Group night! The night for which we wait all year: tears, triumphs, and tragedies! Cursing and cuties! Foolishness and freaking out! Sabotage and the supercilious! Exhaustion and emotional volatility! People thinking they know best even though they don't!
9 PM, Kodak Theatre. 107 sleepy kids, including Rose and Nathaniel and a bunch of other people, forty contestants lighter than when Hollywood started. We're not even getting started on this until 9? I hope they starved them and made them run laps around the theatre too, so they can get started going nuts even earlier than usual.
They show all the people getting into groups, and just like every year it's shaking granola: all the people of the right qualities find each other. The big granola at the top is like: Awful Emily, the Osmond, blind guy, Von, Castro, those two blonde guys with six names between them. Then there's the unpolished granola like Rose, or this cute southern guy who can't find a group. Then there's the troubled granola like Nathaniel and Tatiana.
Nate Marshall is in a group with one of those awful faux-nurturing girls who acts like a stepmom in order to assert herself without doing so. This will bite her in the ass later, but mostly I just can't stand that shit. Her hair is multicolored, always a red flag, although not as multicolored as it was at her audition. She kisses her hands and then beats them against his head and yell at him not to be scared. Of course, the one person on earth asking for this bullshit is Headband Nate, so whatever, but it's still obnoxious. Try that shit with me, you'll draw back a stump.
Tatiana wanders around pulling at her skirt psychotically and talking to herself. Everybody pretends that they're too busy to even notice her standing there and being weird, with weird sleeves and crazy makeup. A couple of other people wander around trying to figure out a way they can advertise that they are not Tatiana.
One girl I sort of remember -- Meghan? -- awkwardly approaches a group of girls. They can't decide whether to Mean Girl her or not until they hear her sing, so they're just minorly standoffish -- "we can make it work, I guess" -- which sort of goes south on them when she asks what they'll be singing and they have to admit they don't know. So the whole act about massively retooling their set in order to accommodate her ungrouped ass was just sort of them being dicks, because they met up with each other six seconds ago. Pretty much anybody who says they've already got a firm group going at this point is being a dick, or making assumptions based on appearances, that may or may not be founded.
With Tatiana, they are so founded that we get a whole reel of footage of her being disgusting and fake and crazy and weird before she starts getting weird all over her group and scaring the shit out of them. An hour later, they're doing a full-on Blair Witch into the camera, afraid to move their lips while they're begging us to help them.
11:15, the groups are shaking out into the professional and the less so. Guess who Rose is in a group with? Jasmine, a girl named Lauren, and... Bikini Kill. Rose considers Bikini Kill to be the enemy in a grand sense, which she is, but makes the mistake of letting the naked horror of Bikini Kill -- which is on Bikini Kill's side of the fence -- get mixed up with Rose's hatred of her, which is all Rose: pronounced eye-rolling, gun-to-the-head gestures, dramatic ennui, and all the rest of the shit Rose does not have time for. She's worried that the cuteness (aka stripper with daddy issues-ness) of Bikini Kill is going to make her look ridiculous. Which is stupid, because out of everybody in this hotel, you want to be onstage to Bikini Kill, Norman or Tatiana. Think about it.
Tatiana informs her group that they are terrible singers who need to stop giving her excuses. One of the girls in her group tries to explain that leading a group does not mean being a jag, but she's not feeling them. Danny and Jamar -- of course -- rehearse in the kitchen with the other two people who they've grudgingly allowed I guess to join them. They sound great, and are adorable. I think Danny Gokey smells like cinnamon. I think that every time he's onscreen and it always seems too weird to say, but I really feel it strongly in this kitchen.
So crazy/beautiful has a grade four meltdown because A) she is confused by the lack of tightness, B) she wants this really badly (which you may remember is how she's going to be winning American Idol), and C) she is mentally ill. These girls have seen nothing yet, but they think she's sabotaging them. Kids, you have not seen sabotage yet. I bet you a hundred dollars all four of them will be in tears before they ever get on stage. The girls engage in some community-building behavior about how she's sort of Satanic, and meanwhile she's screaming uncontrollably at the camera. But the tears in her eyes are sort of arid and not actually tears, and behind her freakout there is the sound of celestial strings tuning up, as if to say that this is just a run-through of a dress rehearsal of the off-Broadway soft open of the actual opera of crazy she's eventually going to unleash.
Tatiana unloads her feeling that they are, in fact, sabotaging her, which brings to mind some very good advice I received once and have since put to use, which basically comes down to how if, por ejemplo, a homeless person suddenly starts saying they are afraid you are going to kill them, the reality of the situation is that they are about to kill you, and this is their rattlesnake way of letting you know. So when she says, "They are throwing me under the bus," which how can you do that on this show anyway, and "they will humiliate me onstage like they did on camera," what she really means is, "I'm about to go away for a little while and my crazy will be taking the wheel. I hope those girls live through it, and it was nice knowing you."
Tatiana heads over to her natural compatriots, which is the Nathaniel/fake-nurturing people, and the fake-nurturer immediately shrieks and throws her arms around Tati, because if there's one person even more fragile and willing to submit to her obnoxious power plays, it's Tatiana. Or so one would think. Nate stares on, stupid-ass glasses and headband and the one outfit he seems to own telling a story we don't have time for. The third person in their group, a fairly ghetto young lady with bright red detachable tresses, points out that they didn't sign on for this -- only Fake Mommy is down for it -- so then Tatiana has to explain again at the top of her stupid lungs how she has intuited that there's a crosstown headed straight for her.
Ghetto girl (Nancy Wilson! Her name is Nancy Wilson! Awesome!) eventually prays to the wall with her arms in the air, searching for a way she can be even more dramatic and get even more attention than Tatiana. Finally realizing this is impossible, she gives in and accepts Tatiana on a provisional basis; meanwhile, Fake Mommy makes insane faces like an orangutan forced to choose between two beautiful things. Nate stands in a corner whining at the camera with his stupid tattoos -- and weird elbowy compulsive need to straight-iron the top of his hair by running his fingers through it unendingly -- and talks his usual nonsense about how Tatiana is bursting out of his skin or whatever.
I really just cannot handle Nate Marshall. His hair is tragic, everything is tragic but the hair especially, because the top of it is like a fauxhawk, but then he's also wearing a tiny plastic headband across the front, and big plastic sunglasses on top of that, and then in front of that whole mess he's got bangs. So it's like this Picasso hairdo that's three assholes at once, and it's tiring to look at, but at least I finally realized why a giant purse means the girl is crazy, which I've been thinking about nonstop since yesterday, when I decided it was somehow the perfect metaphor for Hollywood Week.
It's because there are times that maybe that headband makes sense: like maybe he was scrubbing his unfortunate face -- which it desperately needs -- like, in the past, when his hair was longer, and this is a tribute to that. And maybe there's a time when the sunglasses are appropriate -- for just one example, when you're not indoors, at midnight -- and he's forgotten that they are there. And maybe the front of his head, where the normal hair is located, is a nod to What If Nate took himself, or us, seriously. And maybe the pointy top of the head is cool, if you're going that way, and have a million retarded tattoos and piercings and whatnot, which he after all does. And maybe it makes sense to wear a plaid button-down from Target under a bright turquoise t-shirt with an orange/blue striped tie. Maybe even every single day of your life.
But these things, this succession of horrors, do not need to all be happening at once. Keep adding without taking away, and you will become a drug addict. The giant purse of crazy says that you have so little control or understanding of what is going to happen to you in a given day, and so little concept of a home base -- where you could, say, stash your sunglasses at night -- that you must be constantly adding to your purse instead of taking away, and thus never find what you are looking for in the first place. I submit to you that this is a metaphor for purses and for crazy: Nate Marshall is the place you shouldn't go.
If you're going to dinner and a club after work, you need phone, ID, debit card and lipstick: that's a tiny purse. On the other hand, if you are part of a traveling gypsy show, you probably carry eyeshadow in more shades than usual: still a tiny purse, just with different stuff inside it. Or if you are a vice cop working the beat, you would take a gun, some mascara and some condoms. But if you honestly don't know which of those is going to be true six hours from now, that's when the giant purse comes into play. And that means that you are a little red Corvette that desperately needs to slow down and get its bearings before you end up like Tatiana, being found without teeth in the desert. Also: crazy is like goldfish and grows to whatever size of container you give it.
Emily's whole group is apparently as annoying as she is. What time is it? 1 AM. Some folks are going to bed, Castro among them; others are still practicing, zombie-like. That includes the creepy gay kid with the fake contacts, Von and blind guy's group, and... Tatiana, who ten minutes ago left for Nancy, Nate and Kristin. Now, she's ... heading back to her original group, pissing off Nancy, while Tatiana does more of that shit she does. In this case, that means striding up to them and giving them an unnecessary, unasked-for speech along the lines of, "I will only come back to plague you like Mad Cow disease if you can convince me your intentions are real." Verbatim: "I want to hear you say we can be the best group! That we can do this!" What a fucking choad.
Eventually, fed up with waiting for Tatiana to finish bothering those other girls, Nancy and Fake Momma Kristin run over to where she's sitting and start screaming at her about how she totally just wandered off and joined another group after they let her distract and disrupt their shit for a couple of hours. Without batting an eye, Tatiana gives them a heaping helping of the appalling laugh of the idiot. It causes Nancy to wig out and freak out and start talking some ghetto nonsense including the fact that Tatiana is (clearly!) "off," a sort of terrifying grimacing impression of her earlier tears, and general mayhem. She continues trying to make more of an ass of herself than Tatiana, to prove what point I cannot say. Then back in their corner, it's Nate's turn to tell everybody what to do any how to do it. By 2:15, Nate's doing some weird gay dance and lecturing us the viewers about something, I don't even know what he's talking about anymore, they've named themselves Team Compromise. You're one letter off.
Also compromised: Tatiana's once and future group, who are standing alarmingly close to a balcony and still laughing about what a fucking freak she is, and Tatiana is babbling and laughing hysterically and shaking all over like an old sick dog and telling people what they are allowed to think and say to the camera or even in their heads. The more irritating she gets, the more she kisses her hands and shakes her head around and laughs and makes points that are ephemeral at best, and make no sense. Finally the girl just straight up calls her a bitch, about four hours too late.
Team Compromise(d) takes five, because Kristin is tired. Nancy is not tired of anything but her mess. Nate tries to protect Kristin's right to sit around and be lame, and Nancy dives in to scream at her some more. Nate stares into space, and Nancy lectures Kristin about everything in the world, and Kristin begs her once again to tone down the drama, which only causes more drama from Nancy, so Kristin starts crying and runs off. Meanwhile, Nate is laughing, because people crying are funny. I don't think I've disliked three people this much at once before.
Bikini Kill needs her beauty sleep! Because she's not beautiful, just tricky and sad and gross, giving overt sexuality a shot so that nobody notices that she's basically ugly! Meanwhile, Rose hates her some more, and Bikini Kill is crying in bed like she does every night, and the idiotic producers caption everything as her "roomate" [sic] talking. Because for the biggest show on television, literacy is a bad thing, and that's one to grow on. Rose tells the cameras that whether or not Bikini Kill actually feels like performing tomorrow, she is still an asshat, and her groupmates giggle. Emily proves me right about everything by crying on the crying Nate's shoulder.
Boring fucking Fake Mommy whines into the camera, and elsewhere Nate is making it all about him, whining that he has tried his "hardest" I mean his "hardest" to make these girls get along, so now what is he supposed to do? It was especially effective when you stood in the corner sucking your thumb and laughing at them, or when you picked sides just because you felt left out of the screaming, pointless bitchiness. That was especially honorable. Well, you tried your best. Then he screams at Nancy from across the room, begging the entire room to pay attention about how his dream is at stake. Everybody feels awkward and uninterested, and Nate goes on a crying tour of America so everybody knows how special and victim-powered he is. Kristin stands around not doing a goddamn thing and talking about how the other two screaming, also-not-doing-a-goddamn-thing pair of assholes hold her "dream" in their hands. All three of them run around the entire hotel shrieking and crying about how the other ones are running around crying, and this goes on for a hundred years. God. I hope Simon brings a gun.
7 AM. Everybody's still crying and exhausted. Rose thinks she looks like "a big pile of crap" even though she looks exactly the same all the time; that guy from Puerto Rico with the eyebrows is running late; people asleep on the floor. That guy that couldn't find a group got very little sleep. Tatiana has you for a second, joking about how if you look this hot after so little sleep you're doing okay, then ruins it with that fucked-up fake laughing. And Katrina's still missing, probably still crying. Rose leads the way -- dirty Walmart feet spreading disease as she goes, wrapped in an afghan or three -- to her room: Katrina is not feeling it. She sends her "roomate" to tell them to leave.
And what about Team Compromised? Well, Kristin can't handle how dramatic and lame Nathaniel is. Nathaniel is pulling a Whitney and refusing to speak, writing everything out on a clipboard with a bunch of fucking smiley faces... Then singing along to his phone later when the camera's on Nancy. Who has had it, some more, but is still more interested in following in her teammates' footsteps by doing nothing but talking about how they're doing nothing. Their spirit collectively and separately continues to break for the eighty-seventh time. I want to push them down the stairs, honestly.
The three divas hang out in Katrina's hotel room, where she cries about how she only got two hours of sleep. Rose is like, "Have fun flying home, loser. How could you fucking give up on something like this?" Um, self-respect is something that can get you out of bed. Dignity, a sense of yourself as a person, the wholeness that comes from knowing you are more than your body, or that your body is more than a place to get violated, respect for anyone at all, integrity, a personality: all these things can help.
Emily's group Action Squad practices outside, professionally, and then loses any sense of professionalism in front of the accompanists. Nancy is practicing a one-woman show in the corner, which you might be stunned to learn causes Kristin and Nate to smirk lamely and sedately without doing a goddamn thing.
10:20 AM, and some of the groups are just loving life. That little blonde guy kisses the camera, the "we can work it out" group of Girls With Bangs are doing well, cute boys rejoice, and even Tatiana's group has it "together." Rose informs the grownup persons -- piano player/camp counselor? -- that Bikini Kill has quit. But has she? No. She tells us she's going to just be honest: she was tired, she fucked them over, now she wants to be back. She comes wandering in looking, to her credit, a little nervous, and meanwhile Rose has her badge stuck to the side of her head, so I can kind of see her point. Rose stands up without talking to her at all, and gets really scared about how this is going to get stupid. Then she does another thing I don't care for, which is saying she knew from the start that this was going to be a disaster. I'm starting to kind of agree with Rose's constant wishes for failure, frankly. It's really unbecoming.
One sort of silly cute girl is like, "This drama is excellent!" Then the judges come in and Simon informs everybody that if they forget the lyrics, they're out. Good. That should always be the rule. That giggly shit is so annoying. Everybody scared about it, including one of the three-named guys. Ryan's like, "I love Group Day. Hopefully there will be blood this week."
White Chocolate is the unfortunate name of the group comprised of India, Justin, Kris and Matt: tiny cute girl, three beefy dudes. Name aside, I'm proud of this group for making themselves up this way, because I think it could be cool. Let's see. Well, India starts out by rapping a little bit with somebody beatboxing, and then Matt Giraud (23, dueling pianist, Kalamazoo) starts singing "I Want You Back" (I think? It's that Jackson 5 song about wanting the person back) and it's very good. There's a piano and bass in the background, which really just gives the best groups the option of showing off. Then Kris steps up: a little weaker, a lot cuter, and a little too breathy. Justin Williams (26, Mesa, AZ) has the weakest voice of them all -- including India, who hasn't even sung yet -- which is funny because he's a voice teacher. He whines and croons and looks like a PE teacher that would cross the line. Then they all sing and beatbox so India can rap some more. She never did sing! Everybody cheers for them, and Ryan's like, "But inside they are dying. It is delicious, their pain." All four members get through.
A forlorn tenor guitar cover of "California Dreaming" gives everything an unearned gravitas as we see a bunch of people we've probably never seen before getting kicked off. Kissing couple kiss some more, sharing their failure as once they shared in golden triumph. Some beg and are stonewalled, most accept their fates gracefully. At least, I assume so, based on the fact that if anybody had shit their pants we would have seen it, because this show is vile.
And who made it through? Those four long-haired girls of Meghan's, including a fedora girl, blind guy, vote-splitters Lambert and Von, a small girl, the roughneck and the non-roughneck, a man in a hat, tall Junot in a crazy shirt, Argyle Sweaters Cuomo, India, apparently one of the members of Fall Out Boy, Castro's whole group I think, a more palatable Emily that I vaguely remember -- Alexis Grace, maybe? -- that Kai dude with the awful curly hair and cute mom, the creepy gay kid, the Third Fanning and what looks to be a single mom if ever I saw one, a girl totally embarrassed by the two aforementioned celebrants, that asshole from Silver Lake, FOB's creepy/hot lip-licking friend and their meth-using compatriot-slash-typing pool secretary, manhugs in abundance, a guy who is not Castro but completes the FOB foursome, more hugging -- always with the hugging, and always turned away from the camera so it matters even less -- the three chicks of Castro with Castro far behind, and the giganticest granola: Danny Gokey's whole group with angels and Smurfs bringing them tea in cute little magic cups.
Ryan's wearing his big boy suit at the end of it all while an unknown pretty song plays, here to inform us how Hollywood Week can possibly be two weeks this year. Group Day has ended with 75 hopefuls for the final day of Hollywood. Unforgettable performances, and then the DVR cut off... oh. OMG! The Chair! I get so excited about group day that I totally forgot the Chair! See you Tuesday for the Chair! Here's hoping Danny and Jamar end up going head to head so everybody can spend the rest of their lives crying. I won't be satisfied with anything less.
Look back at the worst performances in Idol history.