Warbling 'Round That Motown Sound

Tuesday. Melodramatic Announcer returns to melodramatically recap the entire show thus far for us in thirty seconds. There's Tamyra, telling us she wants to be a "superstar." There's Anakin Boogie, flailing around like a dancing crash-test dummy. The announcer melodramatically declares about the finalists: "They didn't know it then, but four words were about to change them forever." Then we see Paula telling a contestant, "Congratulations, you're going to Hollywood!" Add "basic math" to the list of things that FOX has ruined. Jim tells the camera, "Thank you. You will not be disappointed." Well, that depends what your expectations are. If you're hoping for thin, mediocre performances, then you can look forward to Jim delivering in spades. Melodramatic Announcer melodramatically continues that the ten finalists were all moved into a giant mansion in Los Angeles and the stage altered to accommodate a live audience. We see clips of the house and the new stage. He melodramatically concludes, "One by one, they will sing. One by one, you will vote. And week after week, one by one they will go, until only one is left: The American Idol." I would hardly call jamming up the phone lines for two hours hitting redial as voting "one by one." And also, two people are getting voted off after tonight's performance. But nice try at the repetitive poetics.

Credits. I guess I was wrong when I stated that we wouldn't be seeing The Octagon of Judgment anymore. It looks like this "new" stage has been built around The Octagon. I suspect that the seating had been there all along, but they never showed that part of the studio before. They've added wings and runways and various bells and whistles to turn the tiny cabaret into a modest-sized auditorium. The color scheme is dominated by purple and blue. The monitor behind the stage has been upgraded about three sizes to dominate the back wall. There are holes all over the stage to hide equipment and serve as an "orchestra pit," though I doubt there's any such thing on the show, but I'll get to that later.

Black and Decker walk out from the back of the stage to The Octagon of Judgment to the cheers of a packed house. Ryan "Joystick" Seacrest is wearing a charcoal suit with a white shirt and no tie. Brian "I Can't Get To You" Dunkleman is wearing a black suit with a violet shirt and no tie. I'm bitterly disappointed with their boring attire. Also, Ryan seems to have stolen Jim's glasses. They greet the crowd, which seems to be about 90 percent teenage girls. And a bunch of them brought American flags to wave. Or rather, they were handed American flags by the producers and told to wave them on the show. Black and Decker blather about the new stage features and "full orchestral arrangements," which is absolutely not the same as the live "orchestra" they promised last episode. I'm fairly certain that all the music has been pre-recorded. If there were musicians performing live there, I can't imagine why they would hide them in the pit. It's not like a Broadway play, where a band could distract from the action or anything. It would actually enhance the idea of a big production. But, you know, if you just record the music, you don't have to pay the musicians evening rates or whatever.

Black and Decker crack an unfunny joke and nobody laughs. I highlight that last sentence and make a macro out of it. Blah blah blah votecakes. Black and Decker explain to the voters that "this isn't Survivor." Yeah, on Survivor, the winner of the contest walks out with a million dollars, whereas on this show, one of the judges will walk out with a million dollars, and the "winner" will likely be filing for bankruptcy in three years. Anyway, what Black and Decker meant is that, just as in rounds, you vote for the contestants you like most, not for the contestants you wish to go away. This week, the two contestants with the fewest votes will be eliminated, while only one will be dropped per week in the future until there are only two left for the final showdown.

Finally, it's time to introduce the kids. They all file out onstage one by one to the cheers of the crowd. I'll save sartorial observations for when each contestant performs, but I will mention that I actually laughed out loud when EJay walked out. Also, the boys seem to have developed a serious aversion to sleeves somewhere in the course of the past week. After the kids make their way out, Black and Decker explain that there will be "themes" for each week's performances from now on. Tonight's theme is "Motown." That's not so much a "theme" as a "gigantic chunk of American pop-music history." It's like describing "The Nineteenth Century" as a "theme" in a literature class. Black and Decker crack an unfunny joke and nobody laughs.

Now it's time to introduce the judges, as the kids file back offstage to prepare for their performance. Randy "You Haven't Done Nothin'" Jackson "yo, man"s one of his typical greetings and gives some nonsense about "America" being behind him. The crowd cheers. I don't even pay attention to what Paula "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" Abdul says, because directly behind her in the front row of the audience are several young women wearing T-shirts with Simon "Stubborn Kind Of Fellow" Cowell's face on them. When they introduce Simon, the women directly behind him cheer, but the rest of the audience boos, like they were told to do by producers before the show began. Black and Decker even make the kids shout out a second round of boos. I wonder how many calories I can burn just by rolling my eyes for about ten minutes. ["After watching this sequence, I myself was suddenly wearing a size six." -- Sars] Brian asks Simon how much he had to pay those girls to wear those shirts. Probably far less than Brian has to pay a girl to take hers off. Simon gestures to the girls, but doesn't really give much by way of a response.

The shirt blather serves as a segue to a discussion about contestant fashion. Black and Decker crack an unfunny joke about their clothing and nobody laughs. The kids have a new sponsor, a [product-placed] credit card company, which allegedly gave the kids $2,000 a piece for a shopping spree. Insert time-wasting flashback montage of the kids shopping. Pictures of the [product-placed] credit cards. People try on shoes. A.J. swirls around to the camera and caresses the collar of his jacket. That boy's got a collar fetish or something. He probably masturbates on top of a pile of vintage '70s shirts. Kelly, Tamyra, and Christina all walk out to discover they're all wearing the same outfit. Ha, hacough. Justin (Eeeeeeee!) stands there wearing a see-through shirt. And yes, we get to see his skinny, chicken chest. Those of you who are turned on by that sort of thing can feel free to drool. He jokes that the shirt is more of a "Ryan Seacrest" thing. More shots of the [product-placed] cards as the kids learn how to be good shills. I find it amusing to imagine that instead of free money, that actually were given credit cards with $2,000 limits, and in two months time, they're going to get bills in the mail demanding payments with 19.9% financing.

Back to the stage, where Black and Decker crack an unfunny joke about Ryan's nipples and nobody laughs. It's time to get on the business of the actual performances. First up tonight is Ryan "What's Goin' On" Starr. Now that they've all made it to the final ten, the show makes an effort to go back and tell us a bit more about each kid in a little clip show. We're informed that Ryan is a "quintessential California girl," which doesn't sound much like a compliment, and I actually like California. Ryan drives down the Pacific Coast Highway in a jeep. She carries a surfboard out on a beach. She wears a wetsuit and carries the surfboard around at the water's edge, but we don't actually see her surf at all. In her strangely deep voice, she explains that likes to go the beach because of the peacefulness and the serenity. Her clothing never gets mauled by wild animals there. We see the Gap-esque clothing store where she worked prior to the show. She wears normal, unsavaged clothes in the workplace. One of her co-workers says that they were surprised to see Ryan's confident personality on stage, because she's "such a dork" at the store. Only a good friend would say something like that about you on national television. Ryan admits that "she's not cool at all" and reaffirms that she's a big dork. The overall impression from watching Ryan's profile is that she's Keanu Reeves's female counterpart.

Black and Decker introduce Ryan to the stage and inform us that she'll be singing "If You Really Love Me." Her outfit is typically bizarre. She's wearing a belly-baring black top and red low-slung jeans. Her outfit is "accented" with a black-and-white striped bowtie tied on to her right shoulder, with others tied at points down her arm. She's also wearing a black-and-white striped shirtless collar with a red bowtie attached to the front, like an Art Deco Chippendale.

She walks out singing, and I'm immediately distracted by the awful, awful CGI graphics scrolling across the giant monitor. It looks like a camera panning down the bridge of a guitar, while music notes flutter about here and there. Flying toasters would look more professional. A scrolling purple marquee screensaver with the performer's name in 500-point Comic Sans MS would look more professional. A blank screen would look more professional. And even worse, the whole CGI animation is about five seconds long and just keeps recycling and recycling and recycling.

Anyway, Ryan's singing. She's her typical confident self with her booming voice. However, this song really highlights how limited her range is. She's just stuck down on the whiskey-voiced end of the scale. She sings lower than all the boys. When she gets to the chorus, we also discover that there are phantom back-up singers in the recording. Ryan's voice just gets lost in the brass and back-up singers. It's not that she's not loud enough. It's just that she's just at this pitch that blends in with the other singers. If she doesn't make it as a solo act, I think she could have a great career as a back-up singer. That doesn't sound like much of a compliment, but the world needs back-up singers, too.

The crowd cheers after her performance. Somebody holds up a sign that reads, "Ryan is a Starr." The judges are now sitting directly in front of The Octagon to render their opinions. Nobody says anything we haven't heard before. Randy says she ran out of steam a little bit toward the end, and Paula observes that she got a little bit behind the music, but they both loved the performance. Simon says that he thinks Ryan has grown throughout the competition and that she "looks like a star." So, compliments all around.

Ryan dorkily runs over to a little set-up on the left wing of the stage where Black and Decker have a spot for post-performance interviews. Not that they ever have anything of interest to add. How does Ryan like performing before a live audience? She loves it. Host Ryan skeevily asks Contestant Ryan how many celebrities have hit on her since she appeared on the show. Contestant Ryan says "none," because leering Brian doesn't count as a celebrity. Black and Decker say that "that will probably change tonight," like having a celebrity drool all over you is automatically a good thing. We're not all starfuckers like you are, Host Ryan. Pun unintended. Ryan starts to leave, but Black and Decker have her sit back down as they toss it to commercials, so Brian can stare at her chest for a little while longer.

And then there's the singing. It's really bad, even for Jim. He's off-pitch, he's flat, he's got no breath control and no flow. To my ear, he doesn't possess a single quality we would associate with a good musical performance. I don't even like this song and generally can't stand Lionel Richie, but man, I'd listen to him sing this for six hours straight rather than endure another minute of Jim. I can sing this song better than Jim, and I can't even sing. He has even less stage presence than R.J. His eyebrows wander around his forehead of their own accord as Jim mugs and tilts his head. The crowd is just sitting there, for the most part. A couple of girls are waving their hands in the air, but there's no cheering. If this were Amateur Night at the Apollo, he'd be getting booed off the stage. They don't even have enough money to buy new screensavers for each contestant. Jim gets the same pool surface graphic that Nikki got.

Five girls stand and cheer for Jim following his performance. The rest of the audience just claps politely. You know that's not a good sign. You can tell from Jim's resigned facial expression that even he knows it was awful. Randy starts by giving some big, long speech about how they're trying to find the best talent in America. Isn't it enough that we've got the narrator and Black and Decker reminding us of this after every commercial break? We know! We're watching! Also, the best talent in America didn't even show up for this contest, because they're too busy actually working to make their dreams come true, instead of hoping it gets handed to them in a contest. Randy starts blathering about working with Whitney and Mariah, but Simon interrupts him with a loud snore, because he doesn't like anybody getting more attention than him. Randy's point is that Jim was really, really, really bad. The crowd boos, even though they all really thought it sucked, too. Paula, of course, is an idiot, and tells Jim that he "doesn't have to take it" from Randy, like there's anything Jim could possibly do about it. She gives this utterly incoherent speech comparing the contest to the Olympics, and contends that Jim is an Olympian. Whatever. Have you ever watched the people who are sixteenth place in figure skating in the Olympics? They can't even cross the ice without falling down. It's hardly a compliment, and it's also stupid, and just shut up, Paula. I never liked you when you had an actual musical career, and I like you even less now. I think I liked you the most when I had never heard of you. She concludes that this wasn't Jim's "golden moment," but he should still be proud of himself. Simon picks up where Paula's Olympic comparison left off and points out that the two people before him ran the musical equivalent of 100 meters in ten seconds, while Jim ran it in five minutes. Simon says that he's sure Jim is a nice enough guy, but they're looking for a star, and Jim just isn't it. Jim bobs his head in resignation and thanks them for their comments.

He heads over to Black and Decker, who try to pretend that Simon and Randy are the only people who thought Jim's performance sucked. They ask him if the repeat criticism from Simon and Randy even means anything to him anymore. Jim answers that their opinions do matter to him. He concludes that he wants to please everyone, but sometimes, "you can't win 'em all." I think he kind of knows that he's toast.

Commercials. When we return, Black and Decker repeat for us that tonight's theme is Motown and blah blah blah votecakes. up is Kelly "Mustang Sally" Clarkson. In her clip show, we see Kelly goofing off in her tiny hometown in Texas. Clearly fame hasn't gone to Kelly's head. I don't think it's possible for fame to go to Kelly's head. She's got some sort of hormone in her cerebrum that blocks fame from passing into her brain cells. She tells us how her friends still all see her as the girl who would show up at school wearing her pajamas because she just got out of bed. Kelly hangs out at a creek that reminds me of the time some friends and I went canoeing out in rural Missouri and ended up stuck in a campground full of neo-Nazis. Anyway, one of her friends tells us how she showed up for school one day and forgot her shoes because she was running late. Kelly tosses around the football in the creek with some friends and makes silly faces for the camera and generally acts pleasantly goofy. She insists that her friends and family are the most important things to her.

Kelly heads out to The Octagon to sing "You're All I Need To Get By." She's wearing the exact same burgundy corset that Angela Peel wore in the semi-finals. Her dress, though, is longer and frillier, though it's still black and has a leg-revealing slit in one side. She also has huge, black lacy sleeves that hang down, kind of like those that Tamyra usually wears.

Man, Kelly's got such a big voice. It sounds so strange coming out of her body. Like Ryan, she's still got her whisky-sounding belting qualities; however, Kelly's got a much better range and is capable of working her way up to hit some big power notes. She definitely doesn't get lost in the phantom back-up singers. Her stage presence is okay, but she seems a little stiff. Not as a bad as R.J. or Jim or anything, but not as good as Ryan.

The crowd cheers loudly for her performance, and a few people rise to their feet. She heads up to the front of the stage for the judges' comments. Randy starts the way he usually does, by repeating the contestant's name about six times, then calling her "man," before getting to his actual comments. Randy tells her she sounds brilliant. Paula says that the public has really embraced Kelly's personality, dorkiness and all. She loves Kelly's personality, her spirit, and her voice. Kelly jokingly covers her ears when it turns to Simon's turn. Simon tells Kelly that she's "raised the game" for the other contestants. Kelly looks shocked at the compliment. I don't think she has to worry about Simon forgetting who she is any more. Simon concludes by absolutely butchering a Texas accent in telling her, "Y'all did a great job."

Kelly rushes over to Black and Decker, where they briefly mock Simon's sorry attempt at an accent. Brian interviews Kelly while staring at her breasts. Seriously, he does. He mentions that she's been "quarantined" at their group house. Apparently, Kelly gave this whole kick-ass performance while suffering from laryngitis. Wow. You really could not tell, but that might have been why she wasn't so active on stage if she had to concentrate more than usual to hit the notes. She and the contestants prayed over her voice, et cetera, because she claims it was totally gone yesterday. She calls the performance a miracle. Let's not go that far. And apparently they must have some extra time, because they drag out the interview to try to get Paula to give some more comments about how Kelly has "grown" in the competition. Here's a suggestion for future shows, guys: Let the kids sing the whole song. Paula calls Kelly a "pistol" and has an "aura of energy" about her. She even invokes Simon's X-Factor to describe Kelly. And they're still stalling for time, so they invite some guy in the audience who apparently has a crush on Kelly to come give her a hug. This geeky boy rushes up on stage, and she obliges him with a hug. Then he gets down on one knee and kisses her hand. Everybody cheers. She gives him another hug before he runs back down to the audience. Black and Decker finally send us off to commercials.

When we return, Black and Decker blather on about the voting. God, just shut up. up is A.J. "All I Could Do Was Cry" Gil. In his clip show, we meet A.J.'s mom and nine siblings. A.J. is wearing a giant crucifix on his necklace to try to convince us that he's not of the undead. His efforts are hampered by the fact that he's wearing a heavy black turtleneck sweater outdoors on a hot summer day. His mother tells us that A.J.'s shy. Black and Decker narrate that A.J.'s dad is a traveling minister, leaving A.J. behind as the "man of the house." God, how I hate that phrase. Like Mom really needs her teenage son's help running the house just because he has a penis. It's all so very 7th Heaven. A.J. says that his mom prayed for a good performance from him, and for A.J. to be able to attend one of Dad's sermons without bursting into flame.

A.J. heads out to The Octagon to sing "My Cherie Amour." The closed captioning calls it "My Sharee Amour." Idiots. A.J.'s wearing this hideous black jacket with (of course) a giant collar and yellow stripes that look like they're actually just strips of tape, and a pair of dark blue jeans. He falls behind the music with the opening "la la"s and is a little flat. Not a good start. He gets the same awful musical note screensaver background that Ryan did. His singing is definitely better than it was in the semifinals and he seems a little bit more comfortable on stage, but he's still terribly blah. He also can't hold a note steady. He trills everything. He plays to the cameras and pretty much ignores the audience.

Still, he gets plenty of cheers for his performance, and a few folks in the audience rise to their feet. Randy starts off the judging by commenting that A.J's performance was "very nice," but didn't really blow him away like some of the other singers'. Paula never ceases to amaze me with the witlessness of her comments. She compliments A.J.'s ugly outfit. Well, I suppose after seeing the cloned outfits of R.J. and Jim and the walking disaster that was Eeeh-Jae, A.J. does look dressed like an actual guy his age. Paula points out that A.J. had trouble staying in time with the arrangement, but compliments his "nice, pure voice." She agrees with Randy that perhaps it wasn't his best performance. She starts saying, "But you did a real, real--" and Simon interrupts here to finish, "Good job?" Paula denies that that was what she was going to say, then stammers around for five minutes because she was totally going to say "good job" and now she can't think of anything else. So she insists that she was going to say that this was the second-best performance she's heard from A.J. So she was going to say, "You did a real, real second-best performance"? Shut up, Paula. Simon smiles and tells A.J. that he thinks he's a nice person and hopes that he achieves his dreams. But everybody knows the "but" is coming and it's going to be a doozy. They actually cut to some woman in the audience who is wincing in anticipation of what Simon is going to say . No idea whether or not she's any relation to A.J., because there's no captioning. Simon says that he cares "passionately" about who is going to win this contest, because stripper girlfriends are expensive to keep, and he needs to make sure he signs a good cash cow. He insists that he wants the "audience to be proud" of whoever wins the competition, whatever the hell that means. It's not like we're all his vocal coaches or anything. All we do is press buttons on a phone. Anyway, he says that, based on A.J.'s performance tonight, if he were to win, it would be "a disaster." The audience boos, and Paula once again insists that A.J. "doesn't have to take that" from Simon. And what are his alternatives? I repeat: Shut up, Paula.

A.J. heads over to Black and Decker, who repeat Simon's comments. They ask A.J. if he thinks he "proved" himself to the American public. A.J. responds, "No, I agree that I don't deserve to win this contest. I encourage all of you at home to vote for Justin or Tamyra or one of the other singers." Really, what do they think A.J. is going to say? He says that he hopes so. He makes some big speech about nobody seeing his performance in Pasadena on the show, and I haven't got a clue what he means; Paula did mention that his performance there was his best, so maybe he's worried that the voters haven't seen his best singing. He concludes that he respects Simon's opinions and they'll just have to see what the voters decide. With that illuminating piece of information, Black and Decker send us off to more commercials.

When we return, it's time for our last contestant, Christina "Three Times A Lady" Christian. In her clip show, we learn that Christina is a product of South Florida's Caribbean culture. We see her sipping coconut milk directly out of a coconut. She explains this to us, because we don't know what a coconut is, I guess. Christina's parents are from Trinidad, and it looks like the entire Christian family has been given free rein to swim as much as they like in the "pretty" end of the gene pool. Her father (I'm assuming) says they knew that she would be a star from the moment she was born. Wow. No pressure there. Christina sits photogenically at the edge of some pond and babbles about all her friends thinking she's a star, even though she insists that she's the same old Christina she's always been. I wish one of these kids would say something like, "Yeah, I'm a big star now, and I'm going back home to rub it everybody's face." Just for variety's sake.

Christina hits the stage to sing "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." She's wearing a paisley-print, belly-baring peasant blouse and a full-length denim dress that's a little too tight in the thigh area, making it a little hard for her to walk down the ramp to the front of the stage. Whose dumb idea was it to design the stage so that the performers all have to walk down an incline to get to The Octagon? It's almost as though they actually want somebody to fall down. Never mind, I think I just answered my own question.

Christina's singing, fortunately, has much less bleating than it normally does. But there's still just too much. Her voice does sound stronger than it has in the past, anyway. If she could just get rid of the vibrato, I'd probably actually enjoy listening to her. Her stage presence isn't much to speak of, particularly in comparison to the other female contestants. She just kind of stands there and rotates around to sing to various parts of the audience. Of course, I don't think she can go bouncing around the stage much in that dress, anyway. Out in the audience, Paula and Randy dance together while the rest of the audience stands and claps. Christina gets evergreen trees as her background graphic.

The audience continues to stand and cheer for Christina when she's done. Randy loved Christina's performance and her outfit. He asks her if she was nervous. She responds that the clapping crowd made her feel more comfortable. Paula says that Christina's a beautiful girl with tons of poise and quiet confidence. Why doesn't anybody ever talk about her singing? When they get to Simon, he admits that he has a "crush" on Christina, which explains why he doesn't ever seem to notice the flaws in her singing. Simon says that Christina's obviously such a nice person, and he hopes that she does well because it proves that "a nice person can be a pop star as well." Add another mark to the Contradictory Comments From Simon scorecard. Didn't he bitch that they were all too nice to each other? I guess Christina gets to be nice because Simon has a crush on her. And nobody commented on her singing at all.