American Idol S02E08

First of all, nobody seems to know what the actual name of this special is. Throughout the regular shows last week, Ryan was calling it "The Best And The Worst." It was even labeled as such on the cue cards. The commercials and TV Guide, however, refer to it as "The Best Of The Worst." Considering that we don't see any "best" tonight, I'm guessing the second title is probably correct.

Ryan "Skinny" Seacrest greets us solo atop the Seal of Tsathoggua. He insists that the title is "And Worst," even though the promo just before the show said "Of The Worst." He's dressed in cheap-looking clothes that probably cost at least $500. He tells us that this show is about some of the "great" singers who didn't make it all the way to the semifinals, so clearly they weren't all that great. But more than that, it's an opportunity for us to wallow maliciously in the awfulness of all the bad performers that the show's producers milked for all they were worth and then cast aside like used condoms. I guess they had to put some good performers in or else this show would be classified as a form of torture by the Geneva Convention and they wouldn't be allowed to air it.

We'll start with the "good" in Los Angeles. Simon "Jackass" Cowell enjoyed Carrie Hunt's rendition of "God Bless America" nearly as much as he enjoyed the fact that she was thin, pretty, and eighteen. But then in Glendale, she moved from the "best" to the "worst" category with a wretchedly out of tune rendition of "Don't Cry Out Loud." Simon tells her back in Glendale that she's "lost something." Yeah, she probably was never that good a singer and practiced three songs for months to get good at them, and then her plan came tumbling down when she was given something new to sing.

Just as they did in the audition episodes, the show uses Carrie's patriotic song to transition to some awful auditions. We get a montage of various guys butchering "The Star-Spangled Banner" with their nasal voices. We've already seen most of them, except for David Gavin, who sounds like a middle-aged female gospel singer, except without any talent. Play ball!

In some thrown-together interview, Randy "Say My Name" Jackson whines about how awful it would be to listen to these folks singing the national anthem at a ball game. Then he asks somebody off-camera if he remembers some girl in Miami. Gee, not only are we getting bad, awkward auditions, we're getting bad, awkward transitions, too. He says the girl sounded like she was gargling while riding a sheep. Ah, he's talking about Monica Songok, whom they've already shown. She's the one with the super-mega-extra-vibrato. Yeah, she was really bad. Then Randy "Yo, dawg, yo!"s us over to Detroit to some guy who sang like a he was a car trying to get started. That would be Michael Quinchett, whom we haven't seen yet. Yeah, not only does he have a vibrato, but he can't seem to even hold that steady and vibratos his way up and down an entire octave. Randy tells us that if we combined those two, we'd get Dino from Los Angeles. Dino was the guy who butchered "The Greatest Love Of All." We get to "enjoy" his whole performance again, even the part where he stopped, and the judges were speechless, so he began singing again. He begins laughing when he's done, like he totally knows this all sucked and he was only doing it to be on television or whatever.

Commercials. Oliver Beene: Hey, let's take Malcolm In The Middle and set it during the '50s! It's doomed.

When we return, Paula "I Go Wild" Abdul tells us about some guy named Antorey Clark that she liked in the initial auditions. He sang Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" at the original auditions. His singing's good, but he dances awkwardly and makes strange grunting sounds in the audition. Then, since Paula is nearly incapable of criticizing a male contestant unless his singing actually causes her physical pain, they have to have Randy tells us how Antorey fell apart in Glendale. He styled his hair strangely -- Randy describes the knots he put in his hair as "Mickey Mouse ears" -- and apparently lost the ability to enunciate words. His performance in Glendale was an incomprehensible mess. Simon calls it "a nightmare." Randy says that Antorey was okay with the Motown, but he had nothing if you took that music away.

Then Simon is saddled with the awkward transition by telling us, "Then again, Motown isn't for everyone." This sends off on some wacky Saturday Night Live-esque commercial parody of an album compilation. In this case, the "album" is a collection of bad Motown song auditions, featuring a bunch of contestants we've already seen. I just love that girl with the femullet and the black cocktail gown butchering "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" with a Muppet voice. Two creepy-looking boys, who each personifies the adjective "homunculus-like" in his own special way, take turns butchering "My Girl." The "commercial" ends with an offer of a bonus track that looks like it features Freddie Prinze Jr. in giant coke-bottle glasses butchering "I Just Called To Say I Love You."

In an interview, Randy whines about having to listen to these bad auditions all day. Yes, it must have been really hard for all the production people who actually had to listen to them all and picked only a handful of the bad ones to come before the judges. Shut up, Randy. This all serves as a transition to bad performers who butcher the lyrics. They include captioning on the bottom of the screen, but the captions are of what the contestants are actually singing, not the real lyrics. Some guy sings, "Can you hear it in ma voids? Roses something I listed. Does the whole world nohawaowawow" Et cetera. Somebody else screws up some other lyrics while singing as though he's Omar White on speed. Randy comes back to tell us the bad contestants butcher the melodies, too. Well, that's pretty much the case with all the bad auditions. That's not really a "special segment." They show the girl who sang "Unchained Melody" and took two hours as an example. They show the same seasons-changing clip show they did last time. This show probably cost $50 to produce and they're going to rake in millions from the advertising. I'll bet it's taking me more time to write this recap than it took for them to edit this clip show together.

And then there's Edgar again, to give us all nightmares! Edgar and his screeching and crying and freaky gesticulating. He was rejected and then lied that he was going to Hollywood. But then he ups the ante from Stefanie Sugarman, the crazy cheese lady from last season. Unshown until now, Edgar flew himself out to the Pasadena auditions and changed his hairstyle, all in another doomed attempt to make it to the round. He's interviewed by Kristin Holt and tells about fifteen lies about not being able to audition last time and where he lives and yadda yadda yadda. The show helpfully includes a lie-detector buzzer to indicate to us each time he lies. This whole segment is the saving grace of the entire special. Onstage, he sings another Enrique Iglesias song in Spanish. Some folks on the forums say the song is titled "Mentiroso," which is Spanish for "liar." That would have been the perfect joke with which to end this segment, but clearly nobody bothered to research anything about the song. Edgar isn't any better a performer in Spanish than he is in English. He sings like he's crying, but he's not. He flails his arms around. He shouts the words instead of singing. He's crazy and needs professional help. Simon tells Edgar that his music is painful. Edgar responds, "Isn't that what music's about?" Uh? Simon responds, "No! It's supposed to be about enjoyment, not misery." Unless, of course, misery is your source of enjoyment, which is the entire purpose of this special. He's rejected yet again.

Commercials. Oh great, those twits on Joe Millionaire are now going to try to convince us that the relationship is real. Give it up. That never worked for The Bachelor, and it's not going to work here.

When we return, Paula is whining to us about how rude Simon can be. She does cogently point out that Simon does that trick to make him seem less insulting by starting out saying, "I'm not trying to be rude," or "Don't take this the wrong way," which, as everybody knows, is a precursor to saying something rude. They have a clip show of Simon telling about fifteen people that they suck. God, it reminds me of going out to the bars. Which is why I don't anymore. Of course, it's not like I have any choice anymore out here in the middle of the desert. Paula blathers on that sometimes Simon goes too far and Paula has to step in to make an utter fool of herself, which relieves the contestant's embarrassment. She doesn't say that, but that's what actually happens.