Knock It Off (The Box)

Tuesday

Ryan recaps: It started with 193 people going to "Hollywood" for the "chance of a lifetime," and then there were three days of grueling challenges, such as singing a song, and dancing around, and making Elizabeth Pha feel like shit. Now only 75 remain -- but the journey is far from over. Tonight there will be "a battle on center stage" with one last chance. Your purple prose? Just gives you away. I know that the whole deal with this show is making us all into tiny Regina Brookses that totally might die if we don't find out right now who gets cut and who will make it and all that, but it's just so tiring every time. Twice a week? Makes it harder to care, especially since I barely remember any of the people I'm supposed to be rooting for in the first place. Sarah Mather and Lindsey Cardinale are different people, right? And tonight they're engaging in a battle on center stage for their one last chance?

So after that, we learn what it actually means: that all the people are in four rooms, and two of the rooms are going into yet another round tomorrow night to determine the Final 24, so really, what are we going to call that? A battle to the death on center stage? How can we get more topspin on that? Oh, right. An Evil Chair. Anyhow, we see some people in the four rooms -- this strung-out-looking dude, John Zisa, Cardinale, Scott Savol, Kurtis, Sharon Galvez, Mikalah, some long-haired guy that might be Bo Bice.

Wait, so it's just them in four rooms? And then some of them go through and some go home? So this episode should be like four minutes long, right? Wrong. Because we're totally going into a flashback.

That morning� It was totally crazy! It was "a mixture of anxiety and nervous anticipation." Also mixed in there were: some distress, a soupcon of trepidation, a liter of apprehension, worry all up out the joint, and some uneasy uneasiness. Not to mention redundancy. We see that strung-out guy again, now in the context of both anxiety and nervous anticipation. Jennifer Todd goes more into depth with Ryan about -- you guessed it -- how nervous everybody is right now. She can totally feel it coming from everybody. They're really nervous, you guys. Are you nervous? I'm nervous. Mixed with anxious trepidation.

Constantine, Anwar, that lamb-voiced bleating stripper girl with the dark gamine hair and horrific shiny eye shadow who I swear I saw once on Taxicab Confessions making out with her stripper friend. She bleats about how "it takes a lot out of you emotionally." Clich�s in such brain-crushing amounts tonight, and I'm just getting angrier and angrier. Crooner Ross, Jaclyn, people losing their voices, people having throat discomfort. Mikalah, who is not "packing her bags." Mikalah singing in the bathroom. She's just got to keep pushing all the time, it's exhausting to watch. Stop pushing me, Gordon. Give it a rest. And on a related note, Anwar strikes quite a pose in the foyer.

Now Ryan explains how they got to sing "a song of their choice" a cappella for the judges before they were herded like cattle into their four rooms. But I wonder how "of their choice" they really were, since on this entire show I've only heard either A) songs from junior high or earlier, or B) songs by those people whose are the only albums being sold right now because only old people buy albums, like Josh Groban or Alicia Keys or that girl who doesn't know why she didn't come. Neither of which fit under my "choice," exactly. Well, okay: If I were auditioning for American Idol, I would sing that Helen Reddy song where the girl magically traps the man inside her radio.

Now there's: Ross freaking out, Anwar freaking out, Carrie shaking like a freak and then freaking out, Mario being nervous in a dumbass hat, and then a montage of everybody singing, and the people cheering in the audience, which you know I really like. Quick Jaclyn, Sean McNeill, JP, and Scott (looking utterly deranged, as per usual) filing out of the auditionorium as the judges begin their deliberations. It's like the Sorting Hat, only no matter what, you lose.

Then quick shots of the rooms, and this is ridiculous, because it's totally wrong and fake, and calculated to throw you off, because they're actually intercutting shots from different rooms? So it's like the only purpose of this little bit is to, um, show you that the contestants were, like, in some rooms. The rooms contain Lindsay and Jaclyn holding hands, and I think that Mean Girl that wasn't Carrie, Rachel, and the lovely Rashida, and a cleaned-up Sharon. One room contains Aa'shia, and Jennifer Todd in the same shot. So fucking suspenseful. Another room has JP, Bo -- who is looking a thousand times better -- and Anthony, and another room has Carrie Underwood, and some room has Mario. And the rooms also contain 62 other people, because they're all in one of the four rooms. So basically we're done here.

JP is, of course, freaking out and sweating. There's an alien I've never seen before with blonde hair and a wild look. There's effing Dezmond. Amanda Avila, and Shunta (nicknamed in the forums "Shunta Funkup," which rules), and Jaclyn, who thinks she did okay.

Pointless exposition that it's 6:00 PM, but that's meaningless since we could be in real time, or in a flashback, or the first day of auditions, or D-Day. We've established that once upon a time, at some point, in L.A., it was 6:00 PM. Now we focus on the individual rooms. I swear there's a point at which the rooms switch what number they are, but I couldn't care less, so I don't know when (or for sure that) it happens.

In Room One, they're all reflecting on their American Idol journey. I'd love to join them on that little hell ride, but I've never seen any of them in my life. We flash back to Sharon Galvez in her regular job as a cocktail waitress in the Vegas. She apparently does karaoke on the bar, as part of her job. I don't have a good feeling about that, as a career. Plus, it makes you look kind of like a douche, because like, singing karaoke standing on a bar in Vegas wearing the clothing of a common streetwalker? Shows you want to be a serious performer, like, not at all. She sings here in "Hollywood" that song about our future and how it's our children. I couldn't tell you if it's good. I no longer know what constitutes good singing. Too much of this show too often. It all just sounds like singing to me.

Also in this group is Shunta "Funkup" Werthen, who is wearing an insanely cute white suit and looks like a million bucks. The reason, I figured out, that she looks like such a drag queen is because she has a gigantic face, like her head and the front part of her head are huge, and her features are proportionate to that, and so if you slap on any makeup it all looks as big as the rims on my Impala. The point of makeup is to emphasize features and bring them all into harmony with one another, but since her features and face are so gigantic, she's just like this insect that appears much larger than it really is, when she's got the crazy obnoxious clown lady makeup on. Here? Her features are very distinctive and she has a really big face, and she sounds frigging great, and I like looking at her.

Yuck. Angel Higgs is in this goddamn room. Gross. She got through? But her lover slash student slash felony statutory didn't, remember? She sings, and it's okay, but she's pretty tricksy, as usual. It's so irritating and unearned when people do that that shouldn't. It's like painting your house all bright and pretty but inside there's a dirt floor. She looks cuter than she ever has -- nervous anticipation is good for her, I'd imagine she's used to it -- but she sounds worse. This room is doomed.

Rashida Johnson laughs about her anxiety, play-whining "I want my mommy so bad!" We talk about how she was sick, some more, and then see her sing that awesome rendition of "Baby Come To Me" from Day One, riffing all around the backup voices and sounding just amazing. I've said it before, but she's so great, because she's a creative, intelligent singer. She has a standard of what's played out in terms of trite phrasing, what's expected in those runs and ad-libs, and she does not go beneath it. (Janay Castine, take heed, please.) She sings "Overjoyed," and again misses out due to the comparison with her prior Sexy Phlegm voice, but she is still a really good singer, and incredibly interesting and enjoyable to listen to, because she'll surprise you.

Sean McNeill and his gorgeous smile and that whole thing, how he was the first person and he stole our hearts singing "Isn't She Lovely," back in DC. I was so much younger then, y'all. Flashback-within-the-flashback about how Simon said, "Voice no, personality yes," which is a bummer because I like his voice. But I like the him of him a whole lot more, so maybe Simon's right. Tonight, he sings "Your Song," which is like a personal favor to me, as far as I'm concerned. I love that song. I feel free to tell everybody it's my song, actually. It's very nice, but his voice changes completely for the "hope you don't mind" power part, and not in a good way -- it sounds like he's compensating or going for loudness over control, and actually he's not, but it's not a strong way to go out. In the room of doom, he looks very sleepy. It's cute.

Ryan tells us again about the four rooms, just in case we're too nervous to remember the basics. Simon is gone on a personal matter -- I vaguely remember seeing other seasons with these rooms, and isn't he always absent for this part? Who would want him there for that part anyway, though. I mean, he'd be a dick to the losers, a dick to the winners, and affect complete disinterest either way, and he would do this four times. And he'd steal focus from Paula, and this is kind of her show each year. Especially this year, dude. Dumbly.

So now Paula and Randy are here in Room One and they're totally going to blow your mind with their decision, because you already know this room is out, because it is obvious, because the rooms are: Probably No, Obviously Yes, Absolutely No, and Basket Cases. I'll tell you that right now. So we're knocking out the least dramatic room right away. Everyone in this room commences looking simply hellish. Well, Paula actually looks really cute, she's wearing a little barrette and a white collared shirt with cuffs under a black vest that's kind of like a bustier. It's cute. She looks like a doctor of Vibeology or something. (Paula Abdul, V.D.) She looks like she should have a monocle -- you know, just for fun. So there's silence, but not too terribly long, and then Randy sends them all home.

Paula says a bunch of nonsense as they all deflate like balloons and begin to feel horrible and wander around the room aimlessly. I'm sad that we didn't get to meet many of these people, you know? Because they weren't interesting as winners or losers, because I'm guessing they were too busy being, you know, people. Not good TV, that. Well, mostly: one guy completely loses his shit and lies down in the middle of the floor in this catatonic way. Sean tells us that he's proud of what he's done. Timothy (I think) is kind of bummed, but being cool about it. You know, stuff people do. Compare, please, this room to Room Four. Now that room is good TV.

Okay, Room Two. Delma Jamar -- is this a good sign for this room? -- and how he acted the fool during the group sing, but not as badly as his crackhead brother, who they show blabbering gibberish into the camera. Jamar is going to sing an original song, which he wrote at his grandmother's house. Oh dear. It is called "Shake," and I have written down the lyrics for you, for when you become the American Idol.

Shake shake
Off your problems
If you've got it you can
Shake shake
In the party
Come on won't you
Shake shake
With the lady that you want
You can shake shake
Whoa!

I love that he put his nose to the grindstone and applied some elbow grease and wrote this song, for the day when he'd become a superstar. And I love for some reason the fact that he did all of this hard work in his grandmother's house. Shake shake, Jamar. Oh, and while this is going on, out in the audience this cute boy and girl look at each other and start dancing around, without cracking smiles, and it's hilarious.

Mario Vazquez -- oh, had you forgotten about him for five seconds? Let's rectify that -- was much beloved by Simon in his first audition. Of course. He's all Latin Timberlake and quite talented. He looks so nervous right about now that Seacrest is even like, wow. We meet Ada, his adorable mom, who kept after him and made him practice all the time and just totally loves him and knows he can do whatever he puts his mind to because her baby boy has what it takes and all that. Which is great, especially because he totally does. I'm with Ada. In response to all this mom business, Mario just says he's doing all this because he wants his mother to "have hope." Aw. And Seacrest tells us Mario kind of "went out on a limb today," and before you can even wonder what exactly that means, Mario busts into "Bohemian Rhapsody," as an R&B song, and it's so freaking awesome. I mean, you couldn't really do the whole song without showing your pants, but it's nice to hear the part that he does sing.

Now: an alien. Matthew Kester (23, Hollister MO), one of those contestants they just pull out at the last second without every having shown them for more than a few seconds at a time. I wonder what Hollister, Missouri is like. Is it really dark with a confusing floor plan? Is there scary thumping music there? Is it easy to get lost?

He sings "Unchained Melody," and confirms my suspicions about his home town. It's easy to get lost. And the music is scary. And so too is Matthew. His hair is not concept enough to hit ugly-sexy, which is what he needs to be going for, and could totally hit, if his hair were way more beyond the pale than it is. I always bring up and name-check Udo Kier, he's like my own personal sleazy European congressional filibuster, so I'm not going to do that again, but honestly that's what we're dealing with. The problem isn't that he's teetering on ugly-sexy, the problem is that he's chock full of bling and whatnot. His pageantry is rich and weird and kind of Bobby Trendy-ish. Also he has a weak voice, and no matter what I do, he's not getting any less creepy-looking.

Carrie Underwood rescues fucking stray animals. I don't even know what to do with that information, but I read it in an article today and I felt I had to inflict it on you. Again with that whole "pictures of trees, pictures of stars" bag of bullshit. Remember how last week she forgot the words of "Young Hearts Run Free?" American Idol does, and will serve up that footage piping hot for the I think fourth time in a row in case you forgot! In fact, today's a double whammy because they hit us with both dead horses at once. Today (earlier) she sang some very pleasant country song about letting freedom ring and how today is a day of reckoning. It's nice. She's nice. Clearly.

After, she confabs with Constantine, and it's fairly awesome, because in his own mind he's the anti-Carrie. He's totally legit and she's totally manufactured, he's utterly hep and she's a square, he is a Golden God and she carried a watermelon, and he's in the know while she's painfully out with his hardcore world of botched sex changes and problematic stripper candles. So his congenital smugness has a field day as he explains to her that the comment she misheard ("Hey little momma you knocked it off the box," she giggles) was a positive comment having to do with baseball, and he's a rock star and hardcore and calling bullshit on her Pollyanna routine because he's all too streetwise. So yeah, he's smirky and nasty and has a very Brad Dourif kind of vibe, but Seacrest figures she's probably glad to be in the same room with him now, because of how obvious it is that he'll advance. For whatever reason.

Judd Harris (27, NYC) is unassuming, uninteresting, and never before seen on my TV. He sings "Mustang Sally" and he's awesome, with a booming voice and a nice growl in it back there. He's got those Sal Mineo dark circles and looks like he needs to rest up, but he's hot and unexpected and a good singer. Also in here are David Brown, Anwar, Janay, and Vonzell. Just in case you didn't get it, this room is all good.

Come with us now to Vonzell's life as a mail carrier. Join her in her truck, where she loves the fact that she gets to sing and listen to music all day. Some of the people on her route like to come out and bug her and ask about her musical career. Kickboxer, fashion victim, mail carrier. Awesome singer. There's nothing she can't do! She's got interests, I like that. More neon stuff all over her. She sings one of the creepier songs ever penned, "Natural Woman," while wearing a decidedly unnatural side ponytail, and there are some weird, unnatural goblin movements, but she sounds really good.

Randy and Paula finally come to give the obvious news that they're good. First, they are asked to give themselves a big round of applause, which: gay, and then Randy goes on and on about how there are both winners and losers in this competition. Barf. They're totally going to go there, yeah. So Paula whines about how it's "so tough" and it "breaks her heart" and she's acting like she's going to cry. You can only pull this crap so many times before it starts to grate, and that number of times is one or maybe two, but this whole last couple of weeks -- especially tonight and tomorrow night -- hit the panic button so many damn times it's like when the person in a movie hears the sound of the killer but it turns out to just be a cat. So dumb.

Paula, with this jacked up potato-like Botoxified immobile fake crying face? You have made your cute outfit uglier. I hope you're happy. Then, of course, they're through and they scream and yell and act like it wasn't completely obvious. Alien is crying on his cell phone. Constantine sticks his stupid tongue out and it's approximately as cool as when Drew Barrymore does the Wayne's World air-guitar riff at the burger place in Charlie's Angels, and they all freak out and are happy.

Into Room Three, where they can totally hear the Room Two freak-out, which is hilarious but kind of sad, but mostly hilarious. Dezmond, my great love interest Carrie Zaruba, Kurtis from VA looking if possible even hotter, Ross talking right out his ass, Aa'shia ditto, and Jennifer Todd. And then a funny meta part where Dezmond is talking also out of his ass about how Simon constantly tells people that are perfect that they are crappy, but he does it in this way where he's just concerned for other people, not because it happened to him, which it did, in his own mind. And then, of course, flip to footage of the whole "Magic Mountain" debacle, where Simon told Dezmond he was a freak show, and there's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," and I imagine Paula being all, "He did the California Raisins, and he did it better than the California Raisins!" And it's not that great, it's tricksy and lazy and annoying, and he's different and obnoxious when he's a cappella, and I hate it.

Then there's Jennifer Todd, whose chances are so very good that we haven't seen her once this entire time since her original audition. She sings "I'm So Excited," but honestly she doesn't seem that excited, and I'm not that excited, and her voice not all that exciting here, but she does do this one cool dramatic thing where she turns the volume up each time she says "More," and it's very controlled and pretty cool.

And oh, Carrie Zaruba. YAY! She's "remained strong," which gets a Hell Yeah from me, and she -- in response to another stupid producer question they asked everybody -- tells the judges that this week she "learned about fortitude." She sings "Lately" by Stevie Wonder. Dude! She looks like Carole King! That's who she looks like. God, that's been driving me nuts. Okay, so she sings in a key way too low for her range, like Liz Phair. As a brief aside, how come Liz Phair, a songwriter who writes her own songs for her own self to sing, by herself, writes songs that are too low for her own self to sing? It's so mysterious. Anyway, in Carrie's case, the higher notes sound vastly prettier than the low parts, and the low parts sound juuuust fine. I like her so much. She's very beautiful on the stage. In the room? Not so much. She looks like she might die. She looks dehydrated.

Aa'shia -- it's been so long I don't remember how they pronounced it at her audition, but either way it's pronounced tonight "Asia." We see her horrible asstastic mother again. Ryan's basically like, yeah, her mom's still horrible, even here in "Hollywood." What she has learned is that "the purpose of life is to have a life of purpose." I guess that's true, if stupidly obvious and embarrassing in the way that true things usually are. It sounds a little disingenuous coming from a 17-year-old gender dysphoric, but whatever. Still dressed like a dude, still singing like a chipmunk. Still upsetting. Why can't you go over to The Road To Stardom With Missy Elliott? They don't ever have to sing on that show if they don't want to, and the truth is that you don't want to, you just want to rap, and the additional truth is that I don't want you to, because it sounds stupid and always makes me think of the "Pass the Dutchie" song, and I like you when you rap, and at no other time, singing or not.

She's got this whole irritating Mikalah Star Search kind of act choreographed with her hat where she acts out the lyrics of the goddamned song like how she hides her feelings and hides her face with her stupid T.E.V.I.N. hat, and mostly I'm pissed because she's singing "Never Can Say Goodbye," which is an awesome song, and she's ruining it and only dogs can hear it, and then back in the doomed room, she exhorts everyone in the room to have hope because they are all so talented, but it's less about encouraging them -- or whistling in the dark -- than it is about making sure everybody's looking at her. There's this whole demagoguery thing she's trying for (you'll see it again in a sec) that is so painfully inappropriate for someone as off-putting as she's turned out to be.

Only slightly more maleward on the shifting spectrum is Larry Ellis (25, Shreveport LA), another Jack in the Box surprise contestant out of nowhere. He's wearing fake colored contacts. The End. He sings a horrible song, horribly. Five voices come out of him in rapid succession and they are all terrible. I want to punch his face. It's so boring. There is screaming and the making of noises and the lamentation of the Larry. It's so terrible. Also he is dressed like a septuagenarian Miami golfer. There are then some people talking about how phenomenal he was, specifically Tammy Nash, who's a total crazy we've seen a lot of but never talked to, and she's saying how when the Sorting Hat starts, she wants to be in the room with him, but she's not in his room now, and she's so lucky. On so many levels.

Ross, however, is there, and his giant square head is taking up all the airspace and the taller people have to bend down like when there's a fire and you have to put safety first, and we see that this time around he sang "Sir Duke," which is a pretty great song by the very awesome Stevie Wonder (it's the one about how you can "feel it all over"), and just as you're thinking, Jacob! You were wrong! He's not just going to sing Stray Cats and "Mack the Knife" and whatever Swingers bullshit like that the whole time after all, just when you're happy about Ross and his range and his ability to think outside the Zoot box, you feel something ominous and foreboding on the horizon and you remember: there's a bombload of scatting in this song. And that's why he picked it, and that is why I despise him. So he pretty much figures out that it sucked immediately after he's done singing, and I feel a little bad for him. And he flops around on the floor and generally shows that he has something going on in there other than the whole hepcat mess, even if it's something kind of smurfy with the flopping onto his knees and the anguish and whatnot, and for a second I think I might like him, and then I'm sure I do, as he smiles and goes, "I'm really fucked." Yep.

Room Four is stacked five deep with the crying, bruised remains of the most emotionally unstable contestants of all: JP and John from Hackensack, Jaclyn Crum, Mikalah, Crazy Tammy Wynette Nash (that's her name, dude), and Sarah Mather (I think). They're all looking totally freaked out. Like more than before. Mikalah is just looking as raw as ever and staring into space like she just saw a massacre. It's chaotic and kind of Blair Witch. Everybody's being crazy, privately. Tammy is crying. Probably because she's not in the same room with Larry and all his ridiculous bullshit. Why the hell are all the crazies upset? When you're so totally fixated on being fucking freak, you miss stuff. For example, if they were to take even a cursory look around, they would notice how they're fully in the same room with Anthony Federov, Nadia Turner, and Lindsey Cardinale. This is so dumb.

Anthony talks to Ryan about the shaking of his legs, while holding hands with Tammy. It goes on a long while, this talk of shaking. Ryan finally sends him up. Suit as usual, shirt open to sternum as usual, admitting that his last performance wasn't so great. He's quite good-looking, in a grody, creepy kind of "Shia LeBeouf just turned eighteen" kind of way. He tells them how nervous and grateful he is, after a clip of him singing some song during Hollywood week. They tell him they discussed him at length. How I wish that were true about the forums too, so I wouldn't have to feel so bad about how much I hate Constantine every time I read the threads. He's through, and it's a shocker. He jumps around spazzily like he's pogoing for real, which is actually pretty awesome considering he looks like Doogie Howser's little brother at a circuit party and talks like James Earl Jones. Cognitive dissonance rocks my hizzy.

Nadia comes in like a beautiful movie of glamour and Chanel Number 5, and Simon's like, "Shall I tell you?" And she pulls the triple axel of Simon, looking him right in the eye and saying with a sassy charm, "I don't know. Shall you?" It's very Melrose Place, because they stare at each other and draw their wordsoutveryslowly and it's cute. "I think I will." "Okay." And guess what he says. Nadia Turner is beautiful even with hideous pelt boots. Vonzell's in there for five seconds, up, and Paula blah blah and perfunctorily puts her through.

Carrie Underwood comes in, and Simon immediately signals that this is going to take forever, as though anyone watching this is in suspense about whether she's getting through, as though anybody cares, as though you're sitting on the very edge of your coma. But on the way to boring the ever-loving anything out of me, he says some interesting things about how they've had to let good people go in order to maintain the gender balance, basically. Which fascinates me. And then he says that those people, those good people who but for the hideous machinations of this show, would be well-advised to come back for year. But of course, "You won't need to do that, because you're through to the round." She covers her face and is wearing a total Seth Cohen green sweater with a aqua collar and too-long sleeves -- it's seriously so cute. She's nice and likeable and cool, and very happy.

Judd Harris, whom we've barely seen at all but is no less hot for that, does some splits in flashback and then tells the judges he's "hanging in there," and that it's been "a trying day." It is explained that there was a split decision, but it fell out in his favor. I just assume that this always means Simon hates the person. Judd smiles, and if you thought now was your chance to see him and how he is and what he's all about? Keep wishing. For now, lots of people in lots of makeup and capris, getting cut. I'm cool with that. Ivan Ganchev, who we'll see later, smiles sweetly when he's cut, and then Yolanda McIntosh's "journey" ends, but her giant Shunta face never, ever does.