“ Well, it looks like we're stuck with a completely unnecessary, melodramatic announcer. On the other hand, it reduces Black and Decker's screen time slightly, so there's a tiny silver lining if you look hard enough. ”
Well, it looks like we're stuck with a completely unnecessary, melodramatic announcer. On the other hand, it reduces Black and Decker's screen time slightly, so there's a tiny silver lining if you look hard enough. Melodramatic Announcer announces melodramatically to us how the contestants have been weeded down to nine finalists thus far. Numbers melodramatically zoom out over clips of auditions to melodramatically illustrate the weeding. Melodramatic Announcer continues that five (zoom!) of the twenty-one rejected semifinalists will perform before the three (zoom!) judges, and one (zoom!) will be chosen for the "wild card" slot to complete the final ten. You know, the same thing they've been telling us for the past three weeks. As if the announcer and the zooming numbers weren't melodramatic enough, they inflict those awful thumping "heartbeat" sound effects on us after every other word to try to convince us that something incredibly shocking is going to happen tonight. First of all, I'd like a moratorium on those damned thumping heartbeats, especially on promos for medical dramas. But second of all, if you're going to insist on using them, I insist that you confine them to shows where people's lives actually hang in the balance. You know what? Let's just go with it, then. If they want melodrama, I'll bring it. In (thump!) the (thump!) course (thump!) of (thump!) this (thump!) recap (thump!), somebody (thump!) will (thump!) die! (Thump!) Who (thump!) will (thump!) it (thump!) be? (Thump!) Stay (thump!) tuned. (Thump!)
Credits. Black and Decker greet us from atop The Octagon of Judgment, standing on either side of the chair that represents the lone finalist who will be selected by the judges tonight. Last week it was Jazmin's shirt; this week Ryan is wearing Adriel's pimp pants. They start repeating what the announcer just said seconds ago. Suddenly, an ominous creaking sound interrupts the two of them. They look up to see what the sound is, only to have the girder of spotlights that they just strung up last week come crashing down to the stage, crushing them both.
Sorry, I'm not good at drawing out the tension. Should I have waited a little longer before killing them? Well, I'll kill them again in other parts of the recap, and we'll just try to figure out which death was the most satisfying. It's a good thing I graduated from school years ago, or else this recap would probably get me suspended by jittery officials. I blame it all on violent video games like Rollercoaster Tycoon.
After blathering some more about the wild card slot, Black and Decker explain that, once the tenth finalist is chosen, the performers will be leaving The Octagon of Judgment and Pimp Central behind and moving to a larger stage with an audience and a "full orchestra." That's assuming your definition of "full orchestra" is "about a dozen musicians." And after tonight's show, all future performances will be live, so there's always the possibility that a performer you can't stand will completely choke on stage. Something to look forward to.
Nothing Wild
“ Following the public vote for the nine finalists, the judges have selected five of the losers -- oh, sorry, 'five people whose efforts we celebrate' -- that they want to perform one more time for a chance at the wild card slot. ”
Oh, good God -- they're repeating everything again! The show has been on for less than two minutes, and they've explained how we've gotten to this point three times now. Following the public vote for the nine finalists, the judges have selected five of the losers -- oh, sorry, "five people whose efforts we celebrate" -- that they want to perform one more time for a chance at the wild card slot. They chose Kelli Glover, Christopher Aaron, Angela Peel, Alexis Lopez, and R.J. Helton.
Black and Decker head over to the judges' table to ask Randy, Paula, and Simon why they picked those five. Because they thought they sucked less than the other sixteen rejectees. What a stupid question. Randy and Paula find diplomatic ways of saying that. Paula says that the five were their "favorites" among those who were left. Simon snarkily insists that they weren't all his favorites, and challenges them to prove that they've got what it takes to make it to the round. Simon is scarily polite to Black and Decker, insisting that it's "always a pleasure" talking to them. I hope he was being sarcastic. Perhaps he forgot to make that deal for his performers to appear on Ryan's radio show, and now he has to be nice to him from now on. That will be disappointing.
Black and Decker head back to Pimp Central, where The Five Who Didn't Win The Vote But Are Not Losers are waiting. Kelli is the first performer tonight, and we get a whole recap of her cloning-gone-awry life story. To add some entertainment value to this incredibly blah show, they've tossed in some more bad auditions before we get to see the actual performer. This first group is a montage of "boys who have not one ounce of singing ability, who are giant suckholes of musical talent, whose voices should be considered potential deadly weapons." Simon throws up a white hanky and shouts, "I surrender!" to one singer.
Then we get the Kelli clip show. She sings Whitney at the first auditions. The judges love her, but warn her about how her voice goes all Muppet-sounding when she tries to sing from her throat. Then she sang more Whitney in Pasadena. She's still a Whitney Muppet. She asks her momma what to sing for the semifinals. Momma stage-mothers her into singing the Whitney yet again. Third time is definitely not the charm for the Whitney Muppet. Simon tells her she needs to stop trying to clone Whitney. If you saw Jurassic Park, you know that they filled in the gaps in the dinosaur's DNA by using amphibian DNA. Obviously that's what they did when they cloned Kelli from Whitney, but they had to use Kermit, because of his anthropomorphic qualities. Maybe she'd have a better chance if she spontaneously changed gender. They show her losing to Jim in the vote, because the kids think Scooter is cuter than Kermit. Kelli hangs her head and cries and pushes somebody's hand away. In an interview, she says she worried about whether her mother would be disappointed, but apparently Kelli's "whole family" was upset with her mom and "wanted to kill her." Clearly Kelli's overwrought responses run in the family. Simon tells the camera that he thinks Kelli is beautiful and a great singer, but if she doesn't break free of her Whitney genetic programming, he's not going to choose her for the wild card.
Nothing Wild
Kelli hits The Octagon of Judgment wearing a tan belly shirt with just one see-through sleeve, along with low-slung jeans and a matching tan sash/scarf thing tied around her hips. She will attempt to defy biology tonight, as she starts to sing "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You," which was written by Michael Bolton back in the blissful days before he decided that the world wanted to hear him sing and was originally performed by Laura Branigan, leaving Michael to cover his own song years later and still somehow ruin it. Man, once you pull Kelli off the Whitney, the Muppet influence is even more pronounced, especially when she holds words with "o" sounds. I'm trying to decide which Muppet she sounds most like. A lot of people say Kermit, but to me she sounds more like the lower voice that Miss Piggy uses when she gets angry and is about to go Pig-Fu on Fozzy Bear. And when she's not Muppet, she still sounds like Whitney doing a cover of the song.
Judges. Paula's thrilled that Kelli didn't sing the Whitney and is glad that she can now judge Kelli without having to make the inevitable comparison. Randy agrees and adds that Kelli didn't "oversing" it. Simon agrees and thinks that Kelli chose a good song that allowed them to "see [her] as [her]" and not as Whitney Muppet.
Kelli heads back to Pimp Central and plops down to Black and Decker, clearly pleased. Ryan asks Kelli why she chose a Michael Bolton song. Kelli says that she chose it because she knew there was no way her performance would be compared to Michael's. Brian gives the camera a creepy serial-killer look as he sends us off to the first commercial break.
Oh no -- David E. Kelley has managed to get his horrid little caveman claws on Felicity Huffman. Can't anybody do anything about him? Won't somebody think of the recappers?
When we return, Black and Decker start explaining the fucking show again. Suddenly, Stefanie Sugarman jumps up from her hiding spot behind the swirl couch with a chainsaw, shrieking, "I told you I'd be back!" as she dismembers the two tools. When she's done, she snarls, "Behold, the power of me!" and stomps off the set.
Nothing Wild
“ If you recall, Chris is cool. That's all there is to him -- coolness. And the more you see if him, the more it seems like a better adjective might be 'lobotomized.' If you set him on fire, he'd just sit there, insisting that there's no cause for alarm. ”
up is Chris Aaron. If you recall, Chris is cool. That's all there is to him -- coolness. And the more you see if him, the more it seems like a better adjective might be "lobotomized." If you set him on fire, he'd just sit there, insisting that there's no cause for alarm. Before we see clips of Chris's actual auditions, we get more suckiness. Some girl shrieks what I think is "White Rabbit." A girl sings "Music" worse than Madonna, if that's at all possible. Sorry -- I love Madonna, but I hate that song and her "singing" in it. A geeky man in a gray suit and fedora sings "Play That Funky Music" and does the robot. There's really nothing I can say to make that image any funnier than it is naturally. We finally see Chris's auditions. He wears sunglasses, but Paula makes him take them off, perhaps hoping that he'll eye-fuck her. He sings "My Cherie Amour" and sounds better than Khaleef, from what little we hear. He's invited to Pasadena and hugs Tamyra out in the hall. At Pasadena, Simon tells Chris that he "reminds [him] of Seal, but with a personality." Hey! Seal has ano, no, Simon's right. The judges loved Chris in his semifinal performance, but he lost out on the votes. He tells the camera that his strategy to win the wild card vote is the "element of surprise," and says that he has "something up his sleeve" for the judges. In retrospect, I haven't got a clue what he's talking about.
Chris hits The Octagon wearing a blue shirt and jeans. His choice for this evening is Boyz II Men's "On Bended Knee." His falsetto isn't nearly as pleasant as it was the last time he performed. It's so high that you can barely even understand the words. For somebody who claims to be "cool," he doesn't have a clue what to do with his hands. He waves them in front of his chest, does the "simmah dahn now" gesture repeatedly, and occasionally reaches toward the camera with a bizarre "please don't take my baby away!" grasp. Maybe he's trying to shake out whatever he's got up his sleeve. The song is really hard to listen to. It's not that the notes are wrong or off-key, per se; his version is simply too high. I know the Boyz II Men version was pretty high, too, but the band and the rest of the singers took the edge off a bit.
Judges. Randy says Chris was okay, but was sharp and/or flat in various places. Paula disagrees with Randy in the negative direction, which I think is a first. She says that Chris didn't seem "connected" with the song. Simon agrees, and describes Chris's performance as "mechanical." Yeah, there was a certain animatronic quality with those arm movements. Simon says that there's a thin line between being "cool" and "boring." Simon thinks that because they've seen so little personality from Chris, he's falling on the "boring" side of that line. Randy disagrees to tell Chris that he's not boring, and Chris responds that he "couldn't care less" about criticisms regarding his personality. He hasn't been programmed to feel hurt by negative comments. Simon looks off to the side with no expression, thinking to himself, "Whatever, Captain Cool; I'm the one offering the contract." Randy says that it wasn't Chris's best audition, but he wouldn't call him boring.