World Idol , Part I

We open with a clip montage of London (Airports! Buildings! Birds! Speedboats! Ferris wheels! Desperate young people who want to be famous forever and ever!) as a couple of Brits voice over that Idol winners from eleven different nations have arrived here to compete for the title of "World Idol."

Ew. I thought the opening credits for American Idol were cheap. It looks like they just wrote out "World Idol" on a piece of paper, scanned it in, and used Photoshop to make it look a bit shiny. After a brief glimpse of a world map, it switches into the well-known opening of the liquid metal transsexual.

Oh my. This stage is hysterical. It's like the set for the last iteration of American Bandstand mated with the set for the late kids' game show, Fun House. Don't ask me why I know that show. I thought J.D. was hot. Shut up. The set, combined with the somewhat grainy filming and the really bad clothes and coifs in the audience, makes me feel as though I've gone back in time to the '80s and am watching television at about 2 PM on Saturday.

And now your hosts, Marilyn McCoo and Andy Gibb. No, not really. The hosts are Ant and Dec (short for Anthony and Declan), the duo who hosted the original British incarnation of the show. Ant looks like he's about 60 percent head, but they're both more entertaining and less pathetic and self-absorbed than Ryan Seacrest, so I can live with it. Apparently, viewers in various countries got different taped hosts, making me wonder exactly who Ryan Seacrest pissed off. I wonder if it's a whole Joan Rivers/Tonight Show thing where he didn't tell them he was getting his own syndicated talk show and now they're furious with him. Or maybe he's in rehab. Or getting plastic surgery. Or had an accident with the tanning shower and now he glows in the dark. Whatever. Ant and Dec tromp down on stage to a cheering audience. They greet everybody and explain the history of the show, apologizing for their responsibility in making Simon Cowell a household name. They've adapted the show for twenty-two different countries so far. You're , Mongolia! Ant and Dec introduce the eleven contestants down on the stage, as the audience cheers some more. I'll save the details for each performance, although I'm sure the folks in the many nations with various differing cultures in the Middle East just love being referred to like a single country called "Pan-Arabic Region." After each contestant, we get to see their allies (or maybe just Brits bribed to wave their flags) in the audience. England's representative, Will Young, gets the most cheers, of course. He's still got that awful mullet.

Oh, and we get eleven judges, too. Why, it's 3.times the pointless conflict disguised as entertainment! Ant and Dec introduce them all to us: Zak Werner from Canada, wearing the finest car seat money can buy; Kuba Wojewodzski from Poland, whowellI don't want to give it all away now; Elias Rahbani, the "Pan Arab" judge, who smiles and pretends it's not insulting to have his national identity stripped from him; Nina De Man from Belgium, who is terribly pretty, even with the Lisa Loeb glasses, and is my second-favorite judge; Jan Fredrik Karlsen from Norway, who has '60s Beatles hair; Henkjan Smits from Holland, who gives us all a thumbs-up to indicate how many minutes of screen time he's probably going to get; Ian Dickson from Australia, who has '70s Beatles post-break-up hair; Randall Abrahams from South Africa, looking a bit like Bryant Gumbel at some angles; Shona Fraser from Germany, who by smiling threatens to destroy the world with her overbite; Peter Waterman from the United Kingdom, looking far too normal to be here; and Simon Cowell, representing the United States, because why even have the contest at all if nobody's going to be humiliated? Simon is the only one to get booed. He's also in the last spot so that he can get the last word.

Ant and Dec then explain the rules to us. You vote for the one you like most. Unless the one you like most is from your own country. Each contestant is assumed to win his or her own country and gets the maximum number of "points." Otherwise, each contestant would win his or her country of origin and only his or her country of origin, causing an eleven-way tie. Well, it's possible the German contestant wouldn't win his own country, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Dec reminds us that there's a whole world outside of America, believe it or not. Jeez, Dec, we're not stupid -- we need the rest of the world to keep our labor costs down and our military contractors in Porsches. Anyway, melodramatic soap opera music plays as Ant and Dec inform us that we'll have to vote for a non-American. Or just not vote at all, which is also a very American thing to do.

Finally, it's time to start the contest. The first contestant is Alexander Klaws. For each contestant, we get a little clip show to explain how he or she won. Alexander apparently won Germany over with his boy-band looks and comprehensive rejection of shirt sleeves. But he had to overcome his competition, some young woman who looks like a back-up singer in an old Pat Benatar video. She's singing "99 Luft Balloons" on stage in a red t-shirt and black-and-white-striped tight-fitting pants. Wait! The hosts narrate that this is a guy! Named Daniel. I just don't know what to say. Everything about him -- voice, looks, hair, clothes -- screams "girl trapped forever in the '80s." But Daniel didn't win, because they wouldn't want somebody getting up there on the international stage and embarrassing Germany or anything. Cough.

So Alexander comes out to the stage in a burgundy sleeveless shirt (and matching armbands) and jeans to sing "Maniac." I thinkI think this show has sent me back in time. Where did these parachute pants come from? Look, it's my old red-and-white [product-placed cola] sweater, which was all the rage back around 1987. I'm going to go buy a six-pack of Tab and then go see Back to the Future so I can hear jokes about Pepsi Free. And learn how time travel works so I can go steal a DeLorean and find a way to get myself back home to 2003.

And what is there to say about Alexander's performance, other than that it has the power to turn back time? It's awful. He prances about the stage, snapping his right hand around like a Jet looking for a Shark to dance menacingly at. It's mostly shouting and hardly any singing, which is my recollection of the original as well, so good work there, Alexander. If the show were judging armpits, I think Alex would be a top contender, but otherwise, not a chance. He's wearing those headset microphones that normally signify to me that the performer is lip-syncing (hey there, Britney), but sadly he's not. There's a lot of pointing and wiggling and prancing. It's so wonderfully terrible. Christopher Guest is probably having an orgasm watching this. There are fireworks during this number. Sparks shooting up from the front of the stage. Let's hope none of them land on Alexander's gelled hair, causing a recreation of Michael Jackson's accident back in the '80s.

After the awful is over, we cut back to some dressing room, where Kelly Clarkson pretends she's watching these performances as they're happening and commenting on them. Kelly diplomatically says she thinks Alexander was great and would do well onstage or in the theater. Where he won't ever be accidentally inflicted on anybody stuck in an elevator or listening to the radio in the car.

Back onstage, we get a handful of specially selected judges' comments designed to influence our votes. Yay! Henkjan says Alexander danced around like a male stripper and didn't hit the notes. Ian says he doesn't want anyone to ever tell him that the Germans don't have a sense of humor. The audience laughs at this comment, but they clearly don't understand what it means, because when he says Alexander's performance was "a comedy routine," the audience gasps. Shona, the German judge, defends Alexander, suggesting that there's too much testosterone on the jury (what the hell does that mean?), and they weren't really paying attention to his performance, and he picked a hard, up-tempo song, and he had a cold, and his grandmother died, and he missed his bus, and his dog ate his homework. Simon starts, typically, "Okay, without being rude, it was terrible." Sometimes I'd like to be a judge just so I can say, "It was terrible, and I'm totally being rude about it. Bite me." Simon suggests that it was Alexander's personality (read: boy-band looks) that got him to this point. Alexander interrupts to give the "I only have two minutes so you all can't get to see the real me" excuse, which falls on deaf ears around the world. You're singing, not asking us out. Alexander heads over to Ant and Dec, who have those mysterious drinking fountain stools from the first season. Those things look uncomfortable. They ask Alexander if he's enjoying London. He is. Everything's great. Look at my armpits! The audience cheers him, and Ant and Dec give the number to call if you want to have a good time with Alex.