Carrie Underwood! Puppy fat gone, with interest! Good to see Hollywood's not getting to her. She sings this awesome song about this fast-driver lady who hits some black ice and then immediately dedicates her life to Jesus and defensive driving. It's my new favorite!
Brenna goes home and sounds even worse than she did Tuesday, which is funny because usually they sound better. I will miss her as a television personality, but not as a terrible singer, or as a formerly lively person gone lifeless. Heather the Stalker also goes home, still not Mariah Carey, and she mentions goats in some way. Paula laughs at them both for reasons that make sense only to her. And to Simon, who fed her a bunch of nonsense lines apparently before the show so that he could laugh at her on live TV when she repeated them verbatim. It is gorgeous. I'm just glad Katharine's okay. Get with the program, Toots!
Ryan asks all the boys one by one if they made it, like it's not stressful enough, and then sends the albescent David Radford home with his gorgeous mother. I will miss him as an adorable person on TV, but not as a worthless singer or a formerly personality-enhanced performer. We didn't get to see him puke one single time! Sway and Kevin, the two possible home-goers, are subjected to yet more hilarious random talking by Paula, who nearly goes to sleep and then almost crawls under the table and around the studio on her hands and knees, laughing and crying in ragged jags. It's amazing. At one point Ryan actually has to remind the judges that they are live and possibly recording testimony for their eventual competency trials at that very moment. Sway is eliminated, of course, having left the voice I thought I liked somewhere in Hollywood and traded it in for something very uvular and mucosal, like a frog in the back of his throat which in turn contains a frog in its own throat, and so on, and somewhere in there is David Radford, snapping and dimpling terrifically and nearly barfing for ever and ever, amen. We'll miss you, just...not on this show, at all.
And we're live for a full hour. And such an hour! I admit that Wednesday night, I got more and more insanely jealous of Joe R during the hour-of-NAMBLA public service announcement episode. For exactly 24 hours, until this. Now I'm okay!
So Ryan's wearing a complicated black outfit with a white pocket square. The black makes him look more orange than lighter colors do. He tells us that Carrie Underwood is coming, and for some reason I'm looking forward to seeing her. I'm sure that will last about six seconds, but I was like, "Yeah? Carrie?" I guess when a person spends as much time in your living room as she did -- watching each episode multiple times, no less -- you can't help but be kindly disposed toward her. I hope she is happy forever. And that I don't ever have to listen to her sing again in my entire life, because that is not how I roll.
Avril Lavigne's terrifying body double watches as Ryan tells us there were over 42 million votes this week. That is so many votes! Randy's wearing a lovely candy-striped shirt, Paula's doing some kind of Anna Nicole thing and waving to her own face, and Ryan calls Simon "Mr. Cranky himself." I bet that's what he says in the morning as he's bringing in the tray. "And how is Mr. Cranky this morning? I made you crepes." A little paper flower in the OJ. Fuck Simon Cowell for not being grateful for what he has. What could be better than Ryan Seacrest bringing you crepes and calling you "Mr. Cranky"? Paula's out of it and not talking or looking at anything in particular, and Ryan tells Simon not to "start" tonight. I guess due to the fact that Simon asked him last night to please not molest the contestants. Does that really fall under the heading of "attitude"? Because I would have put it under "I will have your ass," and not in the nice way.
Now the group sings "Love The One You're With," which fits the cynical amount of bullcrap going down in the Top 24. I always thought Bo should have done that the night Carrie won. I think the fans would have appreciated that, and it's in his range and vibe. Quickly now: Melissa still dances like a stripper; Taylor still dances like a scary idiot; Heather still has boobs; Brenna still sings and thinks like a duck; Gedeon is still a strange little thing; Paris still sings directly to the camera with little "vote for me" hands in her eyeballs, folded as though in prayer. Bucky hates to dance because of California, Lisa sings into the camera with her eyes wide and then chases it into the audience. Ayla's the only one who's even trying, vocally, wearing a snappy and sexy red dress and ending her line with a cute little fake smile at the end. She sounds great even though she has to move around a lot more than most of the others, due to the choreography. Then Katharine! Rocks! She riffs over the chorus and does a cute little dance with her legs going every which way and is wonderful. Bucky is in hell. Will is at the front of the group, not really registering, and Kellie's cute some more. Kevin is still here? He looks like he wandered in from a studio tour, as usual. Kinnik is also still here, jumping into frame out of nowhere and wearing a really cute outfit, a newsboy, and huge white sneakers. (Andy: "She's the only one that looks famous. Everybody else looks like I went to high school with them." Jacob: "Your high school was not drag queen-friendly." Andy: "Tell me about it." Okay, I admit that I made most of that conversation up.) Will is a good dancer, actually. David Radford is still here? Then there is Mandisa to wrap things up.
Mandisa. Girl, no. I want to be clear here, when I say that Mandisa is a beautiful woman with a wonderful voice. She is a sexy large lady with very awesome hair. But this...99% of dressing yourself is looking great, and the other 1% is personal style. And what has been accomplished here is 0% of a possible 100%. There's no need to say she looks good when she doesn't, just because she's a big girl. Most of the time she looks awesome, and dresses for her body. Which it turns out is...really weird, if you dress it right. She's wearing a long tunic shirt, black, that is tight in the bodice and looks great, then flows voluminously down over her hips and thighs, which are wearing jeans. The lightness of the denim, and the looseness and darkness of the bottom half of the shirt, combine to make her look like a flip book of girls. The top half is sexy and is recognizable as Mandisa, dressed well. The bottom half is some other girl, who is clearly not supposed to be here. It's so weird and so wrong, because these are basic mistakes: if you have big thighs or wide hips, don't pair light bottoms with a dark top. If you have an outsized lower half, compared to your top half, don't wear a shirt that's tight up top and then flows like a tablecloth down across the rest of you. Simply switching the colors, and giving the shirt a consistent hemline further up, and you'd be golden. Instead, you look scary, and you look twice as big as you are. The mantilla she was wearing on Tuesday kind of went too far in the other direction, but still. The shirt, compounding the problem, is supposed to be sleeveless, but in a close-up there are these clear rubber straps holding it up, cutting into her shoulders, which also makes her appear fleshier than she is. This is an assault on the beauty of Mandisa, and I am not on board. Where did this hell come from? This is an outfit that would make almost anyone look bad -- even a chicken-legs person the exact upside-down opposite of Mandisa would look like they had huge thighs -- on color mechanics alone, and then there are the plastic straps, which would look assy on anybody. I think we need to have a word with someone. But she has infectious and powerful joy and her voice is great.
The song is called "Jesus Take The Wheel." Not knowing anything about Carrie Underwood, I very confidently told the moaning millions in my apartment that it would no doubt be a winking, "Sin Wagon," Dixie Chicks kind of Jesus song. Not a song about Jesus literally and figuratively "taking the wheel." ["Oh, Jacob." -- Joe R] I almost immediately apologized for my misconception, and the credibility on the subject of anything that I suddenly lost once the song started. The song is about a woman driving to Cincinnati on Christmas Eve, visiting her parents, with a baby in the back seat. It has been a "long hard year" and she's got a "lot on her mind," and I can only assume, moving forward, that those things are a hefty drug addiction or a reckless sex life. "Before she knew it," the woman -- who has done nothing particularly bad that is explicate in the song -- hits some black ice, and starts spinning out. She sees not only her own life, but the baby's, which I guess didn't take too long, flash before her eyes. She doesn't even have time to cry, she's so scared. What she does have time for, however, is to take her hands off the wheel entirely, and pray. Now, I don't know how to drive, but my understanding is that you steer into the skid, so that you can get traction underneath you. I don't remember throwing your hands in the air and asking Jesus for an assist being an option.
But this lady does, because she "just can't do this all" on her own, and she asks for "one more chance" from Jesus, and also that she be saved from "this road that [she's] on." I get the metaphor, and it's helpful and I think a good one -- when things are going to shit, "hold on and trust God" isn't advice that I would make all that much fun of, because sometimes you don't have options, and it couldn't possibly hurt, not to mention that it might bring you the peace necessary to make the right decision about what to do . However. I would suggest that the time for this epiphany or moment of introspection or whatever is: once you've reached your destination. Not actually while speeding off the road with a baby on board. The kid's like, "Do this shit on your own time, Mom. For now, just turn into the skid. Jesus won't mind." The metaphor breaks down somewhat, is what I'm saying. Maybe it's the sheer amount of detail, the "Cincinnati" and "Christmas Eve" and constant temperature updates, that does it. Carrie is operating on the metaphorical level only, with her eyes shut tight. So in the second verse, it is "still getting colder" in the split second as Jesus -- apparently, since she's opted out -- gets her safely to the shoulder. She sees the baby in the backseat, and the kid's fine, so she breaks into tears and prays some more. She apologizes to Jesus "for the way [she's] been living [her] life," which we don't actually know anything about, because she was just going to see her parents, that's all she was trying to do, and I don't know why that would be a problem. Maybe -- and I can't say this for sure, because the song doesn't really give us enough background to determine whether or not this is true -- maybe the problem is that she is a single parent. That's all I've got.
Carrie throws her hands and arms up all over the place and sings the hell out of the song. As does Melissa, which is funny as hell, because the deal is that Heather's the only one to actually admit that she's seen every episode a hundred times, but you know they all have, and apparently Melissa's even bought Carrie's album. Ryan kisses her and they are cute, and there is applause. Her family or something is there, like this is still very exciting to be here, but I don't know why that would be. If I were giving a speech at my elementary school or something, I certainly wouldn't ask my siblings to come.
Okay, eliminations. Ryan's going to pull the bottom three vote-getters for each side. The women are going first, one after the other, which is a nice change of pace, although it seems to cause Paula to lose whatever semblance of control she ones had. Heather and Brenna seem most worried, actually, and Lisa's doing a fair job of acting scared. Kat is looking right at the camera the entire time, Melissa and Kinnik are in a fine mood, and Mandisa is holding Kinnik's hand. Ryan tells us how Lisa sang and even though it wasn't up to her potential, everybody knew she'd be fine. Ayla smiles hugely and graciously, and sighs when told she's safe. Me too. up is Kat, the other one I really like, and she looks horribly worried. She's safe, so she immediately goes all drama to the point where even Ayla's like, "Damn, girl. You're not the only one here." We're all reminded how Mandisa is the best female performer here, and she smiles beautifully. Taylor looks dead-eyed into the camera, and looks totally scary. Kinnik giggles incessantly, nervous, as Ryan recites the judges' comments, and then nods when told she's in the bottom three, like, "I know, right?" Brenna smiles, already bummed, and traces a tear down her cheek with a finger as she joins Kinnik. That's two. Kellie pretends to be scared, and then looks like Jewel Kilcher a whole lot, and then overacts both her disappointment with the critiques she got, and her relief that she's obviously safe. Paris does the same thing, but less intensely, then they cuddle and giggle cutely. Heather and Melissa hug and tell each other they love each other and will never tell anybody about the time they did too many kamikazes and made out in front of Ace. As though he cares. Heather just wants this whole piece of crap to be over. Melissa doesn't seem all that worried. She shouldn't be, honestly. It's not my thing, the thing she does, and I am bored to death by her, but she did a good job at it. Paris and Kellie maul Melissa some more as Heather goes up to join the line of losers. Ryan explains that "all the ladies on the couch are safe," and that two of the three are going home: Kinnik, Brenna and Heather. Katharine reaches down to pat Paris and Kellie on their golden child heads, and is ignored altogether.
Randy is somewhat surprised that Kinnik's there, not intensely but somewhat, and altogether thinks America basically got it right: these were "not the hot performances this week." Heather and Kinnik are sent back to the couch for the moment, because Brenna got the lowest number of votes of all the women. And that sucks, but it's right, because nobody was ever voting for her based on her singing, they were voting for who she pretended to be, and once she stopped acting like anything in particular, and sang all kinds of bullshitty Up With People nonsense two weeks in a row, it became strikingly obvious that she cannot sing very well. She is a personality, not a celebrity, and that's how it's going to work. And I'm fine with that, because she'll be more fun doing whatever it is that she's going to be doing, because I have no doubt that she is going to be the kind of non-celebrity that we'll be seeing the rest of our lives. I hope that my crossed fingers on that point outweigh those of the rest of the world. Kat (of course, because she's just as affected as Brenna so they're like sisters, and because she won't let tonight go by without demonstrating her intense emotions about anything at all, at every opportunity) and Ryan (of course, because diva) are bummed out. Brenna is, as usual, ridiculously optimistic and nuts. "It's all right, I'm still ready to make some money! I'm ready to make some cash! Clive, call Nigel and let's make some money!" She's so, so awesome. She thanks the fans and tells America to look forward to her album, and to giving her more money. Ryan thinks it's great, the whole thing, and I feel them both, because who doesn't like money? Kellie Pickler? Bo Bice? Give me a fucking break. She poses crazily and awesomely, and sings in a scratchy, weird way, before immediately diving into the duck singing. She looks fantastic, and is having fun. The boys don't really seem interested one way or the other on the balcony; Gedeon likes it, everybody else just kind of claps. The ladies all dance very energetically. She ends on a cute pose and the smile she's had the whole time that is clearly fake, then waves at the crowd for a million years.
Heather hugs Ryan, and they agree that the last few minutes were the worst for her in history. Thanks, Paula! Heather says she's going home to her "goats," and he asks if she has any words for the viewers, or their goats, and she doesn't really, and then she sings "Hero," and it's just as boring and pointless as last night, and her hair is severely crimped, and I do feel bad for her, but it's...not like she was going to win. The Top 12 should have at least a chance, you know? Ryan hugs her and she smiles gorgeously.
Coming back, the boys on the bench, remaining ladies upstairs in the Red Room. David and Kevin stare into space, urping it up. Bucky has...it's not just a ponytail, you realize that? It's shaved from the bottom up to where a baseball cap would be, all the way around, so that the lank hair that is left falls down around his disgusting face even more thinly and dirtily. It's a blue-collar thing, I assume it's sweat-related, but what it actually is, is the updated Nascar little tiny rattail, i.e., a sign that you are gross and probably spit indoors unless specifically asked not to. Ryan lets him know that Simon thinks he lacks "star presence," and Bucky...responds in some way. He's safe, and I think he makes a noise or says a word or something. Not sure. His very lovely, large-hearted smile indicates that he is pleased. He recognizes this as a positive, at least. Ace has a very tight t-shirt on, and his arms are large, and he looks very scared or something. If this were a singing competition, that would make sense, because he sucked terribly last night, but it's not, and he's safe, and Ryan asks if Ace thinks he's in the bottom three, and Ace whispers, bashfully, kind of ridiculously afraid, and says he "hopes" he's not in the bottom three. He's, um, not. Elliott smooshes his weird face into a weirder face and asks Ryan if he really has to "speculate" himself. He admits that he thought he did "okay" and Ryan says the other guys can vouch for his performance, would be surprised if he was in the bottom three; he's safe.
Sway: "Overjoyed" was underwhelming, Simon called it karaoke, Sway's "not too sure" how he did, but America has less trouble figuring it out, and he's in the bottom three. ["The mouth said 'not too sure.' The eyes said 'get this the hell over with.'" -- Joe R] Taylor Hicks has a sneaky, scary intelligence in his eyes, at rest -- like David Cross on Just Shoot Me, or like Primal Fear. It's unnerving. Once he's safe, he twitches and laughs and wiggles and makes stupid noises for a while and everybody just waits for him to finish. David stares at the floor, turning whiter and whiter, and has "no idea" what is going to happen. He's in the bottom three, and walks across to Sway, sickened and resigned. Chris continues to look nicer each week, but still just like a nice mechanic with a nice home life. "I hope America agreed with the judges," he grins, referring to their unabashed and completely earned praise. Terrified and disgusted by the idea that someone might actually get any kind of attention, Taylor reaches into the frame and rubs Chris's head, so the camera pulls back, and then he hugs his stupid self and rocks in the chair for awhile. Gedeon is "unique" and "a funny little thing," and he knows damn well he's not going anywhere. He's not; he smiles gigantically. I'm almost getting used to his bizarre face. Will looks very sad, and it's down to him and Kevin. Duhhhhh. Will sang "Lady" adorably and hilariously, and was "bland" and "loved by 11-year-old girls," and he smiles and rolls his eyes and pretends it's "hard to guess" whether he got lower votes than Kevin. (Hint: No.) Kevin sang "Heard It Through The Grapevine" and it was awful and stupid and Paula loved it because she's a patronizing bastard. Kevin also lies that he has "no idea" if he did better than Will. (Hint: He never, ever will.) Ryan tells him he's in the bottom three, and he nods and stands, being a very strong little soldier, a good little man. It's tough. Why is he here? The bottom three: David, Kevin, and Sway. They are all incredibly tiny.
Randy says he is "shocked" that Sway is there, and that's all he says. Ouch. Yes, but not really. Ryan sends Kevin and Sway to have a seat, because David got the lowest number of votes. Wow. Sway hugs him, Ryan hugs him, and you could not pay me to get that close to someone that looks that close to booting, no matter how cute and nice he is. He's physically shaking. ["I sincerely believed he was going to chunder. So relieved he's out. Poor kid." -- Sars] Ryan asks him what "this whole thing" is like, meaning "how bad does it suck." David answers in a way even Paula would be like, "Huh?" "You don't get to eat as much. Not a lot of sleep either." He says he's happy to be going. Frankly, I'm glad too, and not just because he is bad at singing and great at "singing." Ryan asks him what he'll remember most, and David goes totally 404. "School?" He has no idea. He remembers five seconds from now when he drops dead, but other than that: blank. Ryan's like, "Because it's three hours a day?" There is again awkward silence. Ryan's about to just grab the kid, it's so awful and heartbreaking. David stares at nothing. Silence. Ryan's like, "And these friends you've made on the show?" Anything. Anything. David's like, "Yeah." This marks the second time in this episode that Ryan has held the entire show together with only his finely-manicured hands and a fierce will. It is beautiful and terrible.
David sings, close to tears, but quickly regaining the power of his fake bullshit. Soon enough, he loses himself in the non-music. Kevin and Will snap along behind him, like the Rat Pack, as though they can name more than one of them. David's wonderful, beautiful, amazing mother claps along in the audience. I'll miss her. The girls crowd the stage and surround him, finally. Ayla smiles and is very sweet with him. Kevin keeps snapping the whole damn time, even like after the song is over. Melissa is right up front weeping like Kimberly Caldwell, just like Paris. It gives me a new thing to think about, with Kimberly, because there's camera-whoring, right, and I always assumed that was Caldwell, but now I think I was just being harsh. Because I grew up with girls like Kimberly, and girls like Melissa. Well, near them. And they'd actually cry at the drop of a hat. They liked nothing better than somebody else's sad story so that they could get very, very emotional about it and blow your mind with how sympathetic and hugely emotional and brilliantly soft-hearted they were. Cameras or not. And I think that's what's going on with Melissa. Paris, I'm not so sure. Lisa is very sad and not looking at the camera, but frankly I don't trust her either. They have a precision and a preternatural performing ability that I've only ever seen before up close in the children of Scientologists.
Sway thanks everyone that voted and repeats that it's been a fun ride, hopefully you'll see him "again later on," yadda yadda, and then has to sing "Overjoyed," which is known in the music business as "the shit end of the stick." He's even more uvular and liquid than on Wednesday. Kevin dances along with his neck going all over the place, like he's clapping with his tiny head. Sway's mom looks bummed as heck. He goes on a quick run and there are cheers, but his poor mom looks over it completely. Lisa is so terribly bummed up in the balcony.
Everybody onstage one last time: Brenna makes money gestures and "call me" faces, cutely. Elliott cries, Ace also taking this very badly -- everybody looks pretty bummed except for Taylor, who is bored. Ryan tells the judges that they're grounded and need to behave better than this week. I would fire Paula for this shit. I love her, but that was a nasty display. Thank God for Ryan Seacrest. He smiles grimly at the screen, his apology for tonight no less than crystal-clear. There are memory videos of the four eliminees, which is mostly stuff we've already seen, and is so boring even TiVo is like, not worth it.
Thoughts: The girls, yes. Hopefully Kinnik and Melissa time, because they just don't have the voices. The boys? Kevin should've gone before Sway. Other than that, I'm cool. I no longer have enough hope in me to think that Bucky's going anywhere, and I know Taylor's going to stick around, and I don't know who that leaves. I can't remember any of the other ones.
week: It's all Joe R., all the time, as we finally reach our Top 12!