An attack of hyperactive praise from the judges, crappy sound and a really off-key backup singer make hash of the first three performances; Ryan calls the insanely dressed Randy Jackson "unpopular," says the word "bitch" to Paula, and bitterly tells Blake that sometimes, Simon lies; Hot Mess Paula starts the night tripping over her dog and getting an emergency nose job, and ends it screaming at Blake and telling him how much she loves him...until DAUGHTRY takes the stage, for a concert appearance we'll hopefully never, ever see. Randy is, by the way, dressed like a civil war happening in the Rhythm Nation; also notable: Marlee Matlin is in the audience.
Round One: "You Give Love A Bad Name" versus Jordin's choice, "Fighter" by Xtina. Blake's somewhat fatigued performance is still aggressively weird, but especially off-putting with the sound issues that plague the show's first half-hour; Jordin pulls off a surprisingly deft and powerful "Fighter," given she's too young to even spell the word "adversity." Clothing-wise, Blake looks fantastic in a Chris R-ish jacket and hoodie, while Jordin is shockingly enough wearing a dress over pants. First round goes to Jordin completely, not least because of the nice arc you get from her redeeming her Bon Jovi misfortunes with a rock-adjacent tune. Turns out one of the many emotions she can manufacture is rage. Simon gives the round to Blake, but I heard he lies.
Round Two: Blake's choice, "She Will Be Loved" v. "A Broken Wing." Blake is simultaneously pensive, smarmy, sexy, and argyled out to here, but his voice is not quite as limber as he seems to think it is. Also, the song itself is missable. "Broken Wing" is exactly the same as it always is, although Simon calls Jordin's performance "shrieky." It's not, it's exactly as solid as one might predict, but altogether Round Two is pretty anticlimactic. Which is sad, because Round Three is the coronation song, which sucks less than usual but still sucks. Jordin's emoting goes to a nervous school-play place, but her vocals are an easy match for Blake's wandering-troubadour pinstriped vibe. Round Two goes to Jordin, who is wearing...a different dress over different pants.
Round Three: "This Is My Now," a song about forgetting the hardships you've not actually undergone in order to revel in your personal Now. Blake's Now seems mainly to consist of bouncing and flailing around, rabidly sincere faces, and neon arrows pointing at his biceps and crotch. It's a passable performance but not the song for him, and he's not confident enough to fool you otherwise. Jordin's Now consists of powering through the song as though it were written for her, then breaking down adorably in the last few seconds like a good little winner always does.
Should Win: Jordin Sparks, damn her.
Will Win: Jordin Sparks, bless her heart.
One hundred thousand hopes dashed, and now it's all happening: girl versus guy versus machine. One last chance to vote, one last episode full of pointless filler and one hell of a crappy coronation song. This is the night, this is the audience, this is...the death of culture." I'm paraphrasing. But in the audience there is much cheering and Pounding of Dawgs, and into the Kodak we are welcomed one penultimate time. Other boy/girl fights are mentioned: From Justin to Kelly and on into Bo and Carrie, Taylor and "Kat," and now all of a sudden we got Blake and Jordin. My favorite things. Randy Jackson is dressed like Sergeant Pepper on a bender, bejeweled and bechained and bespoke and befoolish. Paula's hair and outfit once again jostle at the Wearstler elbow, and inside her head it's just a parade of trumpeting crazy. Simon looks exactly the same as he always has and always will: like the swinger cokehead manager at a particularly tony restaurant with $15 martinis and everyone on the waitstaff is five foot even, so they appear to scurry. Ryan calls him "Simon Cleavage," hilariously not, and Paula traces one creepy finger along his low-rise t-shirt and then won't let go of his hand. If the shirt's getting attention, she's on it. Ryan asks what happened, and the short version is, she tripped last night on a Chihuahua named Tulip and busted her nose -- this is not of my invention -- then got crazy fast plastic surgery and now looks exactly the same as she did before. She goes, "Simon says the new nose is sexier," all twisting the knife, and you know Seacrest ain't having it: "So the bitch is okay, we got it." Now, normally I'd say this is Ryan being awkward at an inconvenient time, but no: you mess with the bull, you get the gelled-up, well-manicured, bitchy little horns. Don't insert yourself into that mess, Paula, no matter how many cameras are pointed at it. Simon and Randy are like whoa, but you can't hide the tiny little smile on Simon's face. This has got to be American Idol: the bitterness, the free-flowing alcohol and pretense that everything is normal, that added soupçon of barely contained gay rage mean it's either AI, or Thanksgiving dinner Chez Clifton. And we're months from the holidays! "It's ironic," says Ryan, understating as all get out, "that the town to get press for all the wrong reasons is now famous for the right reasons!" This doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense because the world still doesn't hate Seattle as much as I do, so we must infer he's talking about the tiny little square foot world of this show, in which at some point Seattle did something foul to Ryan Seacrest. Or more specifically, his hair. Now, unless you live in that little box, you might not remember what that was; I sure didn't. Apparently, it rained. That's it! In Seattle, it rained this one time. Amazing. Specifically, in case your disinterest also includes Moments In Seattle Meteorology, it rained in Seattle in September of 2006. An almost unbearably long time ago, notable only because: Eva Avila won Canadian Idol, Mark Foley resigned. Spinach got serious and edged out broccoli for Most Hateful 6-n-Propylthiouracil Vegetable, as did Katie Couric. Meredith Vieira and The CW were born anew, Britney bore her second Spederline; Beyonce released an album named for a toilet and Fergie crapped hers out into one. Justin Timberlake and John Meyer both released albums, bringing white boys back to their rightful place as the bosses of you. The Wicker Man, Hollywoodland, The Black Dahlia, and All the King's Men proved that old America's corpse-raping tendencies still don't seem to produce much of worth; Zach Braff puked up The Last Kiss and cried all the way to irrelevance with another Forkcast soundtrack, and Jackass: Number Two was the best thing all month. This was not an indictment of our generation, but of all of them. Cormac McCarthy's The Road helped Sidney Poitier soothe Oprah's Million Little Bitchslaps and Faulkner Fuckup, and it rained on the AI tryouts for the billionth time running, because it rains in Seattle every second of every day, but it only really rains when it rains on Seacrest. Ryan tells the story of how on Planet West Hollywood, it only rains once every century, and how he was all about to see the rainfall when some cruel children locked him in a storage locker and he didn't get to see it, and it was real sad. Blake demonstrates a sexy perception of spatial relationships describing how the line was like, from here to there. Jordin was...there too. It was so very rainy, and the freaky people were very freaky. Also the songwriting competition people were there too, but nobody cares. You never see the one that gets you. "Two gems," Ryan waxes, emerged "from this Emerald City." In that long-ago past, Blake explains how he's too legit to know what this show actually is, and that he went on a whim, and Ryan lets him in on how the auditions were sucking so bad, but Blake was like: "Welcome to me." Simon agreed. I agreed about a half-hour when I picked his revenue-generating ass out of a crowd of six thousand. Paula loved him, his dad was adorable, some song is playing, Blake "takes risks," "beats the odds," and "steps up"; he doesn't "play it safe" and continues to "take risks." Are you getting this? Blake explains that he didn't know how bad he wanted it until he actually got onstage for the first time, which is kind of awesome but mostly sad. Jordin actually wanted it: when she turned sixteen she didn't worry about cars or driver's licenses, just the fact that she could finally audition for the show. It's Season Six, people, and this is key: there are humans who grew up watching this show. Roll that around in your mouth like a fine, fine wine. Now: spit. Jordin's "infectious smile" and "consistent performances" spanked it and Sparked it, Randy and Paula went nuts, but you know our Jordin: she's so happy to be here. So then "the rain clouds" parted, and "our saga from Seattle" finally had a happy ending. Is it sadder if they actually believe this epic shit? I can't tell. Blake and Jordin agree that they'd never thought they'd be the Top Two in their wildest dreams. I know what they mean! You know how I kinda hate this show? And my boy Joe R had to back me up when I said this was the best season ever, the best Top Six, the best Top Three, the best thing ever? I got reasons. Let's chat, shall we? You're adorable and I love you. We have fun. But I swear on the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ that I will stab the motherfucker who thinks I get this ga-ga about the show and the contestants this year because Blake's hot. It's demeaning in several ways, not the least of which is the implication that my priorities are so screwed up, that my passions are so addictive, that I'm such a fucking dizzy queen that I would go nuts writing about this show just because a boy is cute. I get pretentious on my own steam, thank you very much, and when I write about Blake Lewis it's the Paula space around Blake Lewis that I'm generally writing about. What he represents as a tactical move by this show, which if you haven't noticed is the biggest thing on television for six years running. We learn and talk about cultures by the stories that they tell. The fact that a dying technology like Nielsen television still manages these ratings after six years is phenomenally important, by the fact that the approximate stardom and amateur karaoke super-stardom this show represents is still in some ways the highest accomplishment most Americans can imagine. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it is a thing, and it bears looking at. Each season of this show is a constantly narrowing angle on who, and what, is most important t o us today. But my wanting to kiss Blake Lewis on the mouth has nothing to do with music, or culture, or entertainment, or the year TV changed for good, or how much I hate Baby Boomers, which is generally what I can be found writing about; it has to do with my mouth, which is not anybody's problem but mine. And Blake Lewis's, God willing. There's a coin flip with Blake's face on one side and Jordin's on the other, and that's as good an angle on our culture as you're likely to get from this show. Either way it lands, Jordin's going second, meaning she's going last. The only people that know that are you, me, Ryan, and Jordin. There's wild Briefcase Or No Briefcase music, the coin flips in slo-mo, and this year Ryan actually catches it. Like a girl. Winning Blake asks Jordin if she wants to go first, she doesn't care, so he'll go first then. Dumb. But they hug, and it's very sweet. But what on earth will they be performing? Again, three songs. One is their favorite, one is something they haven't sung on the show, and the last -- barfimously -- will be the winning songwriter song, "This Is My Now." First up is Blake, with a jank sound system, redoing almost note-for-note his performance of "You Give Love A Bad Name" from Bon Jovi week, which I really didn't love the first time around. He does the fake LP bit, in a suit jacket and hoodie from 2004, and in light gray striped pants that do the trick. Well, to be fair I don't really remember the first time he did this that well, because I didn't watch it more than half of one single time, but whatever: he sounds good, he sounds like a machine, he's not loving it, he didn't have to. The usual frenetic moves, the usual awesome parts, a bit of moonwalking...the sound is so terrible tonight that I don't know where the crap ends and the staleness begins, but he's good all the time. The drums are too low, the mic is fine and the dancing around is super sweet, but even with the sound issues it's still just...weird. It's weird. It's not about the voice, and with Blake it barely ever was, but if the music isn't sounding great -- and tomorrow night is everything good -- if the music isn't everything, if he's just high-fiving some dude while we miss out on the experience the audience is having, then this isn't so special. Randy can't talk because of the screaming and the bad mics, but I imagine that he is suggesting that we "check it out." Randy gives him ten out of ten on beatboxing and tells him it was hot, singling out for special honors the "triplets going on." I...assume that has to do with music in some way. Oh, here's something to keep in mind: the judges are talking shit tonight for real about how fabulous everything is. It casts a pall. Even Paula's got a case of the Paulas this week. However, Randy found the singing "just all right" this time. I agree, but it's like...you're reading a magazine, and there's an ad for a color printer, trying to demonstrate for you that X brand color printer is better than Y color printer by providing examples of both. And this means establishing a strange metaworld where this can be demonstrated in a printed document, which one presumes was not printed on either an X or Y brand color printer. So we're not hearing what they're singing, and we can't trust the judges, so our choices are to A) vote with our hearts and memories of past weeks, adjusting for the shittiness of the recording, or B) take what we're being fed and swallow it whole. Not a fan of B, but who ever voted for Final Two based on that night's performances anyway? Jordin, and for fuck's sake Blake, wouldn't be here if we were voting based on their performances ever. We're all working based on the Paula space surrounding them: do you want the most Idolicious Idol ever to grace that stage, or do you want something weird and uncomfortable and new and imperfect? I say Jordin. I want Jordin. I want that to be where we're at; Blake means this show is over. Paula shakes her head and offers to clean Randy's ears out, and shrieks that he did better than he did "at CBS," and gives him a "10+10+10," whatever the heck that means. Simon explains that Blake's not the best singer in the competition, but is the best performer they've ever had on the show. Thus. Phil Stacey's out in the audience, in his fucking uniform, begging for it. Simon notes that the singing was flat in the middle, which it particularly was, but that it was a great performance and he loved it. Which: I hated it, but that doesn't mean Simon and I are breaking up. It just means Simon needs a little help seeing the reasons. "It doesn't matter," he finishes up, because it was Blake's "best" performance three or four weeks ago. Eh, it got the job done. In the audience, Sligh and Phil cheer and clap and are dumb, and Ryan's like, "I think Simon liked it, Paula was talking about the studio that we film the semis in, and Randy...is now unpopular." Or fucking correct, whatever. The booing could be for anything; such is the extraordinary madness of crowds right now. Blake smiles up at the balconies, overjoyed, and grins at Ryan as he keeps talking. Now, the person Ryan laughably calls Blake's "rival," Jordin, is singing a song she hasn't done before on the show. And OMG if it isn't "Fighter," by Xtina. My goodness. Well, here comes the argyle. Christina Aguilera is our Madonna, only talented at singing. Two point oh. You know why I love this song? The lyrics are straight-up Eustace Clarence Scrubb and I love that stuff, always, but the video makes me cry, and here's why. You got butterflies and you got moths. They both start out as something low, and then when it's time, they go away, and they're born again, and they can fly. Some of us are butterflies, some of us are moths. They both soar. And there's so much more power in knowing it and taking that power back. Xtina's a moth, anyone who was hurt before they could bear it is a moth. For a moth, this song is real. Christina's moth music will outlast us all, and she'll be making it long hence, and it's going to be awesome, but I'll love her for this song forever. Jordin's a butterfly. Or will be. But one thing she's always been able to manufacture is feelings, and apparently that includes the moth's holy rage, and her strength. This is one of her best performances, out of a season's worth, and she fucking nails it, sound issues left behind. The band goes crazy with strange sounds, and for once I really do wish I was there. The arrangement sounds a little slow; all the better. Burn in this. It's just "Imagine" again: you can't make this sound real, you can't really swallow the lyrics and what they're telling you after the first time you hear it. Jordin's wearing her usual dress over her pants, in a neat fade of color from light (green?) to black. She looks phenomenal, hunchbacking up there...I love the performance, it's one of the best of the season -- not least because it's from this century, of course -- but it's interesting. Is it real or is it Memorex? When Christina sings the song, it's moth to moth: you get it or not, and it's hard. She's an artist that will open a vein whether she's singing for you or for anybody else, if she wrote it or somebody else did. And you've got to wonder if the power and truth and genuine rage Jordin's bringing to the song is A) an advertisement for X brand color printers, B) something printed on an X brand color printer, or C) something real. I hope it's B. I pray it's B, but it's very convincing. She doesn't drop the face until long after the last note is done; she was born for this. Like literally. Well done. Jordin grins at Randy, asking him to bring it, and all through the theater they're chanting her name. It's "a very interesting show tonight," he explains, "a very interesting night." Because what we have here is "a great entertainer" versus "a great singer." He doesn't find her entertainment factor to be that awesome, but "the voice was brilliant." Which suits the narrative that show is creating, regardless of it being nonsense. Remember those guys that had heart attacks when they saw the Lumiére train coming? Trying asking one of them if they prefer Fincher or Gondry: you'd get this bullshit. The lagging attempt at telling apart two things of the future. I go on and on about Blake because he's more interesting to me, but Jordin's just as much a comment on the show. I type like 70 wpm and you read most of them. My sister Katie graduates high school this week and she types better than that; sometimes on her phone, computer and AIM simultaneously. Watching her have a damn conversation is like reading Snow Crash on crack. Alternately, from Everything Bad Is Good For You, a book that serves the purpose for me that Fear Of Flying served for our mothers: the reason your ten-year-old can program the VCR is not because he memorized all VCR manuals, but because he groks VCR in a way you never will. Watching Randy comprehend Jordin is in some ways more bizarre than watching Simon figure out Blake, and this silly story is the result: Entertainer versus Singer. In years (West Coast v. The South, Plastic South v. Dirty South, Cute Privilege v. Ugly Reality, and so on), the story wasn't that far from the truth. This time it's coming from the other side of a singularity. This time it's Inside The Show perfection v. Outside The Show ambition. And since the judges subsist Inside The Show only, that's not a story they can tell. But it's the story we're hearing, and it means American Idol is a part of things, now, like how The Real World smashed through every screen, and every fourth wall, in its first season. Paula knew that this would be one of the best finales ever, and tells Jordin she was stellar and awesome. Simon applauds her choice of "a younger song," though the mid-bit of the vocals actually was a bit shrieky. The crowd Pavlovs; Simon bitches, but gives round one to Blake. The audience goes wild, and out there are some five-year-olds acting more awesome than adults. Ryan asks Paula if she agrees: "Too tight?" Paula Abdul, a moth still in her cocoon if we've ever seen one, has regrettably not heard the song. Maybe that would make the difference. She calls it "an amazing tie"; Randy repeats that it goes to Blake on "performance" and Jordin on "vocals." Bleh; the vocals were amazing, so was the performance. This story is starting to bore me. Round One to Jordin. Growing up, Blake asked for a drum set every year; his senior year (1998? Nearly ten years ago?) he saw this dude beatboxing, and promised the guy he was going to come back the week beatboxing. Adorable Dad relates how he came home to sounds in the garage and was exasperated: Blake had finally gotten his drums. But it was only Blake, beatboxing. Turning people into machines and machines into people, until you couldn't tell the difference. Until even Dallas Lewis, a man who had a perm back then, a man who clearly loves Blake as much as or more than I do, couldn't tell the difference. Those machine songs. Tonight's song that Blake hasn't performed before will be "She Will Be Loved," one of the lesser lights from Maroon 5's debut Songs About Jane. It's a brilliant choice, in theory: combine the last-five-years power of Blake's best songs with the yearning proto-emo of the Keane thing. If only he...could sing it. If you've ever heard Adam Levine sing live, you know that his falsetto is for shit and that his singing through the nose is egregious outside the studio. Great songwriter, sings unaided like someone getting his ear yanked hard by a nun. Luckily, though, he's a hottie. You can't starve that kind of bone structure off, no matter how hard you try. Having said that, Blake's falsetto is worse. He starts on the edge of the stage, getting all argyle with you, and some...hyperactive pinstriped pants. The voice does get better as he goes on, but either way he's a showman, and it's awesome. The vibe is very Last Song Before The Encore, which is a great choice of tone. It's nice. You can actually see him wonder if he's going to hit the notes, hilariously. There's no sincerity in it, but I don't rate sincerity that high. I kind of loved how Simon called Blake's last Maroon 5 outing "not copycat" when -- 311 love notwithstanding -- Blake's vowels, intonations, phrasing, and pronunciation have always been a total rip-off of Levine anyway. That's not an indictment of Blake, but of Simon: how would he know? "Check it out," says a Mystery Personage, whose name you can guess if you like. It was a great song, a very nice vocal, and Randy gives him some underhanded props on how great it is when he just sings "natural and pure like that." Which serves the narrative we've been force-fed since the beginning: that Blake's all flash and beatboxing, but doesn't have the vocal chops. Problem is, that's at odds with the "entertainer" BS we're also getting force-fed: either the "issue" is a plus or a minus, but not both. Meanwhile, Rick Schroeder's in the audience, so there's that. Paula notes that it was a "big number," that he got into the song and was relaxed. Simon calls it "good" and "safe" but not as good as the first performance, which is true if you're really old, and as usual, Simon's right about everything. He tells Blake he wouldn't have chosen that song in the finals, because it doesn't make that much of an impact, but...whatever, the boos are intense even when he's right. Or wrong and then right, like now. Ryan points out a similarly underhanded fact, which is actually closer to the bone: that Blake's never even seen an American Idol finale, and yet here he is. Sounds fine, actually contributes to Jordin's win. Either you're into this show or not. Blake refers to the "amazing" audience, changing the subject altogether, and Ryan asks if he's nervous. As an interviewer, Ryan's really just got the few comfort zones. Blake assures him that he's fine; he's fine. He grins ridiculously down at his friends while they cheer and Ryan does the numbers; after the break, it's Jordin singing Obligatory Martina McBride. I swear that bitch either has one of Rupert Murdoch's kids locked up somewhere, or America is still in love with its own victimhood. One or the other. Meanwhile, you've got Marlee Matlin in the audience of a singing competition. About which I have nothing to say. At all. J always knew she wanted to sing -- at twelve she did her first real competition, adorable in her braces, and is that American Child Performers or whatever that was called? -- and...her mom is fucking HOT. Have we seen her before? She's luminously beautiful. She's the hottest mom ever on this show, for sure. Anyway, Jordin's been singing since eight months, singing before she could talk, the usual. Jordin explains that she's accomplishing her dream at seventeen and has not a lot to ask for beyond that, which is sweet, and would be sad if this were happening ten years from now, but it's not. She thanks you and me really sweetly and seriously, and like: it's a small dream, but it's a valid one, and I'm very, very proud of her. Aren't you? The point of this show is making you crazy: picking one person and going for it. What if somebody told you that you're allowed to like all of them? They're the Two, Six, Twelve, T wenty-Four best people the show was able to come up with this year. They're pretty good. Plus it's disobedient, which is fun. Or you could hate them both, also fine. Jordin's favorite song from this season, "Broken Wing," is to be sung wearing a kimono kind of a dress over pants. And let's talk about the pants already: are we clear on how that's a bad idea? For whom does that...clothes are a story you tell. I'm trying to imagine a person whose proportions are so terribly warped that this is the most flattering possible option. Over and over like that? Is she secretly a farmer? Is she hiding some kind of glorious secret? No. So why is this? She's wearing a crazy bejeweled gold belt like Conan The Barbarian. Also, this is a pretty song. You know what's just like this song but way better? That Karla Bonoff song "Never Stop Her Heart." You know who should be five thousand times more famous than she is? Karla Bonoff. When the time monsters come and eat the seventies, I hope they leave Karla Bonoff. It'll be enough. She's like Juice Newton and Janis Ian had a wonderful, beautiful, violent poetic baby. I'm not talking about her songwriting, even, which is masterful -- she spent a brief time as the Diane Warren of crossover country -- I'm talking about her actual, no-nonsense albums. On Monday I'm going to check her out on iTunes and her numbers better be way up. Get your ass over there, she's brilliant. Jordin? Perfect, but less so; the emoting goes a little overboard, creating a dress-up vibe. She's like a seventeen-year-old girl singing about spousal abuse. That's what she is. Randy has, counter to nobody, loved her since day one, and thinks she's probably the most talented 17-year-old singer ever seen, though age has nothing to do with it, and that she can "blow," because it was flawless. Blah blah, it was better than the original. Paula tells her she "looks adorable," but because that's usually the death knell, Paula has to make a positive sound like a negative: "But I gotta tell you you're in great vocal voice tonight! You're soaring!" So -- just so we're clear -- in terms of "vocal voice," all cylinders are go. Simon's just like, "Now that was good." Ryan asks her how she's feeling: "All right in this moment?" Fuck yeah. Round Two to Jordin, clearly. Alex Karev sits out in the audience with a little kid and a Jordin sign. He's soooooo awesome! and finally: back-to-back (dumbly) performances of "This Is My Now," written by Seattle songwriters Scott Krippayne and Jeff Peabody, who get a publishing deal with 19 Entertainment. Ryan makes the taller one sit down because, once again, he's short. I kind of like the lyrics, though the song itself is not that awesome. Lots of "I am made of more than my yesterdays" and whatever, moth shorthand, but the song musically is uninteresting, and who cares anyhow because coronation songs are going to be (justly) hated either way and still sell a billion copies. Whatever, Blake's up first. In a third kind of argyle and some very dramatic shoes, singing about how there was a time when he packed his dreams away. The outfit is about three things: biceps one and two in a shiny blue workman's shirt, and a whole lot of crotch action. Work what you've got. This is a song you've heard before and will hear again, that was his Then, this is his Now, et cetera. The song is boring and we knew that was coming, but it's not entirely out of Blake's wheelhouse, in some ways. It's clearly as boring for him as it is for us; he spends the middle point hopping around randomly like something is about to happen. It's not going to, and he knows that. At the end the Chrises cheer and act foolish. There's a seriously issue-tastic voice in the choir antiharmonizing like a monster, in both performances: a strange inconsolable sound like somebody being slowly crushed beneath either their Then or their Now. Randy lies that it's "not the kind of song" that really suits Blake's voice. Not true: Blake's voice is not as good as Jordin's. That's it. He can do Keane, he can do Maroon 5: what is this but more of the same, drowned in sunshiny rainbow treacle. He rocked "Imagine," for fuck's sake. Shut up, Randy. "You did a good job, don't feel that bad about it -- it wasn't great but it was all right." The fix is in. Paula tells him he did a great job and was in great voice, but who listens to her? She's a woman and the only one tainted by pop, except all of them. Simon calls it "all a little odd, to be honest" -- this is the man who praised "You Give Love A Bad Name" speaking -- and asks Blake how he's doing. He's sympathetic to the frustration that a crappy song like that can engender: "It's not a bad song, just not the type you'd sing." Marlee's guy signs to her as Simon says, obviously, that Blake should only be judged on the first two performances, since the last was written for Jordin. And everybody cheers. They joke about how Seattle sucks, and Simon pretends he didn't say that Seattle sucks but really he did say it sucked, and now all four people who won are from Seattle and everybody laughs and whatever. Ryan asks if Blake's "biting his tongue" about Simon's Seattle profiling. Blake doesn't care, Blake lives in the world, Blake pats Ryan sweetly on the back as he works it. Ryan, a little sadly, admits that Blake is out of options at this point and can only sit back and watch Jordin sing the song, then win. Jordin's still nervous in voice and affect, wearing a great black Badgley Mischka dress. She looks amazing. The lights, the cameras, the crowd, the judges: everybody knows it, including her. This is her coronation, one day early. And -- thanks to FOX being idiotic and still pretending TiVo time-shifting isn't the reality -- it might be the only time you see it. She sings the song, with that awful voice in the background still stomping around, and there's a standing ovation, all immediately. Melinda stares up, making a bemusing face: is she angry? No, Melinda Doolittle is not an act. That's Doolittle from a lifetime of teamwork, giving Jordin the thing she's got to give, knowing that if she looks down and sees that strength and intensity coming up at her, it'll put her over the top. And at some point a while back, the sound issues went away. Her voice sounds fucking amazing. Jordin gets overcome in advance at the end, crying over the last line, feeling dumb about it. Winning the season. Everybody in the audience starts crying with the crazy little blonde girl inside them. Andrea made a point of telling me in the Bo year how gigantic it seems when you're actually there, and I believed her then, but damn. The reason I cry whenever I watch TV is because of that, and you've done it too: the enormity. I mean, not here and now, but I recognize the response. Bartlet For America. Michael Scott receiving his gold medal at the Office Olympics. Buffy finally taking down Quentin Travers. Sydney Bristow and "No Man's Woman." Most of every second of Friday Night Lights, "Objects In Space" and "Restless." "Breathe Me." Point is, you've been there: that's where they all are; wherever there's a door about to open. We're not there, but they are, so watching them is weird like watching people pray. It's like Jesus Camp, these people right now: seeing something happen that was always going to happen. Fucking brilliant. Randy tells us nothing at all about how great it was and the bar none of it all, the best ever thing that happened in this world, and down in the audience Constantine's nodding off. Paula remembers her inability to speak coherently -- that one time -- and motions toward Jordin's parents, who are pleased. Simon remembers wondering if she was good enough to make the finals, and takes the opportunity to say publicly now that he was wrong -- is in case we forget, sometimes this is a singing competition -- and the floor should now consider itself wiped with Blake. True, Inside The Show. She cries a bunch more and Ryan's like, "Need a chair?" She agrees that it's overwhelming; out in the audience Kathy Griffin wipes away a tear in what's clearly a subtle but graphically hateful attack on Clay Aiken and all his fans, because she's such an obsessive, unfunny bitch and he's all she can think about. Aren't you so creeped out by people that get obsessed with like one irrelevant celebrity and beat it into the ground forever, like creepy perverts? Man. That Kathy Griffin really needs to get a life and stop obsessing about pointless fucking Clay Aiken, because it's really embarrassing. Everybody in the world chants JORDIN! JORDIN! JORDIN! and Ryan's like, "If you like her, vote for her." They talk for about four hours, he's totally touched and into the whole vibe. It's intense. Recappenstein: "You Give Love A Bad Name," with an awesome bass drum and much running about. "She Will Be Loved," both pensive and smarmy. And then "This Is My Now," with a buncha bouncing around and silliness and boredom for everybody. Then: "Fighter," all angry and awesome and solid; a very nice "Broken Wing"; and "This Is My Now," doing it up right and crying at just the right moment, even during rehearsal. Turns out the other emotion Jordin can manufacture is Her Now. The judges are still wowing that Simon admitted he was wrong one time, because that's all they have to talk about, and then apparently there's stuff going on we wouldn't get to see even if FOX understood TiVo, because DAUGHTRY's setting up onstage for some useless entertaining, so Paula interrupts herself kissing Blake's ass to scream, "CHRIS!" Which was confusing for those of us, you know, out here, because is it so far outside reality that she would scream the wrong name at Blake? Randy says Jordin wins the night and it's a singing competition, okay, and Paula calls them all winners and refers mysteriously to those future events we don't know about, and Simon points out that Blake was great on the first song but that is it. Paula goes on some more about how they're all winners, and Simon finally addresses the camera about it, while Paula continues to babble. Everything in its right place.