Tuesday
One Brittenum twin acts like a total douchebag, and then the other one acts like a total douchebag. That's like half the episode right there. One of them fucks up the lyrics and then blames his teammates, who all get through save one, and then he blames the one of his team that didn't make it. Even though he screwed up the lyrics. The other one gets confused, thinks his brother got cut, throws a hilarious twenty-minute Madea fit about it, stalks out...then his brother tells him he got through. They go back in and apologize, Simon tells them both to get lost for a half hour, they come back and act like idiots, and then...they both get through! It is demoralizing. Effing steal an identity that doesn't suck time, please. Also, they nearly make out, as do Paula and Randy at one point. I hope we get to see the Brittenums being taken away in handcuffs tonight. Then there is an actual Brokeback Mountain montage of Dances With Turkeys and a couple other cowboys, who don't get through, that's not so interesting, but it is long, and it's pretty funny in that it asks you not to think about sixteen elephants at the same time. After they get cut, they hug very manfully and brokebackly for a million years and then cry like babies, and it is awesome and very sweet and very sad.
The other half of the episode involves the auditions of a bunch of people we barely know, and the people we already know are going through, and then those 95 people doing what looks like a pretty awesome one-on-one a cappella audition that we don't really see, and then getting Hogwartsed into four rooms, all but one of which get through, resulting in a Top 44 for tomorrow. Paris and Seth Cohen are adorable and get their beauty sleep and nail their auditions; Paris's wonderful and doomed teammate Stephanie Scott gets through. Ace gets through. My man Sway gets through, as do Elliott Yamin and his teeth. David Radford and Kevin âCosVeighâ get through, even in a horrific all-crooner free-for-all. Mandisa, the elder Barretsmith, the incredibly sexy Marcy Smith, the almost-unredeemable Mikalah clone Brenna, Chris Daughtry, April (YAY!), Kevin, Kellie, the dirty guy from the Foo Fighters, a world of Taylor Hicks. Just what you thought.
Tonight: Mandisa calls Simon out on the fat jokes, people scream and holler, and we get our Final 24! So soon!
Wednesday
Twenty people get cut, giving us a Top 24, and most of them handle it with class. Then Brittenum twins finally go to jail. Just Mandisa handles the whole "fat joke" issue with nearly overwhelming maturity, poise, and grace. Kellie Pickler and Melissa McGhee look very tired and strippery. Stevie (née Stephanie) Scott gets through, somewhat making up for the fact that my Marcy gets cut. Ayla Brown, I don't remember -- was she the girl I called the singing lesbian? I don't think I was necessarily wrong. She's very cute and has a very cool, mellow, smoky tone. Paris Bennett is the cutest thing in the universe. She and William Makar should be sent to populate Mars or something. Remember Lisa Tucker? She did not sound fantastic in Hollywood, but she rocks the whole "I'm merely sixteen!" vibe that she rocks so well. Katharine McPhee is beautiful and has a powerful voice, but seems to think she is the Queen of All Drama, but at least she's very likeable, v. Brenna Gethers going in and out of her bullshit Queens accent and getting more affected by the second. Kinnik Sky beats out one of the Kelis poodle-heads for the last spot, which is always stressful, but I don't actually know either of them, so I don't care. Becky O'Donahue learns to count. See the ladies sing for TWO EFFING HOURS on Tuesday.
I'm so totally over Taylor Hicks treading on my nerves and spazzing out and going into the whole routine all the time. Ace Young can also go suck an egg. Chris Daughtry gets stuck in the elevator, which, like, I thought the whole point of being blue collar is that stuff like that doesn't happen to you. Kevin Covais has never experienced anything like this before, because he has never experienced anything before, other than the miracle of childbirth a few minutes ago. It's Sway Penala's birthday, Elliot Yamin is stressed, and Bucky Covington is fucking disgusting. Patrick Hall is like that guy you keep seeing everywhere but not dealing with, but seems likeable and sweet and with a good sense of humor. He's the boy Kellie Pickler. Will Makar is perfection in human form, and beats out the awesome Syd Harcourt for the final boy spot. David Radford ["Oh, for fuck's sake!" -- Joe R, and I know this because I heard it, from Texas] gets cutesy in the elevator. Bobby Bennett is very excited and will be going home Thursday. The crazy-looking, weirdly- and wonderfully-singing Gedeon McKinney is full of drama, but it is a musical, and not a personal, sort of drama. See the boys sing for TWO EFFING HOURS on Wednesday. See the results on Thursday, for a total of FIVE EFFING HOURS of anti-women's figure skating programming week. So evil. Plus Hollywood was not that great this year at all. Then they all dance like assholes, just like last year, so that's fun.
Tuesday
Last Wednesday, we took 175 hopeful young people, and turned them into 99 very tired young people, with a remainder of 77 broken young people who will never attempt anything of worth again. Until year, when we'll hopefully at least remember the joke we made at their expense. Tonight, we do group performances, do another cut, and then put the rest through a cappella performances in a darkened, creepy theatre. There's all kinds of practicing and madness going on at the Orpheum the night before this all goes down. At 11 PM, the scratchy-voiced young people are reduced to saying things like, "I am thirsty, and hungry" and "I mean, where is dinner?" Elsewhere, Garet the Breakdown Cowboy practices with his team of two other men, and it is not going well.
Better, though, are things for Garet than for the teammates of a girl named Brenna Gether, who seems at first to be cute. One of her teammates, Marcy Stone (yay!), is having trouble with the choreography. Not like she doesn't get it, just like she hates it. Pointing to their third, Nick W., Brenna catches herself in a slight faux pas: "The brother's six foot, he doesn't want to look like a...um, like he's from the Village People." Yeah, on behalf of gaywads everywhere: much better, thanks. Nice catch, idiot. Marcy takes off because even Mikalah Gordon is like, "Brenna: learn when to quit," and Brenna cam-jokes that she's probably off crying somewhere. Marcy doesn't exactly ask for sympathy from the camera, although having just seen Brenna in action, it's kind of assumed: "I only have myself to blame if I don't get it together and put on a smile, and do what I have to do." Word. I love Marcy.
They get back to the hotel at 2 AM, and people like Will Makar and Paris B. -- namely, tiny ones with a good sense of professionalism -- get their asses into bed. Everybody else, who apparently have never learned a song before and cannot use their time efficiently, stays up to all hours. Anthony, a nice-looking Carter brother post-Nick-bloat, finally finds Brittenum 1, Terrell, who has apparently purloined the identity of somebody's slightly demented asshole grandmother. The Brittenum twins, you remember, are the ones that look like dandies from long ago. Like black Fezziwigs, with their cravats and weird Tutenkhamen beards. Anthony immediately gets bitched out for his trouble ("You don't have to find me, you have to find them") with some head-circling and some entitled sass, like Brittenum's too good to be "found" as he wanders around whining and yelling about nothing. Their other teammates, Elliott (gas-station attendant with meth-mouth) and Sway (Pinoi b-boy), unlike Brittenum himself, can actually sing without the high school choir attitude and blame-shifting, and have gone to sleep. Ever since Brittenum found out they were second to perform in the group session, apparently, he's been raging and out of control. Previously, I guess, he was just hideously annoying. Anthony is clearly tired of his mess already -- and I'm guessing that's the main reason the other guys skived in the first place anyway -- but still Brittenum lectures us about what terrible people they are. The show hasn't even started yet and I already want to slap a bitch. Who was it said Hollywood was the best part? Not me, surely. Somebody who had never heard of Team Brittenum, for sure. There is, I think, Kellie Pickler singing with other very tired (-looking) girls, and Mecca singing with somebody's mom or something.
An hour later and Brittenum is still freaking out, because it's just sooo important that he get his practice in that he's...not going to practice at all. What a useless fucking waste of time that last hour was, you moron. He lectures Sway on the phone, all hissy and bitchy, a way you would not talk to a dog, about how he's just going to tell the judges that they didn't feel like practicing because they were sleepy. Also disappeared: Brenna, whose teammates Nick and Marcy are now practicing in the blissful, happy silence of a world without Brenna. Brittenum calls up Elliott and lectures him condescendingly with a drama-teacher "If you don't meet up tonight don't worry about it, because I don't have time for it. I promise you I don't." Then...don't? I hate that, that don't worry about it shit, because the answer is always: way ahead of you, dick.
There's a clip from Notting Hill, and Paula goes on two simultaneous blind dates where the guys keep saying stuff Dr. Phil told them to say, so that coincidentally, they're like, "If you have a bunch of feelings, I will love that! And I will hug you! And embrace you and pet your hair! And gently make love to you until you stop crying!" Both of the guys are the same person, which is the male equivalent of the stupid girls the gay dude keeps dating, which is: empty. The fact that they are the same person makes this boring. Well, and the fact that it's Paula. Well, that, and the fact that there's zero chemistry, because neither of them are underage black guys with braids, which is all I personally have ever seen her be attracted to. She dumps one of them, some country singer or something, and picks the other guy because she "can't compete with sold-out stadiums" and that she knows country guy is going to be too successful to ever truly love her. Which, Dr. Phil was not paying attention when she said that shit, I guess. But his heart was not really in this one. Then she and the other guy go bowling, and by "go bowling," I mean "never see each other again."
Wednesday
Tonight, the top 44 will be cut down to the top 24, 12 guys and 12 "girls." Some of them have stuff to say first: Gedeon, who is crazy both in his brain and his face, is ready for his life to change. Becky McO'Donnelly-Shaughnessy-Litchfield-Avranipalinam has words of wisdom: "It's ultimately not your decision, and you have to remember that." Like showing your tits in Maxim, or kissing your sister in a lesbian way while showing your tits in Maxim: sometimes you have to just trust that the photographer is an artist with his own process. Kevin Covais has never "done anything like this or experienced anything like this." Or anything like high school, or crossing the street, or using the stove when his mommy's not home. Ace does not think that waiting is very fun, and his voice is always so surprisingly high. Some girl would like us to know that if today doesn't work out, her music career is KAPUT.
It's the same setup as last year, where they all sit in one room gnawing on their fingers, and then they go up an elevator, sit on a long church pew for awhile, walk down a very long floor while the judges stare at them, to The Chair, and then get told what happens . In the elevator, apparently, they will milk it for no reason except that they are dorking out because they are nervous and/or fame whores.
Jessica Santos is a no, Bobby Bullard is a no, Brooke Barrettsmith whose "lips are shaking" is a no, which is a shame. Nick Whitten and his teeth get cut even though he looks very cute today. Stephanie White is a very pretty no. Jessica Santos is "kind of hurt," but God has a complicated system of opening and shutting doors and windows to create the perfect microclimate of punishment and reward or whatever crap keeps you free of accountability and sleeping easy at night. Crystal Stark (whose best audition was her a cappella "Wishing On A Star," she thinks -- and it's good, the crowd goes nuts) is incredibly gorgeous and was kicked, but not unanimously. Simon's so taken with her that he just repeats himself over and over, but unfortunately, the phrase he got caught on was "It's a no. It's a no. It's a no." It's pretty ugly. Bobby Dillard goes up to get cut as Katharine McPhee bitches fakely at Ryan about how she wanted Crystal to make it. There's clearly been a leading question here, because she's being really cagey and fake-mad about it. Crystal just sits a few feet away smiling sadly as she babbles. Finally she's forced to admit that she's only slightly upset about it. She and Crystal laugh hysterically about this, and I love them both. You've gotta be some kind of a McPhee for me to overlook the awful history with that name.
Antonio Bridges is cut, and Eugenia Littlejohn the Kaput Girl, who they couldn't agree on, and Eugenia Littlejohn breaks down really quickly into crazy grief. I think maybe the "kaput" thing wasn't the hyperbole we assumed. Paula calls her "sweetheart" and "honey" and she tells them how it's all over and her life has ended and how she's 26 and has a six-year-old son and it's over. "If you think you've peaked at 26..." Paula looks her in the eye. "Please, Eugenia." Paula hobbles over to her in The Chair and holds her while she squeaks and cries. Randy is horrified by the loss of faith in herself. In the elevator: "Well. I'm fucked." Y'all, Eugenia Littlejohn needs a nap, is what she needs.
Robert Bennett, Jr. is congratulated immediately, so we don't see his history and I don't remember his voice at all, but he can talk a blue streak. Out of the room, down the hall, into the elevator, down the elevator, out into the room, he talks. "I'm likeable!" I would not want this coming right at me. In the cattle pen, everybody cheers with mostly shock. Although, interestingly, both Antonio (previously cut) and Taylor Hicks are disgusted about this. Well, I guess Taylor might be having a fit, but he looks grossed out about it. Outside, Eugenia Littlejohn bitches at the camera crazily -- although I guess it's understandable -- and the scary man with her just laughs about the bitching. Bobby says that all the excitement is not good for fat people, and it's pretty cute. Kevin Covais is like, "What is a 'cardiac arrest'?"
Mandisa. Flashback to Simon with the "we'll need a bigger stage" and "forget Francie, she's France" and all his other not-funny fat jokes. I'll say it again: Your Mama jokes are not funny because your mama's fat, they're funny because of how fat she is. For somebody who loves to crack on overweight contestants so much, he's not very good at it. But on the other hand, I think making fun of it is secondary to being horrified that they'd even try out, because they do not smell to Simon like money, and he pushes that whole "it's a visual medium" thing more than anybody. Ryan swears up and down -- and has been doing so since last week -- that this is going to "get a little uncomfortable," but Mandisa's not going down like that, if I know Mandisa. She and Simon smile at each other the whole way from the door to The Chair, like, "Yeah, this'll be weird." She sits: "Well, you didn't need a bigger stage, but you could've got a bigger chair." Randy laughs, and I don't think it's the nervous-response laugh, I think it's because he knows where she's going to place it. "Simon, a lot of people want me to say a lot of things to you. But this is what I wanna say to you: Yes, you hurt me, and I cried, and it was painful. It really was. But I want you to know that I've forgiven you, and that you don't need someone to apologize in order to forgive somebody. And I figure that if Jesus could die so that all of my wrongs could be forgiven, I can certainly extend that same grace to you. So I just wanted you to know that." That's class. I could do without the "I am forgiving you, by the way, and I will be gifting you with my forgiveness" spin, and sure as hell without the WWJD context, because equating your problems with Jesus's really demeans both you and Jesus, in my opinion, but that's still fucking class. What a poised, gracious young woman.
"Mandisa, I'm humbled. Come here, give me a kiss." They laugh together and agree that he is appalling. Paula, like a cocker spaniel when the other dogs are getting fed, jumps in about how "aren't you glad I sit to him? I can sock him!" and Mandisa lays it on a little thick: "Paula, what would I do without you?" But I mean, in for a penny, right? Simon: "I feel about one millimeter small [mission accomplished], so I'll carry on with what I'm supposed to be doing. And I'm sorry to tell you..." Her face drops so fast, with the fear. "You're going to have to go through this again." Randy hugs her and tells her how impressively she negotiated the whole fat-jokes issue, and she hugs Paula and Simon again, and she jokes that he's not her type. They all laugh and for a bit there's a really nice, happy vibe in the room. Simon apologizes upfront, and she thanks him, and they have a weird conversation about her ass as she leaves. "Work it out, girl! Work it out!" yells Randy. She giggles and screams -- still very poised -- into the elevator.