By Joe R
Jennifer Lopez is on hand, and this week we're pretending that she makes Latin music, so that's the theme. She's really helpful if you're having trouble pronouncing "Conga." She's also really pretty, and I kind of like her, but don't tell anybody. Melinda starts off with "Sway" and is her usual brilliant-if-a-bit-old-fashioned self, and since the false modesty about her voice has gotten a little offensive, she finds something else to be humble about: her lack of sexiness. I salute you, Melinda! Simon finally gets to dislike a performance of hers ("a bit lazy, a bit wooden"), which hopefully keeps her voting base from getting complacent, if nothing else. LaKisha performs "Conga," which isn't so much a song as it is a series of steel drum interludes built around a tongue twister, and that's essentially what Simon tells her. Also, she continues her streak of ignoring mentor advice and persists in pronouncing the title of the song like a gringo. Chris Richardson performs "Smooth," made famous by that noted Latino superstar Rob Thomas. And you know how much I love Chris, but he's...not good. Disinterested karaoke, is what it is. The judges, however, are very forgiving. Haley sings "Turn the Beat Around" -- again, not so much a song that you sing -- and is aided in practice by some fake-spontaneous help from Blake. On stage, she gets confused and employs all her sex kitten tools at once -- hot pants! Stilettos! Bright red lipstick to beat the band! -- and essentially goes into overload. The singing is wretched, and I don't usually have much of a problem with her singing. She HAS to go home this week. Phil opts for "Maria, Maria" and it's droning and unending. He also stupidly over-emphasizes the fact that Carlos Santana isn't there. Can't Donald Trump show up and shockingly get rid of both him and Haley this week? Jordin sings "The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You," and...she looks disinterested like Chris did. My two favorites seem as bored with Latin Week as I am. Simon comes down on her hard for it. Blake chooses the trés suck-uppy "I Need To Know" by J-Lo's Skeletal Frame Of A Husband. I know the song, I hate the song, I've been known to be underwhlemed by the Blake Lewis Experience, and yet...he's totally freaking awesome. Impressive, compelling, and totally hot despite the fact that he's dressed like Panama Jack. The judges and I agree: best of the night. Finally, Sanjaya gets the pimp spot, which is delicious and sure to drive this already-batty One Nation Under Sanjaya even crazier. He sings "Bésame Mucho" and he's dressed like his own evil twin, but he's actually pretty good. Judging by the extremely low bar he's set for himself, he's pretty really good. Which means this is the week he'll go home. I'm totally kidding, he's never going home. SANJAYA IS FOR THE CHILDREN!
So when I first heard that Jennifer Lopez was going to be a guest mentor this season, I started to wonder what kind of theme week she'd bring with her. I mean, she's not much of a singer anyway, so you figure she'd be there repping a genre. So...dance music? That was my best guess. That or the now-customary "music of the current decade" week, which would have been fun, if only to see Sanjaya sing one of Fergie's many songs about the joys of spelling. Honestly, among my top five potential themes for J.Lo week, "Latin music" was nowhere to be found. It just never registered for me. It probably would have helped if I knew that she was currently charting with a Spanish-language album. Guess that subscription to Billboard would have done me some good after all.
But Latin week it is, according to Ryan Seacrest, who is convening with the Top 8 backstage when the show just happens to go on air. Ryan's all, "Oh! We're on." Like he doesn't have every act break this show has ever taken in six seasons embedded in his DNA. It looks like Chris Richardson is recording things on his mini-camcorder thing, which someone probably told him to do, but it's adorably Chris-like, in its way. I like to imagine that he's taking these movies to send to Gina, whom he misses terribly. See, while Jacob and Blake are taking gondola rides and feeding each other grapes, Chris and I have been rendezvousing behind the bleachers. And the school won't let us go to prom together because they're fascist assholes, so he's going with Gina and I'm going with Jordin, and we couldn't afford a limo, so we got a van, and after, we're gonna go to Jordin's dad's cottage by the lake, and I'm pretty sure I know someone who can get us a bottle of Rumple Minze, but if anyone asks you, we're just going to a movie and then midnight bowling, you got it? You know your mom and my mom talk. Anyway, so Chris is taking movies for his best girl Gina, and Blake and Haley are making faces at each other, and Sanjaya's hair and Melinda's hair have crossed the same point on the graph. You'd think after reading this paragraph that things are about to jump off this week. You are sadly, sadly mistaken. This...is American Idol.
Ryan takes the stage to the applause of many, including Nathan Fillion and company from Drive. Ryan gives props to the band and introduces the judges. After three months of this shit, I can't be bothered to once again report on the un-witty repartee of the judges, so let's all assume that Randy said "yo" a lot, Paula smiled awkwardly, and Simon looked away from the camera until the last possible second, proving that he's been listening to Tyra all these years. Oh, hey, look! It's Mickey Dolenz. I feel like we've seen him in the audience before. Does he just live in the neighborhood and stop by because he's got nothing else to do that day? I mean, sure, he's essentially the godfather of the kind of pre-fabricated "affront to all things music" that Idol represents, but maybe his Tuesday nights are just really boring.
This wasn't Randy's favorite, but Melinda gave "another solid performance" in yet another genre. He says she showed echoes of Celia Cruz. Nice: "You remind us of that old dead lady." Paula, who is dressed like she's got an initiation ritual for a girl gang to get to once the show's done, essentially tells Melinda that she didn't really have to do anything impressive tonight, but it was nice that she did anyway. Simon, giddy as a schoolgirl, tells Melinda that, at long last, she's given a performance that he didn't like. The audience freaks out, and Melinda's like, "Calm down, crazies, it's fine." He says that she appeared older than she is (so...Nefertiti?) and was too "lounge/cabaret." He then gives the actually very helpful advice that for someone as good as Melinda, she has the added pressure of having to not only live up to her own standard but surpass it, every week, in order to impress an audience that can be frighteningly fickle. "I think you're better than that," he finishes, to a chorus of boos, of course. Safe to assume they...don't think she's better than that? Or are they just a bunch of Pavlovian morons who have been trained to jeer everything that falls short of a rave? Oh right...the entire history of this show. Never mind.
Ryan takes the stage and asks Melinda if, after Simon's declaration last week that he was going crazy without anything to bitch about, she was worried that he'd indeed find something tonight. Melinda says she's happy because "he really wanted to say something bad, and I'm glad he got the chance." The audience eats it up and asks for seconds. I think at this point, the line between "scripted" and "spontaneous" is so fine as to not even matter. Everybody's on the same page here. No one even needed to feed Melinda that line -- Simon did it for her. There is enough well-honed fakery and agitprop on this show to run a small Central American country.
Over by the product-placement stools, Ryan and his best gal LaKisha conspire quietly. His totally random viewer question asks LaKisha what made her try out for the show. As it happens, LaKisha has a daughter, and this is all being done for the daughter's benefit. I'm not going to give LaKisha too much shit, because she's actually kept the "my daughter" stuff relatively under wraps thus far. We see that earlier this week, with J.Lo, LaKisha's intentions were to sing "Conga" and to pronounce it like you'd pronounce "Honda." J.Lo's like, "Conga...Cone-gah...it's Cuban, come on." J.Lo tells us that LaKisha didn't need much help vocally (the "especially from me" goes unspoken), but J.Lo was able to impart some dancing wisdom. She tells LaKisha that it's like the song says: let the music move your feet. There's this fantastic moment where they're practicing the dance and they both pop their hips out to the side in perfect synchronicity: "BAM!" J.Lo laughs and tells us they had fun.
LaKisha starts her performance from the riser behind the judges' table. Once again, she's wearing a tight-fitting halter dress that's black and fire-engine red, which I guess is her way of looking like the Miami Sound Machine just exploded all over her ass. The song, as I mentioned in the recaplet, isn't a song that you sing. It's a song that you try your best to keep up with while the horns go crazy. So it's hard to evaluate. She sounds...fine. She doesn't fuck it up at all, which I guess is the point of choosing this song. When you want to give the illusion of liveliness and minimize the risk of falling flat on your face. When LaKisha makes it back to the chorus, we see that she has decided to pronounce "Conga" like "Honda" anyway. Why do you hate the mentors, LaKisha? Why?! Randy praises the performance and actually compares it favorably to Melinda's, saying LaKisha was having a lot of fun up there. Paula leads with "First, you look lovely," so you know she didn't like the performance. Paula calls it a "safe" performance, and Randy now joins the audience in booing the critique. Paula says she wants LaKisha to "push for it" now that we're getting down to crunch time. Simon looks askance at Paula and asks LaKisha if she agrees with Paula's critique. LaKisha says she thought she moved outside her comfort zone with all the dancing (Randy: "Exactly!"). Simon, however, knows what Paula's talking about and agrees. "Conga" is "not a singer's song," and while she was having a lot of fun with the performance, he's not sure how much fun it would be for the home viewers. He calls it a safe song, which it is. Randy's like, "But...the dancing!" Simon goes, "But the dancing wasn't very good," and at that, LaKisha squeals from off-camera, which actually manages to come across as more endearing than you'd think. It's sort of a "Simon! I never!" squeal, which has always been a preferred way to handle his criticisms.
After the commercials, Ryan has some updates on Idol Really Cares...Really week: Rascal Flatts, Annie Lennox, Il Divo, Josh Groban, and Earth, Wind, and Fire will all be performing. Also Kelly Clarkson (eeeeeee!).
up with J.Lo, however, is Chris Richardson. Chris will be singing "Smooth," that Rob Thomas Latin classic. Apparently, this is the only piece of late-'90s schlock that I don't have a place in my heart for. Chris has a hard time correctly pronouncing "muñequita," and J.Lo tells him how to say it right -- "with a 'y'" -- so that the Latinas aren't all in his business about it. They'll be all up in his business anyway, I'm pretty sure, despite the fact that he's wearing his giant Gryffindor scarf indoors. J.Lo also advises that he take his vocals up a half-step -- and later, up a full step -- to really get the best quality out of his voice. "Even to hear him reaching a bit might be nice," she says, and she's actually right. She crosses her fingers and says that she hopes it will help him out tonight. And it might have, if Chris were in any way interested in this performance. For whatever reason, he's totally not. Say what you want about Rob Thomas, and I'll say plenty, but he sounded like he was going to give himself a hernia singing this song. Contrast that with Chris's laconic-but-not-in-a-cool-way delivery and it comes across as super-lazy. Sexy as hell? Sure, but it's not like that takes a whole lot of effort on his part. He does nail the pronunciation on "muñequita," though, so he's at least one up on LaKisha. He looks like he's singing this at a karaoke bar at someone else's request. Humoring us, or humoring J.Lo, or humoring Carlos Santana. He can do (and has done) so much better than this.
The judges, however, are in a lyin' mood, and so they lie, right to Chris's beautiful giant face. Randy thought it was "very, very cool, dawg, very cool, very cool." Paula takes it to the opposite end of centigrade: "It was a hot performance. What am I gonna say? You were sexy!" Even Simon is like, "Not the best vocal, but at least it wasn't old-fashioned like Hortense and Esther were earlier." He also calls Paula "whatever her name is," which is awesome. The upside of all the blatant lies is that Chris gets to smile and horse around with Ryan, which is nice. Ryan promises Haley and Phil , and in case that wasn't horrifying enough, the camera zooms right up into their faces. AAAHHH! Save me, commercials!
When we return, Ryan and the judges are all sitting on the riser behind their table, for no reason in particular. It does kind of make me think Paula's going to jump up and start singing "Summer Lovin'," but she's content just to make weird faces into the camera and repeatedly nudge Randy with her shoulder for some reason.
And now it's time for Haley! Haley and J.Lo are kindred spirits, of course. J.Lo's the patron saint of making a career out of not being able to sing and wearing unbelievably skimpy clothing. I like to think J.Lo looks at Haley perform each week and flashes back to that Versace dress she wore to the Grammys that time. Of course, the difference between the way J.Lo carried that dress and the way Haley carries her weekly flesh parade is the reason I can't support Haley in this competition. Much like Lulu a few weeks ago, J.Lo advises Haley to shorten up her phrasing, make it so it's more in line with the rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat on the drums. Haley says she needs a beat in order to get the rhythm right, and J.Lo is literally like, "Oh look, there's Blake, who just happens to be walking past the studio right now. Let's ask him!" Or else Blake truly is magic, and he just appears whenever you need him the most, like the Good Witch of the North. The beauty of watching this show frame by goddamn frame for the purposes of a recap is that you get to catch moments like this one: Jennifer Lopez making sure her hair looks right as Blake approaches. Nothing the rest of us wouldn't do in that situation. So Blake shows up and lays down a beat with his magical mouth, and J.Lo sums up by reminding us that this isn't a song that you sing, but rather one that you "throw at people." You know, it's like Simon always says: It's a throwing words at people contest.
To the stage! This song is such a mess, and the band going synth-crazy and the lights freaking out just add to the madness. Also, because we should get this out of the way early, Haley is wearing: short-shorts, a zebra-patterned halter top that gets sheer right around the cleavage area, stilettos, bright red lipstick that looks like she applied it with a shovel, and incredibly heavy eye makeup. If Haley's turn toward sexifying her wardrobe was a maneuver born of having her back against the wall in the competition, I think it's safe to say that two straight weeks in the bottom two have caused her to throw everything in her arsenal up on that stage and see what sticks. The only thing you can do with this "song" is keep up and avoid getting run over by it. Haley is unsuccessful in this endeavor. When her voice finally goes kaput sometime around her trip into the audience, it's hard not to get the impression that the pressure, the negative comments, the hyper-focus on her appearance (on her part as well as everyone else's), and the insane nature of the song have all teamed up to short-circuit her brain. We've finally lost Haley.
In the interest of "keeping it real," Randy finds the performance "very karaoke." Paula states the obvious, saying it's not a "singer's song" but it's a "fun song," and judging by that standard, Haley did look like she was having fun. Simon mangles the language, saying, "I think you have a very good tactic at the moment, Haley: wear as least amount of clothes as possible." [Sic] you very much, Cowell. So the camera then makes this creepy pan right the hell up Haley's legs, and it's objectively disgusting the way the country can do nothing but ogle her at this point, but also: we're not the ones who decided that the best answer to "boring" would be to start progressively shedding clothing either. Nobody gets to feel good right now. Simon once again tells her that she has no prayer of out-singing the competition, so it's probably best if she just has fun out there. Bright side: Haley's cried out all her tears by now, so she takes her humiliation with a bored smile. Ryan tries to provoke a response to Simon, but Haley can't be bothered. She appreciates everything the judges have to say, and she tried to have fun with the song. I'm thinking the song ended up having fun with her.
It's Phil's turn now, and J.Lo tells us he'll be singing "Maria, Maria," which is another song off Santana's Supernatural album. Phil interviews that he kept flipping out about being in the presence of J.Lo and her many jangly bracelets. Her advice to him is to put some damn feeling behind his voice and think about someone when he's singing the song. It's a good idea -- hey, I wonder if Phil has a wife or something. That might help him out. By the end of their rehearsal, one of the patented Phil Stacey Power Notes has given J.Lo "goose-pimples." J.Lo sounds so adorable saying "goose-pimples," I don't know what to tell you. If repeatedly discussing "goose-pimples" had been a subplot in Gigli, things might have gone a lot differently for a lot of people.
The very existence of low notes in the song means that Phil doesn't do a very good job with it. The song is not one of my favorites, but it's got a bit of a kick to it. Not Phil's version, of course. Phil's version has much more endless droning, with a dash of an embarrassingly inept attempt to copy Chris Richardson's superfluous runs. When he gets to the line about "the guitar played by Carlos Santana," he leaves the line as is. Which...I'm of two minds. I always get annoyed when musicians change lyrics in songs they're covering in order to personalize them. I mentioned this with Elliott last year. It's not a deal-breaker, more of a pet peeve, but like, even when they change the gender pronouns so you don't wonder why a boy is singing about another boy. I think it's far cooler when Jack White is begging Jolene "please don't take my man." Or when Tori Amos signs off on "Famous Blue Raincoat" with "sincerely, L. Cohen." It's just a thing I have. But so the flip side of that, which Phil is making me see here, is that it can take you out of the song if you don't change the lyrics. Phil -- not once, but twice -- asks us to listen to the guitar played by a Carlos Santana who just...isn't there. The guy who is playing guitar sounds like he completely fucks up for a second, but I think that what actually happens is that truncating the song into a minute and a half meant cutting the guitar solo short (understandably), so it kind of just screeches to a halt. What fails to come to any kind of halt at all are Phil's excruciatingly drawn-out vocals.
Sez Randy: J.Lo was right about there being a problem with the passion or lack thereof, which made it boring. Also, once again, Phil can hit the high notes, but the low ones remain an issue. Paula says it was a "really good vocal," which gets Phil's still-adorable wife (with new highlights?) to applaud from the audience. She gets a seat on stage week, right? Simon says that the performance had "no originality" and was both lifeless and flat: "There's nothing I can be positive or excited about. Sorry." Phil, hold on to your asses now, appreciates Simon's honesty. He then makes yet another of his patented obsequious panderings to the audience. Ryan asks him some dumb question about fatigue's effects on his voice, and Phil's like, "Yeah, that happens -- also, I have a newborn daughter! Have you heard?" He tells an admittedly adorable tale of his daughter's stuffed cow that she calls "Simon Cow," and I'd be far more receptive to it if he hadn't already displayed a tendency to use his family, friends, the military, the elderly, leukemia patients, the victims of feline AIDS, Dannielynn Smith-Stern-Birkhead, the NYPD, Nikki McKibbin's daughter, Columbine, and the Challenger explosion in order to deflect criticism. Ryan looks utterly disgusted at yet another (literally) bald-faced attempt at voter nullification. Meanwhile, Phil beams at his own audacity and won't let Ryan even read the numbers without flashing hand signals to us at home and promising us his eternal love and devotion. I said it to Ace, baldy, and I'll say it to you: quit clinging to my leg, lest you get flung across the room. Your neediness is giving me hives.
Commercials, and then...Jordin! She's over by the product-placement monitors with Ryan, and he poses a viewer-generated question: if she were in charge of week's theme, what would it be instead of suck-ass Martina McBride? Four of those words plus a hyphenate went unspoken, but we all know what's up. Jordin, because she really is my bestest gal pal/fake prom date beard, answers, "I would probably do '80s music, because I love it." Ryan, literally, goes, "Were you even born in the '80s?" Jordin says she was...in December of '89. Awesome. Back with J.Lo, Jordin's doing her best to blow her mentor away. J.Lo tells Jordin that she's doing a great job making the song -- "The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You," Gloria Estefan again -- her own. J.Lo is reminded of Michael Jackson, which is an interesting comparison; one I don't entirely get, but it's certainly meant to be complimentary. Though I'm not sure how a seventeen-year-old can take being compared to a reclusive accused pederast whose face is melting off as much of a positive. Anyhoo, J.Lo basically admits that she has nothing to tell Jordin about being a better vocalist, because Jordin's already there. Get it, girl.
The singing isn't going to be worth talking about, so let's begin with what Jordin's wearing. It's so strange. Shot from the waist up, it looks like she's wearing a sexy trench coat, like she's on her way to Sam Spade's office. But when they pull back for the wide shot, we see that it's just a top, which I suppose would be okay except for: the stretch pants. Oh, honey. Not on national TV. Anyway, the reason I even have time to fixate on the clothes is because Jordin clearly could not care less about performing tonight. Remember what I said about Chris R? Same goes for Jordin: lackadaisical, uninterested, not at all concerned with pushing a boundary. We've seen her perform before; we know the energy she's capable of. I don't entirely blame her -- with Latin night tonight and country night week, these guys are looking at two weeks until any of them can possibly find a genre in which they're comfortable again. Yeah, yeah, if it was anyone other than Chris and Jordin looking this lifeless, I'd be telling them to suck it the hell up and make an effort. Probably true. Don't care.
Lucky for Jordin, Randy found the performance "absolutely great" and invokes the Yo Factor. My sincere hope is that, over the summer, Randy launches a line of cosmetics called Yo Factor. Mere words won't be able to describe what it makes you look like. Paula loves Jordin's "authentic" [sic], and says she's just adorable. Simon manages to hit the nail on the head without even realizing it: he says he feels about Jordin the same way he feels about the night as a whole. "They're okay performances." Nothing stunning or surprising or interesting. Which is what happens when you force singers into a genre that's completely unsuited to them, I would argue. Simon says Jordin's great, but he wanted to see some progression from her tonight. Me too.
up is Blake, who has Jennifer Lopez in the palm of his hand from minute one. And I don't even think it's because he's chosen to sing Marc Anthony's "I Need To Know." Which, by the way, is a total Phil Stacey song choice, from the supreme suck-uppiness of choosing a song originally sung by the guest mentor's husband to the sunken-eyed solidarity Phil holds with J.Lo's gaunt, sickly paramour. But somehow, Blake wrested it out of Phil's cold, dying hands, and it's a good thing for us he did. J.Lo tells him -- calling her husband by his full name, which does indeed sound weird -- that Blake needs to find the meaning in the song the way Marc Anthony does. Blake has already nailed the vocals; now he just needs to put some passion in there. Speaking to the imaginary wooing going on in the song, J.Lo says she wants to see Blake "pick that girl up." And just in case there was any doubt as to which girl J.Lo's interested in Blake picking up, she closes with this: "I think we hit it a little at the end there." I think you wanted to hit it a little. But I know a recapper who will cut you if you do, so...
A sign in the audience reads "Shake N Blake." Get out. Right now. The horns in the band are, once again, going crazy. You think they've all been looking forward to Latin night since the season began? "This is Trumpet #3's time to shine!" So Blake struts onto the stage looking like a total tourist: khakis and a red button-down which, whatever, but it's the hat that does it. Remember the end of Silence of the Lambs when Hannibal Lecter disappears into an island crowd after saying he'll be having an old friend for dinner? Blake's wearing Hannibal's hat from that scene. And the "old friend" he'll be having for dinner is the rest of the Top 8. The performance is hot. It's interesting, because I still think Blake's true gift lies in producing, and he doesn't really do anything different with this song. Vocally, however, it might be his best performance yet. Whatever irritating quality I'd been finding in Blake's recent vocals is gone. In its place is a clear, strong voice that's not shy about asking the question at the heart of Marc Anthony's salsa ballad: "Why ain't we fuckin' already?"
"Best song choice of the night," says Randy, and Paula echoes that, calling it a "very smart performance." Like Blake is somehow putting one over on the audience, which is weird, but I guess it's intended as a compliment, so whatever. Even Simon gets on the song choice train, saying it was the best choice of the night, but he goes on to add, "best performance so far." Right again, Cowell. In order to celebrate this positive reinforcement, Ryan takes the stage and touches Blake in fourteen places within three seconds.
Our final contestant of the night is the carnival sideshow that Sanjaya Malakar has become. As if looking to illustrate my point, Ryan is in the audience and is joined by the following: (1) Sanjaya's sister Shyamali; (2) Tom Lowe, of that fantastic Blake beatboxing supergroup from the Hollywood round (the one who didn't make it even though Rudy did not that I remember or anything), with his hair pony-hawked, who keeps acting very much like Shyamali is his girlfriend even though we all know that cannot possibly be true; (3) B.J. the Hippie (not even kidding -- totally wish I were); and (4) B.J.'s homemade sign, which reads "Don't be fooled by the votes that he's got, he's just...he's just Sanjaya, God he rocks!" A lot of people saw B.J.'s presence as yet one more black mark against the Family Malakar, but I'm thinking if anyone were going to have the gall to glom onto the irony-stretching "fame" of Sanjaya and essentially crash on its couch until someone decided to sack up and force him to leave, it would be B.J. the goddamn TAR Hippie. He has now entered the top ten of all-time Celebrity Hangers-On, joining, among others, Howard K. Stern, Brody Jenner, Puff Daddy, and that guy who would always use Methuselah's name to get into parties. Aaaaanyway: Tom Lowe only looks marginally less hot for his association with this mess.
Now: Sanjaya. J.Lo tells us that Sanjaya chose to sing "Bésame Mucho," which is a very old, very pretty, and very sung-in-Spanish song. She says, surprised, "I have to tell you, he really, really impressed me." She listens to him sing and laughs, all, "I love Sanjaya!" She then advises him to "take his time" at the end, before demonstrating how to end the song like a desperate and spurned woman in a 1950s melodrama. So now we'll know whom to blame when the time comes.
On stage, Sanjaya's atop a sincerity stool, so we know he's bringing the quiet storm this week. His hair is still shorter, but now it's all jheri curled. Eh. He's done better. Of course, the real show is the "goatee." Which has taken him a full three weeks to grow, if we're counting the week where he kept applying the tonic to his upper lip, and I certainly am. So now he looks like his own evil twin. Which is currently one of the explanations I'm considering for the fact that Sanjaya doesn't sound half bad here. He's self-consciously breathy, but, like, he's projecting his voice, and that's a first. And now that we can actually hear him, you can tell that his voice is capable of being quite pretty. It's still not nearly as developed as it needs to be, he can't hit a low note to save his life, and he's got the look in his eyes like he wants to violate your imagination. So there are still problems, to be sure. But the singing is actually -- and this is being judged on the sliding scale of "...for Sanjaya" -- really good. So, like I said, the evil twin theory is a possibility -- that this isn't Sanjaya singing at all, but rather his goateed doppelganger. Another theory is that sitting on the stool helped him to control his breath better. The one I'm currently going with is...you know how if a person stutters in their normal speech, they might not stutter if they have to sing or whisper or...wait for it...speak in a foreign language? Maybe that's how it is for Sanjaya, except replace "stutter" with "sing like an asthmatic creep." He still has the creepy thing going on, which the goatee only exacerbates, and which culminates in the royal eye-humping he gives the camera as the song finishes. It's kind of the best of both worlds, actually: enough Sanjaya weirdness to have something to write about, but none of that embarrassingly awful singing that makes me have to hide my face in a pillow.
So Tom Lowe turns to Shyamali and, like, gets the vapors or something. Has a big ol' gay freakout about how great Sanjaya just was. Randy's laughing his ass off as he acknowledges Sanjaya's diabolical cleverness for the sixth consecutive week. "That was really good!" he enthuses. Paula's reflexes have been dulled after years and years of...well, being Paula Abdul, so she's not so quick to catch on to how Sanjaya's not the enemy this week -- Haley and Phil are. So instead, Paula's all, "Yeah...it was...nice." So we come to Simon, who first makes a lame joke about how he couldn't understand a word, har har, but then he says, "I'm gonna hate myself for this...it wasn't horrible." Sanjaya is taken aback by this genuine praise. Sadly, he does not once again welcome Simon to the Universe of Sanjaya, which is a shame. Even though that's where we've all been living for the past month. Tom Lowe high-fives B.J. the Hippie, and a little part of me dies. That little part of me that was called "my sexual attraction to Tom Lowe."
Ryan takes the stage and gives the Sanjaya Leer a shot, but he just comes across as squinty. Then? My favorite part: the rundown! Melinda and her Jetson hair actually being one of the three best performances of the night, all things considered. LaKisha telling us not to fight it 'til we've tried it and to buy a Honda. Chris failing to reach a standard set by Rob Thomas, which makes me sad. Haley's voice and her legs in actual synchronicity, for once: neither of them is singing a song. Phil sounding like ASS. Jordin looking bored but also gorgeous from the waist up. Blake looking gorgeous all over and sucking up to J.Lo in the most wonderful way. And finally Sanjaya, looking at us, drawing us ever closer to the madness that lies within. Back with Ryan, Phil and Jordin are desperately shilling for our votes, but only Jordin is half-kidding. Chris, meanwhile, is flirting with LC out in the audience, or so I hear. Best unsubstantiated rumor ever! Just so long as he doesn't ever show up on The Hills. That show is like The Universe of Sanjaya: no one gets out of there alive.