's glowing with joy the entire time, and everybody in the house started crying because of the immense joy on his face, and it was one of the best things I've ever seen.
And for some reason, that's when I realized he would lose. Which is rough, because I've been assuming he'd win for a couple of weeks, even though I knew it was dumb to think that, and I came up with a million reasons why he wouldn't, but it turns out there were closer to five million. Randy talks a whole pile of nothing, Paula talks a small mess of crazy, and Simon approves this Final Two. A very tall Brit with a good accent brings out the results, and everyone looks very, very nice, and Bo about starts crying right now. Seacrest takes his sweet-ass time opening the envelope, and the screaming starts, and she cries without tears. But come on, she's clearly crying. I think it's a baby pageant facial situation, where maybe she's just trained not to cry when she's got makeup on. Anyway: Carrie wins.
Then she sings "Inside Your Heaven," and the only thing that makes it worthwhile is the breaking in her voice that makes you happy because she's finally learned to have an emotion. And that emotion? Victory. It's not overwhelming to watch, like with Kelly, which coronation made me think I might lose my mind like an audience member on Oprah, but it's pretty sweet. There's a huge shower of unending sparks that fills the room with smoke, and the glitter and confetti I enjoy so much, so at least there's stuff to look at while she sings this boring, boring, dirty, boring song. The she screams, and smiles, and she's happy. I'm glad somebody is.
Much as they did last night, the lights come up from the darkness and the screaming begins, and it is still very, very exciting. I mean, I know it already happened, and I was certainly not fooled this time around, but since the entire travesty is two hours of nothing wrapped around a half-hour of something, you've got to take your thrills where you can get them. And there are thrills to be had.
We begin the first segment with the Antepenultimate Ten, and they are dressed like idiots, and they singing a Beach Boys medley. I came to the Beach Boys late in life. For a long time I just thought it was more of that oldies music that all sounds the same, and it's about stupid crap anyway, surfers and huarache sandals and all that, and, like, I didn't know there was a qualitative difference between the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, who irritate me no end, and whoever else. The surfer guy groups. Hate them. And then somebody made me listen to Pet Sounds on headphones, like forced me to. This was freshman year of college, if you know what I mean. Like everybody thought they were socialists, these little Klostermans and Zinns just waiting to be discovered. But it turned out that I was pretty much totally predisposed to love Brian Wilson, like we were connected in some kind of new age Vonnegut fashion, and that was how I figured out why. The Idols do not so much pay what I'd call homage, however, so we'll run through this quickly.
It's been a while, so let's run down the names. Mikalah and Jessica, the Banger Sisters of this little tableau, are up in front, dressed insanely. Jessica's wearing a tight little sausage dress over white jeans, and it is a sickly chartreuse color not unlike that of one Mr. Spongebob Squarepants, and it has a halter top, like, that ties at the nape, and it is backless, and she's wearing a bright turquoise brassiere that you can clearly see through the back of the shirt-dress, because the back of it is not there. It gathers horizontally in a way that makes up for a lot of the flaws going on, but regrettably, completely hides her chest. It's pretty much a disaster. Queen of disaster, of course, is Mikalah, wearing a vagina-baring skirt and a midriff jacket with the collar popped, and she considers this "clothed." Both of the things she's wearing are white denim. She looks like she bought a prostitute costume at the Miami Vice yard sale, and is wearing big pink plastic hoops. Her hair looks like those dogs that have dreads. Am I painting you a picture?
They all look ridiculous. It's not even thematic, it's just apparently Look Like Asses Day, onstage. Constantine's wearing a striped Good Humor jacket, they're mostly wearing white jeans -- white jeans -- Nikko's got not one but like five polos with the collars popped, okay, in the flattering hues of Rabid Melon and Aching Lime, under a white sport jacket, which jacket A-Fed is also wearing, with Institutional Blue scrub pants that are aggressively crotchy. They Lift and Separate. Anwar persists with the Björk hair and Kravitz shades, but is now complementing them with a fitted Biological Pink shirt and egregious cameltoe. Lindsey doesn't look too bad, she's wearing white jeans and an orange tank, with a clashing red sash. Scott's wearing a sport jacket in a lovely shade of Elementary School Cafeteria Orange and still looks better than most everyone. Vonzell's wearing a yellow sheath dress and is pretty presentable, except for a huge clot of turquoise at her neck, and Nadia's man-chest is exposed to the world in a sassy Roman Senator number held together by gold chains, hotpants, and a weird plastic belt, and has accessorized with some strange white fan-brush earrings that look like scallops. It's normally a chore to note the clothes, because I don't often notice that stuff and I make an effort to tell you about it each week, but not this week, buddy. This week the clothes are screaming right out the gate.
Nobody sounds like they're singing with the group, so it's kind of harsh-sounding, but we've been over, through, and around this a billion times. They weren't selected for their choiring ability, they were selected for their ability to yell in their own way. Constantine puts himself a foot closer to the camera than anybody else at all times, Scott takes the falsetto part of "Barbara Ann" and it sounds cruddy, and then there's a lot of facing this way and that, but nobody is looking at Scott even though this is his solo.
Mikalah and Lindsay come down to sing "In My Room," and they both sound hellish. Lindsey makes a horrible honking sound, the worst noise of the night, and Mikalah, you need like ten minutes to even understand where she's coming from anyway, so that was doomed to failure. How the hell are these two supposed to sing together? They put them together towards the end too, and it never makes any sense. Jessica comes in to save them, and sounds gorgeous and screwed as usual. On the other side of the stage, Vonzell sings the verse, with Nadia doing backup so low you can barely hear her at all, and then Nadia and Jessica both get an "in my room" line to do with what they will. And they sound nice, but this is all so shambolic it's like getting in a car accident and being happy you went right through the windshield, instead of just hitting it like a bug.
Then Anthony sings -- wait for it -- "Surfer Girl," sitting on the steps, his little self all perfect for this song and whatnot, and then Constantine and Anwar feel some drama. Nikko sings the verse really unevenly, but he actually somehow looks totally awesome. Then comes the part you knew was coming, where Constantine sings "I Get Around" in that unintelligible and terrible way that he sings things, like he's got a mouthful of pudding. Although to be fair, given all the range of that song, high to low and back again, he accomplishes showing that he has more range than we knew. He has a good range and a good voice, he just does evil with them, and I cannot respect that. Then, of course, he makes that effing face and then kisses the screen. Like I was asking for that shit. (To be fair, the narrow minds of the AI team probably made him do this whole cheesy bullshit thing, meaning that he gives his all and that's great, but he was the asshole who gave them the idea in the first place.) Then everyone gets back to being cute singing "Good Vibrations," and that's the best part, not least because it's the end. This, I did not like, altogether.
Ryan Seacrest comes out of the FANT ASIA screen, and we "give it up for the finalists [who lost] one more time." He's wearing a black tie and black jacket, and they are differing amounts of shiny, and it looks amazing. He names all the people the Idols will be singing with, and people cheer or not depending on if anybody knows who the hell they are. George Huff loses it in the crowd at this point and his little fists go crazy in the air, shaking and wigging out. I could buy that George Huff is a huge fan of Rascal Flatts, because I have no idea what gets George Huff excited, besides, like, life, but I think it's more likely that he's just overwhelmed by everything going on around him. Sights and sounds. Hall and Oates still look fucking embalmed.
Seacrestiana about how they couldn't very well "do the Kodak" without "rolling out the red carpet": "To host, we wanted somebody with experience, somebody with class…" (Right then I screamed, "Mikalah Gordon!" And Anna was like, "Good call, little buddy.") "…Somebody with the innate charm you need to introduce celebrities. We couldn't find anybody…so we went with Mikalah Gordon." The joke would have been just as funny without that little jab, because it goes without saying, and belies the other reason, which is that she's outrageous and speaks extemporaneously with the grace and forethought of a young, strung-out Janice Dickinson.
This part, I did not like either. Each segment has such promise and then goes straight to hell. For two hours! Out on the carpet, the camera she adores so much crowding up on her, she asks who will win. They all scream "Bo!" and she goes, "Stop with all the 'Mikalah,' seriously." Isn't that funny? They were saying "Bo" and she pretended they were saying "Mikalah." It's in character and kind of cute. I really enjoyed that, didn't you? Hey, let's make that joke eleven more times, shall we? Should be wacky. She's standing there with Kirstie Alley, of all people, so Mikalah…does the exact same joke. The funny thing is that Kirstie is trying to give this whole PR-sounding thing about how "they're both stars, which is the good news," and Mikalah just talks the hell over her to get to her joke. And Kirstie Alley just keeps trying earnestly to give her speech, because she doesn't seem to know what a joke is. And I've seen Fat Actress, so I know that's true. And hey, Kirstie? You better fucking thank your lucky stars you got Rachael Harris in on that bullshit, or else you'd have one less viewer than you do. Anyway, if you're going to do shit like this, do it to Kirstie Alley, because she's nuts. I can remember a time when I thought Kirstie Alley was cool. But hell, I can remember when I thought Whoopi Goldberg was cool, so who am I?
Mikalah stands with Paula and Simon, who look amazing, and she tells Paula she looks really amazing, and Simon grins, because Mikalah ignoring him is funny. She holds out the mic and asks, "Simon? You wanna say anything?" and immediately jerks it back away from him all, "Thank you and it's been really amazing." Paula doesn't even know what just happened, and Simon just makes the face you make about Mikalah. Oh, Mikalah. You're just little too annoying to make up for it. Then, of all the stars and music luminaries that you'd expect to find here, we get to talk to…Marg Helgenberger. Who is rooting for Bo. Mikalah's like, yeah, "Bo's a rock star." This is funny because she's using the word the same way Paris Hilton and I do, which is to signify coolness that has nothing to do with music, but also, um, Bo's a rock star. Then she and Constantine make that horrible fucking Constantine face toward the camera, like it's funny. It's not funny, it's gross. It should not be celebrated, it should be banned. Carrie and Bo hug Mikalah and smile and completely ignore whatever inanity she's spewing, and then it's finally over.
Then there's a Video Journey for our own personal selves, and I'll tell you a bit about that: Lots of cheering people, Nikko yelling, Leroy yelling, that same footage of the people in costumes they showed us six times at the beginning of the season, the girl dressed as a cow, that Goth guy I loved so much, a crying gay cowboy. There were like four of those this year, actually. Mary Roach telling us, and those that dwell within her, about her plan to not totally freak out. Lindsey singing beautifully in her audition. Regina being a jerk, Marlea Stroman going home. Forty-four people went to the scary chair, including the girl who got lost on the elevator, and Mikalah, David Brown, and Lindsey. We voted on the "guys" and then the "girls," and "when there were six of each we put it all together." God, that was eight lifetimes ago. Remember Joe Murena? Remember Travis? Remember -- I don't even remember that guy. Huh. Look! Judd! Remember Amanda Avila? This is hilarious, this part. I can't believe I'll have Amanda Avila's name and measurements in my head for the rest of my life.
Then there were a Final 12, "and the drama really began." Bo wore shiny pants, Randy was incomprehensible, the numbers got screwed up, Mikalah got prettied up, Anwar was "technically the best singer," although not enjoyable to listen to, and A-Fed was called "hideous," and Constantine was called "the one to beat," and neither of those things were true so then Constantine went home. Vonzell finally got cool, Bo started getting hot, Carrie became more and more acceptable to some but not all of us, and then Vonzell went home. That was last week, remember? Do you? I barely do.
I don't even know what they get. It just occurred to me that I have no idea what they're even competing for. Did I know at one time and just misplace the information? On America's Top Model it's annoying because Tyra says it every week verbatim, but at least you always know. "Photo shoot with world-renowned photographer" blah blah blah. What does the American Idol actually get? Have they even told us this year? A contract with BMG, right, and they "get to" record "Inside Your Heaven," which is very fucking not exciting. Is that all? Oh, they get a car. No, they both get a car. This is sad. I don't even remember why they're trying to win this competition.
Ryan goes to see Bo Bice in his dressing room, and it is very, very fake how Bo is just sitting there reading something backstage in sunglasses and flip-flops, without a care in the world. Well, to be honest there's about five years to go before the results, so maybe it's best to ignore that anything's happening at all. Ryan marvels about how relaxed he is, but thankfully we're spared more quasi-hippie crap about how "waiting is" and he's just happy to be here, chilling out and spending time with whoever and how things happen at their own pace or whatever. "Millions love Bo Bice," Ryan informs us, and then to prove it, we do a hometown check-in. I get a little double-vicariously angry with the people in Alabama, because I'm so sure every single one of them has been rooting for Bo the whole time. I'm not irritated on my own behalf, but I imagine there are some pretty steamed people in that huge crowd who feel like there are about a billion Johnny-come-latelies all around them. I feel their pain, as they say.
And then I feel my own, because every single damn person in Alabama seems to be wearing sunglasses, and I know it's not because of me, it's because of Simon, but it still pisses me off. Don't encourage him! You wear your insecurity like a badge! LaToya London is dressed like a foot and she is drunk. Nobody can see what's going on here and avoid mentioning both of those facts. She's wearing a huge plastic crown and a pink feather boa. She calls Ryan Bo, and then calls Bo "Bo Brice," and then confuses me about who we're talking to. It's a lady connected to the gubernatorial office in some capacity, I think, come to tell us that it's "Bo Bice Day" and that, after Bo wins, it's possible that every day will be Bo Bice Day. That's just a little bit less hot than the Calendario Romano. I support a Bo Bice-centered calendar. LaToya screams insanely some more, and then Ryan confides in her that he owns the same outfit. Oh, Ryan. Yeah.
Bo Bice comes out and sings "Vehicle" one more time, and he's busting a tunic and some chains, and looks like one million crisp new unmarked bills with a pair of stupid sunglasses perched atop it. I don't know what to say about the performance, because it's always the same amount of awesome. Perhaps the subtleties between the eighteen times he's sung this song elude me, but I wouldn't expect it otherwise, because that's how professionals work, and I have actually watched this or some other rendition of "Vehicle" multiple times on my own initiative, so that's not really a problem. He's less with the hair-tossing tonight, which makes me think that was a reaction to feeling unwell, and generally has more energy. Maybe his food poisoning went away. I hope so. His grandma is again doing a fucking duck call in the audience. I wish a duck would come. Show her what for. Bo shouts out to Alabama incomprehensibly.
During the commercials, I think about how my friend Brad told me the other day about when Bono told somebody: "I don't know why, but we always had this belief that there was something sacred about our music, that it was almost holy." I think about that a lot when I've got some downtime, because mulling over this beef I've recently discovered I have with Bono has pretty much completely overshadowed planning my sneak attack on Lou Diamond Phillips. Whence this hate? I'm like two to ten years too late to be on some kind of "fuck Bono" bandwagon, and yet it consumes me. So weird. Also during the break is a commercial for The Inside, which looks pretty awesome, and you should watch it anyway, because Tim Minear is in on it, and he rocks.
Now we'll be visiting Carrie in her dressing room, where all the Dasani water in the world lives. Muskogee cheers for her, and again I'm struck by just how very many people there are, cheering for her. I would freak out. How is she dealing with any of this? Carrie laughs at a "Marry Me Carrie" sign in the crowd on the screen, and then Matt Rogers appears, wearing a suit with such a generous weft and wide collar that he makes it look more like a track suit, like something they'd wear on The Sopranos, with chains, and he's screaming, as usual, like a gay wrestler. His watch is huge, it looks like one of those things in the movie Stargate. The Stargate itself, I mean. And maybe Spader. And an old VW. On your wrist. He's got a huge ugly ring too. Is he just actually in the Mob now? I wonder if it's from the Rose Bowl. Matt talks about how the Okies are crazy, and then introduces the First Lady of Oklahoma by saying, "I'm standing here with someone a bit more -- LESS -- crazy," and he tells her he's honored, and somehow we all blow past the fact that he just misspoke to the tune of calling the First Lady of Oklahoma a bigger nutbar than an entire crowd of Carrie Underwood fans.
He looks at the camera like one and half times the whole time he's doing this, which is weird and amateurish. Who was that girl who fell down and then came back and did this? She was pretty. Matt asks some meaningless questions and the FLOOK says some meaningless nice things about Carrie, and says she's going to win. "Will you get crazy with me," asks Matt Rogers, "after she wins?" She laughs, because she assumed he was gay. Then Matt yells at Ryan and calls him baby, and it's kind of abrupt, and then Ryan is amazed that Matt just hit on the FLOOK, and also is very appreciative of Matt's tan. He cannot let that one go, either. The producer reflected in the mirror behind Ryan gives him the wrap-it-up signal, so he sends us out, and then makes a totally bored face. The cross-fade to the stage for Carrie's performances involves Ryan walking across the dressing room laughing hysterically. I don't think Ryan gives much of a toss about Carrie, other than liking her just fine. Also: It's creepy to be in their dressing rooms when they're not there.
Carrie sings that awful "Angels Brought Me Here" song -- and I take heart that, as katydid explained, the song is actually about aliens and not the kind of angels we thought, which makes a little more sense and is a total lie -- and it doesn't sound that great, to start with. Her hair is back to the crunchy curls I thought we beat out of her at the beginning of the season, and she's wearing a crazy fitted man-plaid shirt like when she feeds the cows. Maybe we're supposed to be thinking about what an innocent farm girl she is. She starts with the bouncing again. I don't deserve to hear this song one time, much less twelve times, but the idiotic bouncing is especially hard to take when there's nothing else interesting going on, like singing. Carrie looks really cute, yes, and seems to be putting something like a heart into the song. Stage presence, stage presence, they kept saying it, and she's clearly developed on that level, but she's still not to where she's really that great to watch. She's very pretty, and her voice is rarely off, but if you think about Bo, or Kelly, or people of this nature -- Nadia, I certainly think -- where you can't take your eyes off them…it's weird. Subjective, of course, and she has definitely blown me away a few times, but it's still the main thing she should be worrying about. Ryan mentions the "awful truth about Simon" segment coming up, and asks who's the American Idol, and bears some fucking false witness about how "we will know shortly…" If by shortly you mean "almost one million years from now," then yes. We will.
Ryan heads to Randy's dressing room, first fucking with a backstage guy's pocket square. "Oh what, it's sewn in?" The guy laughs, but his face is going, Shut it, metro. On the way in and clearly on a kick of some kind, Ryan mentions that Randy "might be wearing white spats." No, he's actually wearing those horrible white dress shoes that always look dirty no matter what you do, Duckie, and wearing them with pink shoelaces. Randy accidentally skips a beat in the middle of their conversation and then very fakely goes, "Oh, Ryan! I don't know! I'm nerve-wracked, man! Who's it going to be?" Oh, Reader! He does know! He's not nerve-wracked! It's going to be Carrie! Proof? "The Dawg always has to keep it real…I think that Carrie probably won tonight." Yeah, like they'd show him -- or for fuck's sake Simon -- making the wrong call here. Come on. Ryan asks if there was a possible "change in momentum" last night, as though Carrie's ever been behind Bo, and Randy goes eight kinds of horrible, all, "That's why I gave her the Dawg's Standing O! I've never seen her connect emotionally with the song like that!" She didn't, because she had the Ebola, and that's just the tip of the iceberg here.
This is all filler to get us to the segment, which is all about Paula and Simon. Can you imagine a dead horse you'd more prefer to flog? I certainly can't. There's a callback to them feeding each other strawberries and cream from, like, the first season, some pointless footage of them fighting, Paula telling everybody to shut up at seemingly every one of those 100,000 auditions, Paula fighting them on Mikalah, calling the Brit over to deal with the Delma situation that time, and it goes on forever. Basically the hilarious point we're making here is that they used to not get along, and now they don't get alongerer, but also that they have a love-hate relationship, which is now love-haterer. Like we care. This is just the chocolate of the egg anyway, because the deal with Simon and Ryan is what's inside, and we're never going to figure that one out.
Ryan hangs out with Paula and forces her to watch the strawberries and they talk about Simon's halitosis, and then she explains that there's a combination of love and hate, and that Simon grows on you…like a fungus. Aww, remember the first time you made that joke? How good it felt, to be a pithy fifth grader making that fungus joke? That's how Paula feels right now, and she stumbles all around and steps on herself to hit the punchline, too. Aww. This shit is more content-free than a Tom Cruise interview. Paula and Ryan make fun of Simon's ego -- and thanking America for listening to him -- just like they do every season. Just like they do every episode of every season.
Bo and Carrie duet prettily on a song called "Reach," over a montage from the various pimpomercials, with the Bo and Carrie parts highlighted. Like I needed this kind of visceral reminder of the shit we went through this season. Then, in Simon's dressing room, it takes a second for Ryan to convince him that they're actually on-air, which lends a somewhat improvised air to the segment. What would Simon do if they weren't on-air, is what I wanna know. Simon's wearing a pinstriped suit and his shirt is unbuttoned to his navel and his hair looks as terrible as ever, that weird, flat, brushy jarhead thing he's got, but otherwise he actually looks great. Akbar points out that this has been his best year ever, but that "all of you" play their parts in the show too. It's funny and very dry, with lots of asterisks all over it, to which Jeff obligingly plays: "Would you say it's the sum of all parts, or…?" And having been handed that open door, Simon walks through it. "No, it's very important, the little people play their parts as well." When Ryan Seacrest is your straight man, you've got the best and funniest job on the planet.
Ryan thanks him -- and basically congratulates him on his advanced degree in Bitchiness -- and they hug awkwardly. Simon says that watching the TV back this time, it wasn't that different, and notes that Bo seemed nervous and uncomfortable onstage. Which is interesting, because I was thinking about that a few weeks back, how for all of her moo-eyed staring and bouncing, when they're not performing Carrie is a lot better handling the crowd. We stopped getting any of that sorority-girl faux-modesty from her any more, and started getting it from Bo in spades, with some cowardly shades on top of it. It's interesting, and doesn't mean he's a jerk or anything; I think if anything it speaks more to her robotic child-bride vibe, like the crying without tears. The whole JonBenet thing of how she probably has been trained not to cry actual tears since she was in her first "Beautiful Babies of the Plains" pageant before she could walk.
Simon says that Carrie will win, and again: he would not be saying that if it weren't going to happen, and that's something I'll have to remember for year, because I was actually kind of feeling the tension this year until that stupid envelope got opened, but in retrospect it was just obvious. Not that Simon isn't going to be almost unerring in his calls and decisions about this stuff, which I think he is, because his whole existence is about being a one-man Popcorn Report avatar of Frank Lentz about the music industry, but even if he didn't know the actual Price-Waterhouse of it, he still had twelve weeks of voting totals to go on, which we didn't. So yeah, it's a duh at this point, even more for him than Randy. But, like, it would be just as bad -- in some ways worse, since nobody knows what the hell she's doing there in the first place -- to have Paula make the wrong call, which means all of them had to know, including Ryan, and that's about the extent of the total conspiracy that I'm up to discussing right now. Do I look crazy to you yet? I'm turning crazy, like people on TV. Surprised?
Simon reiterates how America finally feels great about him, and they've finally built a relationship, and there are so many ways that I hate the whole "Simon's a jerk" thing that I can't even tell you. It's just as rigged as anything else, and I hate having that in my head. That whole "You are the weakest link" thing we've got going. I wonder how the American response to the harsh bossy Brit archetype differs from the Canadian response. We had a Tea Party and a bloody war, they still have her face on their money, so where does that leave the bitch from Weakest Link, or the awful man from Hell's Kitchen, if you're Canadian? And even south of the border, is there a leftover historic thing where that plays to us so well? I'm sure they're just as cool as Simon in real life. Or, I guess, almost as cool, since I really just like Simon more than I like most people. That's what I'm thinking about while this ongoing, never-ending pile of nothing goes on moving ever forward at a pace, and level of destruction, not unlike those of the mighty glaciers that are even now dissolving under the harsh eye of the sun. This is the kind of boring that could create the Rocky Mountains, given time.
Ryan is very indulgent and sweet about the whole American thing, while still making fun of him, and then Simon grabs Ryan's wrist, quite excited, to tell him fakely how talented he's finding Matt Rogers, how he should be the co-host year, and Ryan -- because this is all scripted -- does not slap his huge-pored face. "I know he's taller than you," blurts Simon, and whipsmart Ryan yells, "And girthier!" There's a lot going on here that I don't want to go into, except that I thought the word "girthy" and its adjectival family could not be more upsetting than when applied to hot dogs, but now I know there's something worse: Ryan and Simon discussing Matt Rogers's relative girth while a thousand Oklahomans scream their asses off. That's as low as it gets. I would rather see A-Fed dancing in a Speedo in a John Waters movie than go forward with this mess right here.
So, ever the courteous young gentleman, Ryan takes us over to LaToya, who's…just as she was. Simon gasps, "What are you wearing, LaToya?" But on the screen is just the revolving AI logo, so that part of the script has fallen through, and we're live, and so Simon asks if "we have a technical problem," and Ryan makes that weary servant-of-industry joke about "Imagine that!" We hear LaToya's drunken, screeching, awesome laughter, but cannot see her. Simon's all, "This is embarrassing," and then she finally appears. Simon turns to Ryan: "Is she really wearing that?" Ryan does not verbally reply, and then Simon remarks to himself, "Oh, she's drunk." Latoya talks crazy and Simon says more loudly, "They're all drunk!" LaToya addresses Simon with a kind of British accent, "Simon, I have a question for you." Simon: "What are you wearing? You sound drunk." I love Simon Cowell so much.
A little Alabama boy with writing all over his face screams, in a very damn authentic Alabama accent, "Why do you use reverse psychology on Bo?" Simon asks incredulously, "How old are you?" and mentions to Ryan, "That little boy doesn't look happy." Then the crowd starts cheering "Go Bo Go" and the camera slides away from LaToya, and Ryan's like, "Uh, you're doing a great job here, Simon." Simon, still working the Grumpy Old Guy angle, mutters, "Nobody's going to listen to me there anyway," and Ryan laughs out loud because this whole thing is such an amazing kind of fucking bedlam. Suddenly we're back to the little boy, and Simon screams, "I don't use reverse psychology!" This is a lie, but maybe he just calls it something else, like "lift" or "boot" or "health care." Back to the little boy, who…screams back, "Whaaa did yew use reverse sacholidgy awn Bo?" It's hilarious, the pandemonium going on in this tiny dressing room. Thank God for LaToya London. Simon rolls his eyes. "This is working."
Since apparently nothing is ever going to happen with Alabama that isn't a total bloody mess, we head over to Matt Rogers, Ryan screaming, "Save us, Matt! We're counting on you!" He whispers an aside to Simon: "Check out the outfit and the tan." I love it. I love this. This is the best thing. Should have known the best shit would happen in Simon's dressing room. The camera just keeps sweeping the crowd, and finally Matt comes on, and yells, "I'm dressed the same as Simon!" Only it looks like a track suit, Matt, due to your ridiculous disco collar. Matt and a very old man talk about the ladies, and it's weird and awkward, because the guy is a billion years old, and then there's a tiny dog from somewhere, and Matt Rogers kisses the tiny dog. I cannot even describe to you how messed up all of this is, and it just keeps going. I feel like it's a butter commercial, or like, Mentos or Slim Jims or something, and I'm about to be implicated in some way, like a huge plastic crown and pink feather boa will suddenly magically appear on me and I'll be like, "Whaaa?" That's how crazy it is. So then suddenly, after the dog-kissing, they can't talk to Matt again, and Ryan again congratulates Simon on having far and away the worst-produced segment so far. It's awesome. As we fade to the awful thing, Simon and Ryan independently roll their eyes about each other and somehow roll their eyes at each other at the same time, about how poorly that just went. It's great.
Hey, if you're wondering why we're on page ten or whatever and still haven't gotten to anything that matters? Don't bother. The proportions of this recap are to scale.
Now: The Top Three Emotional Moments of the season. There's a guy crying, a young woman crying, a boy screaming, Regina Brooks selling her wedding ring and being pretty and having a lovely speaking voice but making such terrible decisions and losing her mind and morals and ethics so amazingly and so on-camera that I almost leave the room. It makes me really, really sad to have to watch this again. She gets through to Hollywood, postponing her death a bit, and then, thankfully, we don't have to watch the part where she totally sucks. That was Moment Three. Moment Two is this giant fella we haven't ever seen before, who throws himself into the wall inches from that great Goth guy's head, and then shrieks, "Dammit!" His voice is pretty high, so the crowd laughs. Then we watch that one guy's ridiculous mom scream and cry and lose her balance and embarrass her child and nearly lose consciousness and finally fall down on the floor.
Randy and Paul are now in Simon's dressing room. Simon tries to leave -- wouldn't you, honestly? -- and then he and Ryan put their arms around each other, and Simon's hand is doing something back there and Ryan has to grab his wrist and hold it against the table to keep it from doing whatever it was doing. Ryan mentions again how we're going to learn the "shocking truth about Simon," who for his part stares dead-eyed at the camera all through this, and on the way out to commercial he mumbles, "I thought you weren't going to do that part," and Ryan starts trying to button up his shirt for him.
I'm going to miss you most of all, Seacrest.
We remember Leandra Jackson back in the first seconds of this season, and then the FANT ASIA screen opens up to her butchering the National Anthem again, this time in a dress and a new hairdo. The crowd goes wild, lest we forget how large a part abject cruelty plays in this show. Simon cracks a smile, and feels bad about it, and Leandra looks kind of pretty, but she's still about three cards short of a royal flush, so this is mean and stupid. There's a standing ovation, because one thing you will always be able to count on is that retards are always going to be funny. Then, just like at the beginning of the season, her voice summons the credits. Why are there credits? It's not even on the hour yet, we are just getting credits for no reason. Maybe there were some people who just at this moment realized nothing was going to happen on Lost.
The judges finally come into the theatre, and then Bo and Carrie "sharing the stage for the first time [except for every week]," sing "Up Where We Belong." Carrie is wearing a cute fitted jacket, but still with the crunchy hair -- someone on the forums called it "the pleated look," which is awesome -- while Bo looks like a trillion bucks, with those shiny black pants and a half-open french-cuffed shirt. The break in his pants is awesome-looking, because he's wearing black leather shoes that look good with the pants, and the legs are very wide. I think that the pants have a pirate closure. Actually, there's a whole pirate vibe here, because of the way the shirt fits him. Bo looks radical. Carrie starts bouncing almost immediately. They harmonize, proving once and for all what we already knew, that they're not the ones with the harmony problem. I don't remember this song being so boring, but they're singing it well. Bo is -- that outfit is like the best outfit I've seen him in. At the end, they put their arms around each other, and she sings the last word with her head on his chest. It's so sweet. Then they hug. I didn't buy it with the past years, but I so totally believe that Carrie and Bo just adore each other, because they're so much the same and so different, and he's such a perfect big brother and she's such a perfect little sister, that there's no way they don't get along. This is the least competitive competition I've ever seen.
Ryan reminds them of Simon's pronouncements that Carrie's going to both win and outsell all the other Idols, and Clive's offer to make a record with Bo. He calls it "good news," which Anna and I thought was weird at the time, but again: it's all true. Which reminds me: the whole thing about Simon calling Carrie fans "Wal-Mart shoppers"? I think did not mean what you think it meant. What I think he meant was that like the only place that still actually sells CDs at a profit is Wal-Mart, and Carrie's in the demo of what they sell there. It's not a red-state/blue-state superiority thing -- which itself is, again, a dead end, because it's Alabama v. Oklahoma on that count -- it's a financial nuts-and-bolts thing, and it's specific to Wal-Mart business practices and ubiquity and has nothing to do with generalizing about people that shop there except that they buy CDs, and often they are country CDs, because Wal-Mart is in every small town in America, especially towns where people like country music, so the generalization you think he's making about Wal-Mart is actually a generalization you yourself are making about country fans. So chill, please. It's been a long season.
Ryan pulls out the keys to two shiny red Mustangs, which Carrie lunges for -- and it's not cute, just kind of awkward, because hey! Ryan is working, girlie. Bo laughs, and then Carrie drops her set of keys, thereby somewhat derailing the whole Queen for a Day thing that's pivotal to this whole show, but whatever. It's a minor bit and she's in quite a pickle tonight, so she can spaz if she likes. She and Bo laugh, and embrace again, this time about the cars. Bo asks whether anyone wants to go for a ride, and smiles adorably, while Carrie is first wordless and then gets into a shouting match with her mom, down in the crowd.
Oh, yes. Carrie's family looks like a million bucks, totally adorable, all wearing Oscar dresses. It makes me very happy. Then all happiness ends as Ryan introduces the second-longest segment of the night, where we mine exhaustively for footage of one or the other of them. "A Little Bit Country" plays, regrettably, as we see very cute pictures of Bo and Carrie, and there's Seacrestiana about how "She's the girl from the farm, he's the boy in the band," and Bo interviews again the story about the bet with his mom. His mother is so pretty. Carrie drove 7.5 hours to St. Louis, and it's cool to see her poise and personality, offstage, because I really do like this girl a lot, and we didn't see too much pre-finals footage of her beyond that regrettable incident at Mann's. We see her sing goddamned "Independence Day" in a thousand different venues and outfits, and remember Randy saying in her audition that he can't believe she hasn't been discovered before. We hear her awesome rendition of "Alone," but are treated to the ridiculous hair with which she sang it. I'm just happy to hear it again. Freaky. Lots of shots of her performing on the show, simply beautiful and more or less alive.
Bo sings "Whipping Post" onstage at the beginning of the semifinals, and there's a montage of him wearing lots of really good clothes, and some terrible ones. He pissed me off so much with some of those outfits that I completely forgot how the majority of them were awesome. The Squeaky Dashiki Gets the Grease, as Mom always said. My friend Jonathan was here and he started yelling when he saw the dashiki, and I shushed him because I was enjoying seeing the history of Bo. It's cool to watch and remember my actual liking of them growing each week. A little emotional evolution chart. A nice review of the crazy, crazy ways what life can go on you. Again we're teased with the Simon Cowell revelation, and again Simon looks perturbed. Aaaaaand you've officially mentioned it too many times, and I don't care.
But still no, because there's more bad audition footage. God. There's Denton Goth guy I like scaring the hell out of the judges including Gene Simmons, the awful relative of Faux-ni Braxton cracking everybody up and making Mark McGrath stare, the "5.9%" headband guy that sang "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" in all the different wacky voices like Jewel, Robert that dweeby Frink guy I liked so much that confessed he sometimes "bellowed in the projection room," the deluded psychic that ruined "Unchained Melody" and thought the "#10" she saw in her prophetic visions meant she'd go to Hollywood but learned it actually meant she'd be sitting in the tenth chair, forty-four-year-old Maurice Thomas with the googly eyes who thought he could sing just like Brian McKnight but sounded more like something scary and kind of sad, and then the Number One was Leroy Wells. "Can you dig it?"
Anna: Didn't he shoot someone like right after this?
Jacob: Yeah, but I love him regardless. I can't believe Mary Roach wasn't in the top ten. She's totally like the best one.
Anna: You love her so much. Oh, hey, that reminds me…
Jacob: Adam? Oh, he's coming. I can feel it.
Hall and Oates find Leroy to be hilarious, if indeed they can even see the screen clearly, and then Ryan invites us to the summer auditions for the season: Austin, Denver, Memphis, Boston, Atlanta, San Diego, and Chicago. AUSTIN? Oh, reeeeeally… Huh. Interesting.
ADAM PRATT! There's awesome, awesome footage of Adam Pratt, although we miss the part where he accuses Paula of singing with a bobcat, which was the best part of his audition ("…whatever."). So great. Then we remember Dirk singing the Baywatch song while Adam leapt around for him outside. The Dirk thing is so ugly. I hate that it's connected to Adam Pratt. "My only love, sprung from my only hate." In reviewing the footage from Adam's audition, love how Simon seems to delight in Adam the exact same way that I do. Adam Pratt is something special. We zoom in on him saying, w/r/t to his and Dirk's chances at audition, "I think it would be really cool if we were at the finale together." So they've made the letter and not the spirit of Adam's dream "come true" by bringing them together for the finale, and they're sitting right up front. Adam looks great. Dirk looks the same.
Then David Hasselhoff comes running down the aisle and Dirk Sloths out, big-time, and it's very awkward and makes me nervous, and they bond, kind of, but I heard that Hasselhoff sat with them the whole show, and that is awesome. On the act out, Dirk is still out of his tree about it, flailing all over. It makes me very happy, but I wish that they would do something awesome for Adam, too. I guess retards are funnier than dorks, in the final analysis. Although David Hasselhoff is the funniest of all, on that spectrum, so maybe I don't mind so much, this time.
Then comes the last of the skits 'n' bits crap with a really, really long parody of the Corey Clark deal on ABC. Simon keeps making that disingenuous "what is this?" face while Ryan introduces it, and then they almost kiss. Some guy from some show introduces Crime Time Live, an exposé of Simon's bad judgment "that blows the lid off American Idol." I remark to myself that there's no saying this won't rule. They've certainly got the material, if they're going to do this. Steve Edwards, who's associated with the show from way back, is the host of the "show," and he's interviewing Randy about how Simon's been "getting help from a powerful behind the scenes figure that is giving him info" or whatever. Don't expect any of this to make sense. It's picaresque. You have to deal with each little joke on its own. Paula jaws about how "he'd pull up into the studio in clothes that had obviously been bought for him," and Steve asks her whether anyone has ever advised Paula on her wardrobe. Her insulted response leads into a montage of some of her more troubling outfits, but the last one is awesome because it's her making this messed-up rage face while wearing silly clothes, in slo-mo, and the music goes "bommmmm." It's very A Current Affair and quite well done, that.
Randy offers that someone must be scripting Simon's insults, since he doesn't pay attention to the show -- there's footage of times they've had to remind Simon that there's a show going on -- and then a repeat of the angry Paula face above, with Randy looking irritated at Simon's ADD, and Steve asks if anyone's ever helped write Randy's comments. His insulted response leads into a montage of some of his weirder word-sounds. Hey, kids! Parallel structure!
Then there's footage of Randy singing a song with "Dawg" in it a lot, à la the Corey song, and Paula's at the soundboard mixing it and doing these funny, lame dances. It's cute. Steve accuses Randy of possibly doing this for self-promotion, and Randy acts horrified, then talks about how he's got a book coming out. Steve visits a store where they show him several infant tees and a pair of red lacy underwear, and then back on the set of the fake show, there's a screen with a picture of a dog, wearing a helmet, on a skateboard. No reason. Randy drives with Steve in an SUV, like Corey did, and they stalk a donut shop, because Randy's fat.
Then they go to a Greek restaurant, "Maroulis Dine & Dance," and I can't wait for that shit because you know what's going to happen. Constantine welcomes Steve in and then does some kind of Guido Sarducci riff with a giant Shalit mustache, all about Simon touching someone all over, thereby, in a sad but maybe inevitable isomorphic coincidence, touching himself all over, and then he makes those Constantine faces at the camera through his mustache. It's not funny, it's gross. Paula cries, remembering how she learned that someone else was in Simon's life, and how he started pushing her away when she'd drunkenly crawl all over him. Ryan also felt the rejection, but there is not corresponding footage of him kissing Simon. They do have the very excellent fight about their outfits, my favorite thing, and Ryan talks about how he now feels "empty." Back to Randy singing the song, which I believe is called "Dawgtics," which must have taken them just hours to come up with, and he's wearing a t-shirt that says "BUY MY CD," and then suddenly Randy is dressed as both of his own parents. He makes a surprisingly good woman. The parents cry reading the lyrics of the song, not because it's gross like with Corey's parents, but because it's shitty.
We then reveal the shocking and time-wasting truth: Simon talking dirty to himself in the mirror. He's having the affair with himself. Randy, Jessica Sierra, Ryan, and Paula all register their disgust, and Scott in particular is funny: "He couldn't find anybody else?" Mikalah flubs her "I'm not that surprised" line really badly, and then all the Brit producers freak out about the evidence. One of them stuffs the red lace panties in his jacket when nobody's looking. Steve plays the answering machine messages for Nigel and Fuller, and they're horrified, and then they contact William Hung to replace Simon. William Fucking Hung is like the Godwin's Law of this show. His appearance in any segment or advertisement signifies that this was written and taped in one half-hour, at the end of the work day, when the enthusiasm generated by a three-mojito lunch has worn off and everybody's in sugar crash mode, and thus means the end of everything, every time. Back at the Kodak, Ryan thanks Randy and Paula for their great acting, and Simon says that Ryan's own work in the segment was fantastic. Ryan sends us to commercial and then jumps on Cowell, but I don't know what he does to him.
Ryan mentions how they'll all be at some Nascar event, so that's classy, and then this new thing that I hope they keep doing, where the Idols get to perform with their idols, or near as possible, depending on who they could get. This is not only really satisfying on a personal level, seeing them so happy, but also clears up some conspiracy stuff that went on last week, where it was learned that Rascal Flatts and Lynyrd Skynyrd were going to be performing with Bo and Carrie, and the people were all, "So they just booked them at the last second?" Like it proved that the thing was fixed. I was one of those people. But since all Final 12 are getting to do this, with people they've graciously agreed to pretend to idolize, it makes a lot more sense.
Carrie and Rascal Flatts sing that song I like so much, "Bless The Broken Road." I really, really love this song, and it's also exciting for me personally, because I finally remembered where I heard it first -- the end of the first season of good old Dawson's Creek. Here at the Kodak, there's no Jen Lindley, but there is some really lovely guitar and piano accompaniment, very spare, and the guy she's singing with is like the Daniel Baldwin of Dave Coulier. His voice is in that nasally up in his nasal country way and I can't take it, but she sounds fantastic. It's completely my problem, because judged by all country, they do a great job. It annoys me no end, however. There's no bass in the vocals -- he sings higher than she does -- just that whining sound that country fans like. That's why I don't love it. There's this really weird bridge part that is kind of disconcerting, like they're going to start singing some other song, but it's quickly ironed out. Generally, it's very sweet. He really gives her a lot onstage, looking over at her instead of grandstanding like an Idol would, and she's clearly loving singing with them. It's a hell of a lot better seeing it the second time, maybe because I know what's going to happen. It occurs to me that possibly the hell of watching it the first time was partly because I was antsier about the results than I realized.
A-Fed and Anwar, that colorful duo, team up with Kenny G to sing "I Believe I Can Fly." I have some notes on the performance: Kenny G, your hair is not your signature, it's nasty. Even Bolton cut his hair, bitch. Anthony is wearing a black shirt and jacket, and out-singing Anwar by a bomb. Anwar looks fantastic. Only Anwar could mix that much plaid and work it. A-Fed's crotch is really happy to see us again, after so many weeks. I hate this song so much. They harmonize pretty well, although Anwar's screaming has a bit more gain on it, so A-Fed gets shouted down some of the time, and makes his mic buzz trying to compensate. Kenny G is just noise to me.
Then Kenny Wayne Shepard, Constantine, Jessica, and Nadia perform "Walk This Way." Constantine's wearing a shiny new poseuriffic leather jacket and doing all the shit he does that I hate. He even makes the skreeagh sound twice. I wish I could say that he did that just to piss me off, because it would make me respect him more. Jessica is wearing a not very flattering outfit, but rocks on the song. If you put the two of them together and added testicles, they'd be Lita Ford. Nadia shows up and dances totally cute, but sings a bit lower than I like from her, talk-singing, which always makes her much quieter than she should be. It's not artsy-fartsy, and I know I always said that if she'd just given in, she'd have gone farther, but if this is how she performs songs that are NOT artsy-fartsy, I'm glad she didn't. She would've gone home even earlier. Her moves are fantastic, though. She's such a lovely woman. Kenny Wayne and Constantine have a somewhat rock-and-roll moment together that's only mildly disturbing, and that's mostly because of the extreme up-your-nose position of the camera, with both of them looking down at you like it's a rock-out, and then Jessica and Nadia dance and are awesome and sexy. Then it's finally over.
George Benson backs up Nikko and Scott for "On Broadway," and I like George playing the guitar, and I like Nikko, even though he's wearing sunglasses indoors, because he does cool little dances and I like his voice. Then Scott comes out and he's dressed the same as Nikko, which is funny, and he's singing way too low to start with, but then hits a really growly note that makes it better. It's pretty boring, all told, although both of them are good here, and then George sings and scats, and everybody in my living room -- well, me and Anna -- spontaneously starts talking about the movie Pretty Woman, which is more enjoyable than this, and whether George Benson was on the soundtrack, and we started singing the soundtrack of the movie in our heads, scene by scene. "No, that was Go West. Gay white guys. Not George Benson. Fast forward. In your mind!"
Adam Pratt and Dirk cheer for Nikko and George and Scott, and then Vonzell and Billy Preston sing. She's propped up on the piano, but he's wearing a polo and jeans, which kind of throws off the whole Fabulous Baker Boys vibe they're going for. The lights are black and blue so I can't tell if she's wearing a dress or a black top and denim skirt at this time, although later I did get a clear look, and it's a denim skirt, so I don't know what either of them were thinking, clothes-wise. I think this performance bores me for the same reason I don't like Alicia Keys or Norah Jones -- I get why it's good, and yes, I agree that it's good, but it touches nothing in me. It just goes in circles and is all ABABBA, chorus and verse, and but also, are we really that surprised to see Vonzell singing this intimately with an old man? She's probably just picturing her dad.
Lindsey and Mikalah will be singing with Babyface, so this should be nightmarish. They're all three sitting on stools, and Mikalah's voice -- well -- without being exposed to it a whole lot, again, one finds that one has lost a degree of immunity. One, in fact, no longer likes it at all. I sure do like her, though. Lindsey acquits herself well, especially considering nobody should ever sing with Mikalah, because she of course cannot help herself. She sings some soaring runs and they're actually quite beautiful, so that's nice, but I wish I'd heard it before. I wish she had sung like a lady on the show. Just once or twice. Lindsey's a good strong workhorse, and I really like her voice. And look! I can see her vagina!
They did a pretty good job, all told, stools and awkward physical dynamics notwithstanding, and then all breathlessly we get to…Bo Bice! Singing with Lynyrd Skynyrd! Singing "Sweet Home Alabama!" Ryan SCREAMS his intro, because it's very, very exciting. I'm getting kind of choked watching it again, because I haven't seen a person this happy very many times. Not since we all grew up and Christmas stopped being an issue, I mean. I think maybe also that Bo has a greater capacity for joy than most people. It's one of the benefits of being relatively simple.
This is the secret best thing about boys: when they get like this, about a new car or Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it's so contagious that your face can start to hurt; it's like he's just forgotten where the hell he is or what he's doing, so he can just relax into and not worry about it, or this show, or anything else again. Until the end of the song. Until the end of the song, there's nothing but the song, and how this is pretty much like being Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane all at once. Like in some chick-lit book where the movie star guy falls in love with a lowly D-Girl, or like, playing catch with DiMaggio. "Sure, Ms. Streep, I'd love to run lines with you, just as soon as I get these corrections back to Mr. Sorkin." Until the end of the song, he's the luckiest boy in the whole damn world, and it's fucking awesome.
I don't like this song overmuch -- again, "working on your car in the yard" music -- but I certainly don't want it to end. The other Idols come on stage and back him up, and it's pretty much an incredible spectacle indeed. Look! Taylor from Melrose Place! Lisa Rinna! Bet she likes Bo. I heard also that Ben Stiller was here with Christine, and they said they'd voted for Bo like 500 times. How come they're not one of those couples? They've made like eighty movies together, and they are, both separately and communally, pretty awesome. Maybe they stay home a lot. Or maybe nobody can come up with a word for them. "Staylor?" A world that can handle TomKat could use a little Staylor in it, is all I'm saying. Or, like, Jack Black and Kightlinger. How come nobody ever talks about them? 'Sup with the Blightlinger, y'all?
This trip into the simulacrum brought to you by a commercial for So You Think You Can Dance?, which...Well. It's FOX, so who knows if people will watch it, or if it'll even go its whole run. The biz is so darn unpredictable. There's nothing you can count on. Well, it'll suck, we know that, but…oh, hell. You know you're going to watch it. Me too. Fat people dancing. They might as well just make it a channel of its own. Fat people are the new D-list celebrity.
Wait, is this it? I feel like a dog that's finally figured out what V-E-T spells, and I'm wary of getting in the car again. I have aged since this started. Bo's got a nice old-school jacket over his pirate shirt, and looks at ease. Carrie's wearing a dress made of curtains, and a look of supremely deranged nerves. She can barely smile. The winner gets a Marquis Card, which has something to do with aerospace privileges. I never pay attention when they talk about that thing. I still have no idea what it does. Randy tells that they are both definitely winners, and Carrie claps against her wrist with some utter terror happening, and then Paula talks a heap of lies about how she's "loved to root the two of them on," and how she'll be "buying her own tickets" to see them both perform. Carrie is seriously about to have a coronary. Simon congratulates us, America, once again on getting it absolutely right. The Antepenultimate Ten sitting not one yard behind him smile very fucking politely.
Edward the Brit guy is tall and has a good accent, and he hands Ryan the golden envelope as he tells us the worthless information that there have been over 500 million votes this season, helpfully pointing out to the Americans in the crowd that this equals half a billion votes. Ryan steps in between Carrie and Bo, who are holding hands, and Bo starts crying. Carrie still feels like she might die, but I don't care, because there's Bo. Crying.
Seacrest takes forever ripping open the envelope, and he does a number on it, too. Must be that super-secret special glue they use. He announces Carrie's name, and there is utter pandemonium. Bo and Mikalah immediately jump all over Carrie, making way for A-Fed to squeeze her quite tightly. Aww. She is making ridiculous noises as Matt Rogers, in Oklahoma, shrieks over Ryan's heartfelt congratulations. On the FANT ASIA screen, her name is in the same font and surrounded by the same weird golden color as in the credits on Angel. Possibly -- I don't know very much about this show American Idol -- she's won a role on that show. Which was cancelled, and on another network. Probably not. Man, though, I can think of some awesome stories for her appearance on that show, can't you? Remember that rumor that Britney Spears was going to be on Buffy and everybody freaked? That was hilarious. There are total screams from the entire continent for Bo Bice, who whispers something sweet and lovely into her ear. Paula's nearly crying, and Carrie just keeps yelling, "Thank you! Thank you!" Bo raises the roof at the audience so they'll scream louder, and louder, because he is fantastic.
Carrie and Ryan wonder together whether she can possibly sing the song, at this point. The mirrorball starts, and she laughs about how bad this is going to be. It's a very funny, smart little snort of a laugh, and makes me somewhat more okay with her winning, which problem I realized I had about one second after Ryan read her name off the card, namely that I really wanted Bo to win. But let's not take away from Carrie's coronation. Even Bo was like, "She's going to win, because she's the right person to have the title. She's the right kind of thing to win this. I'm okay with it." And he is, and that is beautiful.
She starts out really well, and her scarf dress hides the bouncing somewhat, but she gets a little choky on the second line. She grins, and gets back to being the professional little singer that she is. It's the kind of stress on her voice that I actually like, where it's just all happening, and there's nothing she can do. When she hits the chorus, huge amounts of sparks come shooting out of her name, and it's pretty crazy. Smoke everywhere, like being in the exact middle of a fireworks display. Thousands of people across the country simultaneously make the "Carrie Ruxpin going up in sparks" joke, and we are united.
She waves to the people and pays no attention to the words, and it's only once we get to the quieter part of the song that her voice completely breaks, like in half, but she awesomely covers it with another "Thank you so much!" And then gets back to it. I'm almost overcome with the enormity of it all, and I'm not even there. I can't believe she's holding it together as well as she is. And except for the almost-crying, she sounds as good as ever. It all just adds to it.
Pretty satisfying. Watching it back, I'm pretty happy. We've been leading up to this for so long, I don't think anything other than, like, Judd Harris dropping onstage from the sky and being the surprise winner would have really gotten to me on that basic Kelly/Justin level, and I am maybe a bit more sad for Bo than happy for Carrie, even though he and Simon and I agree that she's the correct choice. It's less about Bo not winning than something else, something about him being the older, cooler choice, and what a cool twist on this whole thing that that would have been. Its unlikelihood makes it delicious, but its unlikelihood also makes it, you know, unlikely. So there you go.
I saw Kelly win, yes, and I nearly flipped my lid because it was so insane, but there's that inevitable reality TV issue where every year it gets you a little less, and also them, because they've seen it before -- like how now when the people get into the Real World house they just immediately and openly start talking about which type they've decided to play -- so like, it'll never be quite as exciting, not even as exciting as they pictured it being when they themselves saw their first AI coronation, but adjusting for inflation, it's moving.
Mikalah and Lindsey embrace, and Vonzell is standing to Carrie, looking fabulous. A bombload of confetti rains down on Marg Helgenberger, and Carrie screams, "Thank you America!" George Huff is wigging out, and seems to be afraid of the confetti. Lindsey and Carrie hug, and Carrie has lost it to the ugly crying gods. She helps her mom onto the stage, and A-Fed stands awkwardly behind her, clapping, torn apart by not wanting to push Carrie out of the way so he can give in to his courtly impulses and help her up, and Bo waves goodbye, and we're done.
Questions: So, like, when's Bo's album coming out? Come on. And will Carrie be titling her album "Love Songs to Martina McBride," or will it be a more subtle homage? Did Adam get home all right? Did Paula get home all right? How will they top this freak show year? Is Janice really leaving America's Top Model? Who will be the past Idol to break into the mainstream, and will they have to fly to a secret Norwegian location to do so? Why didn't Bo ever fucking sing "Brandy"? I asked politely. Is Carrie really more marketable than Bo? Will Mark McGrath come back year? What happened to the flamingo? Who do I need to talk to about the wardrobe for the group sing at the beginning? Will I actually get around to auditioning this summer? Will you?
See you guys year. Thanks for making this so much fun every day of the week. It's been a constant challenge, and a constant joy, being in contact with you here and on the forums, and I'm glad moderating is a year-round job, so we can still check in. Thanks also for writing me, and for everything you've done to help me out, and pick me up when I was looped. This show has some really fantastic fans, which fact made it a hell of a lot more fun to write about. Without your encouragement and the positive feedback to look back on when I needed it, I would have rolled over a long time ago. (Probably around the time Scott didn't get eliminated for the ninetieth time.) Otis Redding fans, I owe you a hug. Thanks for being patient with my complete disinterest in music pre-1991. And anyone who's stuck around for the whole season? You're my Idol.
Seacrest out.