Remember? Remember Witch Baby? Remember Jordan doing the Kid N Play? Remember Karen Rodriguez of many ages? Remember Casey Abrams and his tummy? Remember Durbin crying and crying and crying? Remember Randy Jackson calling everybody baby? And that chair that went flying? Remember Tourette's and Asperger's? Remember Brett's hair-shaking weirdness? Remember the feather in Steven Tyler's hair? Remember Jacob Lusk? Remember? Remember?
Well, forget all that. You no longer have to care about any of that. The Semifinals are ending and a new life has begun. Out in the audience they have signs for Peaches; up on stage he's excited because there will be twists and turns and the biggest cut ever at this stage of the game: We will have America-Decided on our five Guys and five Ladies, and then the Judgery will fix our wagon by saving some number of more people.
I don't care to list the Top 24 again, and frankly I have goddamn nothing to say about them at this point, except that watching the wind slowly leak out of Junebug's sails has been the greatest part of the last week. He's like Oz the Great and Terrible, only it's just like a sweet little terrified kid back there behind the curtain. A little weird guy with big dreams and tiny silly glasses. Also, I still can't believe Scotty and Robbie are the crowd favorites, or that Paul McDonald -- wearing once again that awful white jacket with the big acrylic roses on it -- exists.
Ugly Jacket: "You know what's easier than pretending to have a personality? Just going ahead and having one."
EXPLAIN IT TO ME
Jackson: "Let me try to explain what is going to happen tonight."
(Immediately adrift in a seaweed tangle of words with no way out. Those are pearls that were his eyes, etc.)
Seacrest: "Jennifer, can you finish up explaining it for Randy? By which I mean, can you explain it?"
Lopez: "No. Wait, yes."
(But no.)
Seacrest: "Who sucked more, the boys or the girls?"
(The girls.)
Judgery: "The producers said they would hurt us if we answered this question. The deck certainly isn't stacked, if that's what you're suggesting!"
Seacrest, verbatim: "After the break: Drama like you've never seen before is about to unfold on this stage. Live."
After the break: This does not occur.
AFTER THE BREAK
We just recap what we already recapped, and it's super annoying. Who are these people that only watch the results show and need two hours of remembering?
Hypothetical Priorities: "The part I hate about American Idol is the singing part. I just wish we could talk to Randy Jackson more and get more insight into what he's all about. He likes having the same conversations over and over, just like me."
We're certainly not going to revisit. Tim was awful; Robbie sang the dead puppies song; Stefano is growing on me or else who is Stefano, depending; Steven Tyler spoke just absolute nonsense the whole fucking time; not even the Judges can believe Casey exists.
Prediction: Scotty and Robbie are safe, based on little-girl hotness. Casey and Lusk based on whatever, "talent." Jovany and Stefano will face off, and Jordan is straight-up out of here. Still with no idea why, or how delicious it was to watch him fuck up so bad on Tuesday. Which leaves Durbin and Brett looking at the weirdness spot... I just realized I can't win here. No more predicting.
MEET THE FEEBLE
Seacrest: "Brett, did you sleep last night?"
Brett: "Yes! In a bower of cowslips and foxgloves, with a sheet of spun gossamer. Slumberland is a world of delights. Santa Claus and the Candy Kid!"
Seacrest: "Mmkay. Stefano, can you give us some insight into the emotional status of yourself and your fellow competitors, in a succinct and comprehensible fashion?"
Stefano: "I put the lime in the coconut! Drank 'em both up!"
Seacrest: "So: No?"
Stefano: "Emptiness is loneliness and loneliness is cleanliness and cleanliness is godliness and God is empty! Just like me!"
Old McDonald: (Looks gross; smells like urine.)
Seacrest: "Casey, you are sexy to the ladies."
Casey: "Great. That's great, Ryan."
BUT REALLY ALL I NEED IS TEAM SEACREST ON MY SIDE
Everybody tells their Greatest Moment. None of the Moments are that Great. Brett becomes more and more awkward as life goes on for him. Everybody, also, is much more awkward now than they were a second ago. Stop them from talking. Stop this!
Everybody: (They do not stop. They do keep going.)
Casey: "I'm a lumberjack." (Nice. NICE.)
Brett: (More incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo about how he's different from other foods.)
DIM THE LIGHTS/LOCK 'EM DOORS
Seacrest: "Robbie and Scotty, you are the same dude but from opposite universes. Here is a knife. You know what to do."
(They begin circling each other for the future of House Harkonnen.)
Lopez, from the sidelines: "Be who you are, but also not who you are."
(Uppercut. Feint and block. A nick along the bridge of a nose. Sweat dripping.)
Lopez: "Scotty, you have the goods. Robbie, you tell a story. Of being in eleventh grade."
(They talk. Stop them from talking! This must not go on! Two hours of them talking? No! Once Rachel Zevita opens that trap of hers the whole thing is going to hell.)
Seacrest: "Scotty, you are obviously the first person in the Top 10. You appeal to young girls and old creeps, and that's all that watches this show now. Well done."
(Scott combines a twink body and cute face and bodacious ass with a deep low voice/accent with a cowboy sensibility with a wily glint in his eye with a complete willingness to whore himself out. Ennis Delmar and Jack Twist, but all at the same time: The ultimate attainable/unattainable combination -- if you're a little girl, or an old creep, or a creepy girl -- flipping back and forth so fast it all blurs into one deadly blur of highly suspect 17-year-old American sex imagery.)
Seacrest: "Robbie? You were not great, and are not in the Top 10."
(Robbie is completely without qualities of any kind.)
Seacrest: "Junebug, Jordan and Jovany, come to the Seal. You three are the most annoying guys in the Top 24, and two of you murdered a little fat boy."
(Moment of silence as we bless the broken road that brought Jacee to us, and the ditch alongside it in which his lifeless body was later found.)
Seacrest: "Junebug, fucking stop crying. Nothing's even happened yet. So much drama."
(So much drama.)
Seacrest: "Jordan, you're just the worst. What would you do differently?"
Jordan: "I would have sung a different song, but still be totally unctuous."
LIKE WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
Seacrest: "Jovany, you look like anime of Wolverine and you have no hope."
Jovany: "America and Jesus. I'm just happy to be here, like Lee DeWyze."
Dumb Audience: "Yay!"
Seacrest: "Jordan and Junebug, you're fired. Jovany, stand right here for a second. Just kidding, you are also cut."
Somebody is playing with a lighter offstage and accidentally lights it, activating Jordan's fear of fire, so he goes on a rampage. Scotty is still the only person, and four guys are cut. Which is half the guys decided, so one more of the boys that are left will be cut. What a horrible way to do that! Well done. Paul, Brett, Casey, Lusk and Stefano: One will be cut.
My wish is that it will be Paul because he is grosssss, but I think it will be Brett, because who are these people voting for Brett? The well-meaning San Francisco just-in-case people that keep adding letters to LGBTQRSTUV all the time. Dianic Wiccans and Radical Faeries. That decisive Fetch and Changeling demographic who were switched at birth with human babies. Forest wizards, bakery elves, spirits of the theatre. Brownies. After a long day of doing chores and fixing little things around the house, all unseen, you just want to curl up with a nice left-out bowl of milk and see what Brett is up to. Text some votes his way, with those nimble brownie fingers.
SOME GIRLS
Remember? They sang. Old Lauren using her legal contacts and a push-up bra to fight environmental illness and big business. Karen getting her polyglot freak on. Haley's amazing face tik-tokking away. Zevita and Ashthon and Julie Z doing an impressive triple swandive. Thia Megia and Pia in a Kia.
Seacrest: "You guys are dressed pretty nuts tonight. Can you women be trusted not to constantly undercut each other?"
Somebody: "We have prayed together, and fallen in love, and been roommates. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked."
Naima: "my name means/ exotic flower."
Old Lauren: "I saw Bette Midler at Madison Square Garden in 1983 after I graduated from Wharton. It was a little present to myself. That's the same year I went on the Pill and stopped going to Est."
(All the Pretty Girls demonstrate an authentic gratitude that becomes a Sincerity Bee that becomes inviting the secret Danny Gokey parts of each of them out to play.)
Rachel: "To be killed off at this juncture would undo all the healing that this experience has given me, and I'll start pulling my eyebrows out again. Witch Babies don't cry."
Julie Z: (Makes a joke about how she could ever be humbled.)
Old Lauren: (Threatens us with physical violence.)
ENOUGH, STARRING JENNIFER LOPEZ
Seacrest: "Pia and Lauren Alaina, come down here. Pia, you managed to be pretty good from out of nowhere. I still don't know who you are."
Pia: "Me neither, except I am super condescending. Let's talk about how great Lauren is, and how young she is."
Lauren: "I am not wearing enough earrings. Not enough crap is hanging from this head of mine."
Seacrest: "Lauren, Kelly Clarkson compared you to Kelly Pickler."
Lauren: (Obliges by continuing to act like Kelly Pickler.)
Seacrest: "Lauren, you are in the Top 10." (Yay!) "Go sit to Scotty, because you are essentially the same person for the purposes of this monkey show. And Pia, you are also in the Top 10. Thanks for justifying how pretty you are."
STEVEN TYLER IS MOKEY THE LESBIAN FRAGGLE
Sandinista and Julie Z join Seacrest on the Seal. He takes Julie to task for sucking last night, but has nothing harsh to say to Ta-Tynisa.
Julie Z: "I have let down America. I wish they had let me play my guitar."
Tyler: "Julie, I love that you talked yourself down. That's beautiful. Nothing better than a pretty girl admitting she's powerless."
Ta-Tynisa is cut. Julie Z is cut, but totally has a shot at Wild Card because they've been selling her to us since January. Six girls left to find out about. Kendra, Ashthon and Karen join Seacrest on the Seal.
Seacrest: "Kendra, there is something dark within you."
Kendra: "Let me show you it."
Seacrest: "Ashthon, you were super gross and wearing a denim corset. Are you a diva?"
Ashthon: (Blabbers some more; is the worst.)
Karen: (Cheers from the crowd, which make her giggle. Tonight she is about 24.)
Ashthon is cut, thank God. Karen goes through, of course. Kendra is cut? I suppose Kendra is cut. Good. Clutch pig I'm gonna miss Rachel, though.
STEVEN TYLER IS CARLES
Tim, Casey and Lusk. I think that Tim will be cut based on the fact that I keep forgetting he exists. Seacrest talks about them for awhile, the crowd cheers for Casey, he does sixteen adorable things that make Seacrest giggle, and then he turns the guns on Tim for pandering and singing a horrible song.
Tyler: "You should have chosen a better song. Like Jason Mraz or John Meyer, something a little more 'alt.'"
Because what could be more 'alt' than Rob Thomas but the two people most like Rob Thomas in this world. Steven Tyler, sometimes I feel sorry for him. The whole thing flips over and I wonder what it's like when he's alone in a hotel room in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to be cool.
Lusk goes through, everybody screams. Casey and Tim, only one of you goes through. Casey starts crying immediately, because obviously Tim is getting cut. He mostly hugs girls. Tim mostly gets hugged by Brett.
MORE GIRLS
Thia, Old Lauren and Naima. Naima was, as usual, totally impressive. Thia was technically great and gave us a "moment," while Jackson compared her to Michael Jackson. She still has no response to that praise, because it's such an odd thing to say.
Seacrest: "Lauren Turner, you wandered onto this show after being separated from your tour group. It's been a good run. Only one of you three ladies are in the Top 10. Naima, actually, you are cut. But you're assured a Wild Card. Now, Lauren, you had no chance at any time, and we both know that. Thia, you are in the Top 10. Are you all right? Do you need anything?"
(Pimp chalice.)
IT GETS BETTER
Seacrest: "This is so hard. Just kidding. Brett and Paul, you are fighting for the forces of weirdness. Brett, you hug everybody so much. We've noticed, don't get me twisted. But how badly do you want to be here?"
Brett: (Crazy talk; gender stuff.)
Seacrest: "I feel you, girl. Let's talk about Paul. [Crowd screaming.] You smell like urine, what is that like? Because one of you gets through, it's going to be Old McDonald. Brett, we've done our due diligence getting you this far because of how It Gets Better, but you're free to go because actually It Hasn't Yet."
So to review: Old McDonald, Casey and Lusk, Karen and Pia, Thia and Lauren and Scotty.
IT GETS UGLY
Seacrest: "Haley and Rachel?"
Crowd: (Virtual silence.)
Seacrest: "Haley, you seem like a funny nice girl and you have an insane amount of face, and also you sang Alicia Keys. The judges turned on you, but not as much as they did Rachel Zevita, because Rachel did something creative and cool, which is the opposite of Alicia Keys and also this show. Your final Top 10 girl is Haley."
Rachel: (Takes off her earrings, grabs her Ouija board and her Gormenghast fan fiction. Wanders away into the woods of lonesomeness. Climbs on her thestral, flies into the night.)
Durbin and Stefano, both of whom I would have thought were safe, but suddenly there's only one spot left. Hmm. Durbin is beautiful but a handful, Stefano is cute but boring. They hold hands and cry... And then Ryan puts Durbin through.
Junebug: Has gone through the stages of grief and ended up at the Stage This Is Bullshit.
(I still can't believe Steven Tyler said 'alt.' That's sad like Carrie. Like Betty Buckley in Carrie trying to get Sissy Spacek to just chill out and menstruate already.)
Seacrest: "The reason this shit is two hours long is that now the half of the people we just totally burned are going to be humiliated by dancing for their Wild Card one more time."
(Can I just say I love how they are doing it this year. Semifinals were always so hard to give a shit about, because you knew them enough to be kind of interested in the singing, but not so much that you cared who lived or died. Let's just get to the meat already.)
BONUS WILD CARD EPISODE
Jackson: "Far be it from me to question the wisdom of America..."
Seacrest: "-- Fair enough."
ASHTHON WILL NOT BE GOING
(The Judgery will pick three of each gender from the 14 Losers to sing a song of their own choice, having previously rehearsed for this possibility. We're actually doing this. Fucking six people are going to sing and get the full treatment.)
Ashthon: "Characteristically, I will be singing 'And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going.' I have no sense of myself or of reality, and exist purely on the mimetic level. What you call clichés I simply call life."
(Sings a meandering weird yelling song without a song in it. Gets right up in the Judges' faces like a desperate mess. Points at them in the face. It sounds like every other person who has ever sung this song, because Ashthon has never once understood or listened to what the Judges were saying, because she is full of it.)
Judgery: "That was offensive because we told you not to be all bullshitty, and now here you are."
(Each of them is hateful to her, in his or her own way, because she is remarkably obnoxious. I don't believe in giving a pass for obnoxious or horrible behavior just because it's 'diva.' What you're saying with that word is that women deserve less accountability and thus less respect than men, because acting like a mental-case asshole is something women can't control. Guess what: Not true.)
(She is totally going to get her Wild Card, isn't she. Damn it.)
STEFANO GILDS THE LILY OF HIS PASSION
Stefano: "I will be singing some song called 'I Need You Now,' as though I am having an emotional breakdown. Check out my cute face making all these cute faces. The great thing about me is that I'm not Robbie Rosen."
(It is actually a fair bid. He keeps surprising me. Durbin is, of course, shitting it and crying all over the place, because when is Durbin not crying all over the place. James Durbin would be a lot cooler if, and this is just my opinion, instead of crying he could move objects with his mind.)
Judgery: "You sorta totally nailed that shit, actually. Stefano, you did really good. Things are looking good. You are good-looking and good-singing. Get a personality, okay?"
(Seacrest reveals that he totally loves Stefano. Jackson says some shit that sounds like it was ghost-written by Mary J. Blige, which is like so ironic because she talks like the neverending roil of what's caught in your spam filter, and yet he still fucked it up. Lopez reveals that this is the hardest part of the entire competition, for her personally.)
Tyler, verbatim: "You gilded the lily of your own passion."
(That phrase does not mean what you think it means.)
THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF PISTHETAIROS & EUELPIDES
(Brett and Rachel, in separate chairs on separate continents with separate secrets, having their own private Kafka experiences from which they cannot seem to awake. Rachel is visited by seemings. Brett sees time in Cloudcuckooland speed up beyond his comprehension; the little lives and dotings of its inmates flashing by before his eyes in quickening flashes. To Rachel is revealed the dark fates of those remaining in the competition.)
THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON THE MIND OF THE CHANTARELLE MUSHROOM
Four more left to sing. Steven calls up Kendra Chantelle, because of course she is his favorite. They are the same lady.
Kendra Chantelle: "I will be singing 'Georgia On My Mind.' I only have one setting, which is sultry. I am deeply inauthentic and undoubtedly a mean girlfriend."
(She does amazing things at the end of the song, setting off the entire crowd and Judgery. Ryan still isn't buying her crap.)
BACK IN THE ATMOSPHERE WITH DROPS OF JOVANY IN OUR HAIR
J. Lo calls up Jovany, so we can take one more spin through the maudlin meatpacking district of his mind. He will be singing a Jon Secada song called "Angel," which quote he "dedicated to the one [I] once loved." It continues in this vein for a while, and it is totally specific to Jovany and has no meaning to anybody that is not Jovany.
He switches back and forth between Spanish and English, yelling all the time. Very original.
If we have to deal with this dumbass for one more week I will throw down. I don't even have anything against him personally, I just think the whole thing is stupid. His whole deal.
Lopez, verbatim: "You've done all you can do."
Seacrest: "Yeah, ya burnt."
NAIMA KEEPING IT BASICALLY REAL
Tyler calls Naima "[his] own little Porgy & Bess rolled into one," and but before she sings Ryan gets rid of Sandinista, Old Lauren, Julie Z and Rachel Zevita forever. Without Julie Z and Rachel, I don't really have a dog in this fight.
I like Naima a lot and I like looking at her much of the time, but she's kind of a fake. Not like a fake person or a bad person, but like a... Like in Breakfast At Tiffany's, she's a phony but at least she's a real phony.
Naima sings her song about how for all we know, we might not meet again. It is gorgeous; Adorable Michael Orland is hell on the keys; the song is eleven minutes long. Eleventy-thousand minutes of Naima singing about breakup sex, then breaking into tears.
ROBBIE SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST ROSEN
The last-shot Wild Card of the boys is Robbie, which means we'll never see Brett or Tim or Junebug or fucking Jordan ever again. Brett hugs everybody, of course, and Junebug is all over Tim, and finally Ryan has to just get out his hook for old Brett, and it's cute, but not so cute that it's not pretty much a total relief that Brett is going back to Ferngully.
Robbie hugs everybody until Ryan tells him to get his shit on the road and he sings once again "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word (Breathy Fake Orgasm Strummy-Strum Fixup Mix)." Jackson has feelings about Robbie that I don't really understand, and the song goes on for a million years.
I guess if you like the singing of this show, this is a really neat idea for the second hour, like a surprise episode of what's about to be happening every week. Way better than the Judges' Save thing from the Ellen days, which just seemed like a distraction on top of everything that was already happening. Needless pressure on us all.
Okay, these are the Wild Card options: Naima, Jovany, Kendra, Stefano and Robbie, and then Ashthon just kind of zooming around the stage with no idea what the fuck is going on.
Predictions? I think Naima and Stefano are the most talented ones, but Kendra is the whole package, which they like. I don't ever want to see Robbie or Ashthon again, or Jovany. I don't give a crap about Kendra one way or the other, but obviously Naima should be the lady that stays. I'm a bit nervous.
Judgery: "We know that it's live TV and that you get crazy about this kind of thing, but we need a minute."
Seacrest: "Fine, let's watch J. Lo's stupid video while you do that."
J. LO'S STUPID VIDEO
Is autotuned, with a very annoying man yakking, in a dance club version of The Cell. Which I just remembered she was in! She was great in that movie. And now she has turned it into a club song.
If I were in a club I would have to agree that this song is hot, but here in my living room where I'm not drunk out of my face, it's just kind of thump-thumpy and gay-house sounding, like the permanent 1998 that those clubs always are. That J. Lo has become.
It's the kind of song you immediately imagine hearing outside the door, thumping against the relative quiet and soft landing place of the bathroom, and wondering if you're even making good choices for the night. What the sober you would say, or the ghost of your grandmother.
It sounds like that "Just Dance" point in the evening where the infinite possibility turns suddenly into the feeling that maybe everybody exploits everybody else all the time, and nobody told you. Everybody starts looking cokehead vampiric.
When you realize either it's just you, and you need to pull out of the nosedive, or you're right, and you need to get the fuck out of there immediately.
THE BAD NEWS
Who joins the Top 10 in their little stools? Fucking Ashthon. The second is Stefano... And the third is Naima! That's awesome. And goodbye to Robbie, Kendra and Jovany. Or whatever. They did that in a funny way where Seacrest was really excited to keep pointing out that "we" didn't know how many Wild Cards we were getting, so the idea that the Top 10 would become 12 was never true, or maybe it was, which is nice because it gives you the feeling that the Judges could have just said no thanks to all of them, or picked 14 instead of 13. That's nice. It's also total bullshit, of course, because media buys and ads for this show are big money and they can't just monkey around with the season because the entire slate is built around the season, but whatever. Sense of wonder.
So there it was: Five hours of this show, in one week. Are you as tired as I am?