Look now, here's Nick acting weird in a variety of locations, singing like a lady at the top of his lungs, crawling around in front of the camera like a Xiu Xiu album cover drug-induced Nan Goldin nightmare, mentioning that godawful song about You and You and You one more time, and expressing his desire to "entertain America." You do realize, do you not, that although the French People Like Jerry Lewis joke is passé, we still have the whole Telemundo situation to deal with, where the guy puts on the red wig and freckles or a bee costume, and it's distressing, right? So now I want you to imagine that you live anywhere but here, and you turn on the TV, and you see this unholy fucker running around in shorts and a sweatband. And the newspeople of foreign nations are like, "This just in: Obama did not fix America like we thought. They have all gone monkeyhouse in a way we were not expecting."
Oh Jeez. So he starts out on the stairs in khaki shorts and red sweatbands adorning all fifty years of him, and he's going to -- of course -- be singing the You and You and You song. This song irritates me first of all because give it a rest everybody, but also: not a song. For a musical I guess it counts, because the whole vibe there is about stitching things together like Frankenstein, singing and dancing around and talking and pretending to have conversations about people standing two feet away from you, so I guess in the world of musicals this is a song. But my ears don't belong to that world, and the song makes zero fucking sense to me.
It's like first there is talking about one thing, and then some yelling, and then singing out of nowhere a different song, and quickly switching to a whole other song, and then just actual yelling, and then some talking, and it never comes back around to the first song or succeeding songs at any point, and it's just this sequence of unfortunate events that I can't figure out why it's happening. This song is like a cell phone conversation from somebody you're not that into, but they just lost their job and need to like process, so you're not really paying attention to them, just mm-hmming and wondering why they think you're this close friend that's going to deal with this with them, and the volume goes up and the volume goes down and the stages of grief and whatever, and in part of your head there's just this unceasing tick-tock of wondering if this counts against your minutes or what, and you start to sort of hate the person for calling you. It's like that conversation, but it goes on for forty-seven years and you really have to pee. And that's just the song.
Add Nick to that shit, and I'm about this close to losing my shit forever and ever. I mean, you know what's more unnerving than a drag queen? A drag queen doing that shit while dressed like a dude. That is fucked up to watch. Nick's Dad looks like he's about to pull a gun on everybody for most of it, but then claps and smiles when it's over. I would be so psyched if Nick Mitchell was my kid. I really would, he's awesome. I would date him so fast. But you don't take babies to the dog park and you don't take dogs to the daycare, and still not one goddamn person has explained to me why he is here. Not even a little bit. I love the way my shampoo smells but I'm not having it on the rocks, and nobody eats breakfast in the bathroom. There is a time and a place for everything, I'm saying, including Nick Mitchell, and I wish to know how we got confused about that. I've heard theories but I don't buy them. I honestly think that some production person got fired in some kind of ugly tug-of-war and Nick Mitchell is his Tyler Durden way of dealing with it and we are the ones paying the price.
Simon earns the wrath of Nick's ancient parents -- "I don't know those people," Nick breathlessly jokes -- by praying to God that Nick's journey ends here, on behalf of America. He explains that it was an atrocious, embarrassing, horrific comedy act -- essentially, that we've all been invited to a lovely brunch in a public restroom -- and Nick Mitchell randomly starts yelling and doing karate chops and not actually listening at all, and pretending to be offended by all of this and yelling like a teen mom on Jenny Jones and calling Simon "Sassypants" and I mean, fuck every single second of this. I don't even care. Randy gets the crowd clapping, and tries to explain to him about his vocals, and then sings that song a little bit. Kara's like, "At least you're memorable!" Paula says... Who fucking cares. Who cares about any of this? Simon stares offstage and thinks about killing himself, Nick has the class to look embarrassed for one second, and Ryan's like, "But his voice is good." Nick "owns" that he... Something, or whatever. Simon asks Ryan if he liked it, and Ryan stupidly falls right in his trap, admitting that he liked it in a "different way" than Simon's suggesting, and Simon's like, "You just said you are gay! Your opinion means nothing!" Ryan looks angrily into the camera and then goes, "Simon, Nick is your boyfriend!" Paula and Ryan team up against Simon, talking over his head about how he totally loved the whole thing and is lying about hating it, and then Paula literally babbles like she's gargling, and Simon's like, "You're done."
Because, as usual, the entire point is lost. Which is that whether or not it was entertaining, and I guess it was, or funny or whatever, clownish and stupid and dramatically obtuse, is not the issue. The issue is that there are eleven singers standing on the balcony watching this shit go down and wondering who among their friends is not here so that we can be treated to the uncreative and childish performance art of Nick Mitchell, who has reached the age of thirty-eight without apparently learning a goddamn thing about how to act. I said it before and I will say it again: we didn't need to be educated about the irony of this show. If you honestly think, eight years in, that it's worth pointing out that this show is stupid, if you really think that's a fresh new idea, then you need to get crucial. This show has been stupid for eight years now. The Emperor never claimed to have any clothes.
Then Ryan asks Nick if he's deserving of another spot and Nick starts some other random mentally ill shit with Ryan and Ryan shuts that the fuck down and some random girl in the audience is like, "ANSWER THE QUESTION RYAN DOES HE DESERVE TO ADVANCE" and Ryan just smiles because at his beautiful house there is a beautiful room and in that room there's a beautiful bed and on that bed there's a beautiful pile of money and he's going to roll around in it later like it's a Chuck E. Cheese ballpit. But I don't get paid enough for this shit.
Ryan tries desperately to make small talk with Allison about what their schooling is like, and that goes flaming down the shitter faster and more times than you can imagine. Basically what school is like on the Idol set, for Allison, is a cluster of concepts having to do with a "room." That's all she says, it's like this really boring like villanelle where everything ends with "room" and Ryan can't fucking get her to think or say anything, and finally he's like, "Well, I hope you graduate." He fake-laughs like there's no hard feelings, but if I had to deal with her after getting Nick Mitchell's bullshit all over me, I would punch her sweet little face. What's school like? "Like a room?" Ryan's never been, actually. "You go to this room?" Does it take as many hours as a public school day? "No... I mean yes. I mean it's a room?"
So she gazes vacantly at the camera and explains that she'll be singing "Alone," the song Carrie Underwood won this show with, because that's how dumb she is. Actually, she's so young probably that's why she's doing it: she remembers how awesome that was, and we are her bedroom mirror as she plays that out one more time. She looked like a grownup at her audition, and now she's coming off like the teenager she is. I dunno, I'm looking forward to Randy mentioning how she's 16. Call me psychic, but I feel that will happen in a sec. In the meantime, what a fucking voice this girl has! I don't want to deal with her being stupid for the million weeks, but shit. Her rockout moves are straight-up Kelly Clarkson, and really entertaining to watch, and her voice sounds like magic. This is by far the best performance. Dang it.
We hear about "Single Mom Jesse" and how single she is and what a mom she is, and that's like her whole personality, which I hate especially since we've barely seen her before. She remembers the motherfucking singoff with Frankie, and how even the suggestion that she was a maybe was enough to kick her into gear. I like that. Then she says that she loves the "story" of the song "Bette Davis Eyes." (Speaking of Gwyneth Paltrow, as I often do.) But hey, it's a story? Hang on, I didn't know that. I can't think of more than five words of that song ("All the boys think she's a spy," naturally) but I thought it was about, like, sex. Which I always thought was weird, because Bette Davis's eyes were creepy her entire life and the least attractive thing about her besides her horrible personality, but she was still smokin' back in the day. Is it about cloning? ...No, it's about this awesome gorgeous chick who acts like she's in a movie and destroys boys without giving even a tiny fuck. I like that story too!
It's weird having her so close to the other hard-faced mom with the blue-eyed soul voice, because I already liked her and already found Megan weird before this even started. Jesse is so cute, on the other side of having obviously been through it. She reminds me of Lauren Ambrose, specifically in Can't Hardly Wait -- which is pretty much like saying "Sexuality is a spectrum of behaviors so stop bugging me" -- but her vibe is more like... Who's that girl that was so wonderful in The House Bunny, that was in Superbad? Emma Stone. Love that girl. So just imagine her singing this song and sounding pretty much like Kim Carnes, and doing little moves.
Randy is sad that she was "cool" like Matt B was "cool," and employs some more "box" imagery about being inside it or on top of it or out of it or whatever, because he's found his theme for the night. Jesse's like, "When you say that -- as you always do -- what is it that you are actually looking for? You want 'more'... What, exactly?" God, don't ask him that. He doesn't even know what the fuck he just said and you're going to follow up on it? He yells and tells her to stretch her range of notes -- which yeah, the song does have a small range -- and she digs it, and he explains how they share "the music language" to the three other long-term music industry professionals on the panel. Kara's like, "I like your off-the-shoulder '80s sweater, and I thought you took good risks tonight, even with that range thing."
Mishavonna has the craziest face, I love it. Not loving: her addiction to dressing like Silver at all times. Ladies, cut it out. Feathers for earrings say one thing and one thing only: "My face is for the birds." Although with Mishavonna's face, I don't know what kind of birds. Special ones. She looks like... Not like a Monchichi, but like those teddy bears that have the person face. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like a regular doll, like a baby doll, that is a furry. She looks like the baby of a person-faced furry. I can't really get there with her yet. She looks like Kat McPhee had a baby with Maria Mounounounous and that baby grew up to be on a soap opera playing the mischievous younger sister. She looks like a dwarf in disguise.
Her performance is muscular and intense, powerful and lovely, clearly deliberate... I really like it. I don't think people will necessarily love it, although it makes total sense that it's coming second-to-last because that's exactly where it goes in the drama of the lineup: it's heavy and pretty and intense, and a nice closer before Adam unleashes whatever fresh hell he's got brewing. I do think she's very likeable, though, and I personally love her whole vibe. She's like if just once the male band/female vocalist didn't automatically mean that the girl is crazy, like, that her gravitas was equaled out by her ability to deal with other people. I guess carrying around a name and a face like that, you grow up fast.
The judges tell her she was too intense and solid onstage, the boys didn't really like the song, Randy didn't like how she sang solo a song by a band -- the fuck, Randy? -- and Kara's like, "First of all, that song rocks. Second of all, you are way too put together." That basically she doesn't look like she's having fun, because she's too busy being awesome. Ryan shows up and Mishavonna's all, "No listen, that's true. But I am also crazy to the point of being annoying, so vote for me and I will show you." And speaking of crazy to the point of being annoying, guess who's up .
Adam Lambert, man. I hate him because I hate all Adams except Adam Pratt because all Adams make me type "Adama," every single time. I just did it four times. And I hate him because dude, calm down. You are everything people should and do hate about Broadway. Literally. But really, I love him because he is what you call "inner-directed." There's lots of people who are just so into being themselves, whatever that means, and most of the time that means being just enough of themselves so that people won't murder them, or being what other people have told them are themselves to bring them down from the actual crazy that their actual selves would cause them to be, which is how you get a Danny Noriega.
But Adam Lambert has figured out a way to do this strange thing without restricting it to one weird note; the downside is that when people actually have the wherewithal to do this, it means they are nuts to start with, because a sane person would eventually simmer down or be put on medication. Some artists, though, are so talented and so deeply crazy that the crazy takes them through all the floors of that building like a Wonkavator of crazy into the sky, and they end up someplace new, and I do love that, but I also recognize that it's how you get a Nick Mitchell. Or a Chris Crocker. But so if to this heady mélange you add David Cook's smarmy vision of himself as this millennial artiste -- which is really the best case scenario for where Nate might end up -- you get Adam Lambert. Which is half irritating as fuck, half sort of nightmarishly awesome, and altogether worth watching.
He points out the whole thing about how working in theatre is a mixed bag because on the one hand it's live all the time and you're competing with just the worst people on Earth and not only do you have to watch out for ladders and the aftcastle but you also have to remember that the show must go on no matter how down you are feeling, so even little kids better fucking toughen up and act right because a million kids want your job -- all good things, which I really admire -- but on the other hand, it ruins you for film and TV because you're used to singing to the back row, making faces they can see in the cheap mezzanines, all that, and if you try that shit on camera you are ... Tatiana. So Kara told him he was too dramatic to connect with the song, and he realized he was going to have to fix it. But did he?
...Wow. I don't have the words to codify this experience. It's sort of like getting held down and... snuggled to death... by the boys of Bel Ami. I don't feel overwhelmingly violated? And I can't say I'm not enjoying myself? But it's like this: I am upset deep inside sometimes when a performer has this thing, I don't know what it's called but it's like they have a secret. Like that sneaky, gleeful look that people get when they're on drugs and you're not. I can't handle that in my musicians. I don't like Peter Gabriel, because I feel like there's something he's not telling me, or there's a joke I'm not in on. Björk is like the ghost of a secret with many secrets of its own in a little elf hill, so she's fine. When I was very, very young I hated Tina Turner because I felt like she had a secret. Jason Castro's brother had many secrets. I can't think of any other people on this show with a secret. Clay had no secrets whatsoever. Jessica Sierra had the opposite of secrets. Constantine's whole problem was not enough secrets.
And with Adam, I feel like he is trying to tell us maybe that we are the ones with a secret. Which is so troubling, and made more so by the fact that possibly, he is right. I don't know what my secret is, but I think Adam Lambert does. And I am supremely uncomfortable with that. It's tempting to say that Adam is the gay Constantine, except that fails on several basic levels number one being that nobody in history is gayer than Constantine, and secondly because people responded either really positively or really negatively to Constantine, and my entire response right now is basically a lack of response, and fear for my life. And it occurs to me that they are both theatre people, and maybe there's an explanation for this behavior.
He is not really very attractive, if you take it apart. His skin, I'm going to stop mentioning because enough already, but then there's his stupid girl hair and all the necklaces and the prancing. Oh, Lord, the prancing. But he's definitely a person who is attractive because they are awesome, not because their face is particularly special. And then there's the whole sex thing he's doing, which is basically like an advertisement for this thing called sex, like have you heard about it, which was another main reason I hated Constantine. But there's something balancing it out a little bit. Maybe because he honestly seems like he knows what he's doing, or finds the blatant sex stuff hilarious -- which we know he does -- or just the "you know you've thought about it," kind of offhanded willingness to raise the bar Constantine set so long ago. It's like I always tell my sister: "Sometimes slutty is good, because boys are dumb."
But his voice is good, and can do backflips and your laundry at the same damn time, which is impressive. He has no sense of shame whatsoever, which makes me nervous but serves you well in this kind of game. He seems brilliant and unbearable and up his own ass, which are all attractive qualities. And slutty is, again, good. So I guess... I sort of have a crush on this little performance. Yeah, I gotta say: Put it all together and I am buying it. Or am I? I don't know. It's just ... weird. I'm sorry I keep spinning my wheels here, but I feel weird and crazy.
Adam Lambert just basically did a Normund Gentle skit about dudes literally fucking -- to the tune of "Satisfaction" -- and I find I have no ill will toward him at all: it's "Tainted Love" all over again, but like the person holding the sledgehammer this time actually knows what to do with it.