Tuesday
Boring as shit Stevie Wonder night. Let's just get this over with. Ace "Do I Do" Young cannot...sing. He is a bad singer. But whatever it is that he is doing, he is really good at it, and I think he deserves a prize. I hope he wins this, and somebody else can go win a singing competition. "Blame It On The Sun" Pickler is not familiar with Stevie Wonder, much like salmon, spinach, and fake eyelashes. Or sitting in a fucking chair. She is, however, familiar to singing flat, and through her nose, and the Heather Cox that now lives inside her nose. Elliott "Knocks Me Off My Feet" Yamin cries a whole lot, just like always, but still won't tell us where his Lucky Charms are. "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing," sings Mandisa, but she kind of worries about some things. One of those things is not singing well. In a night when even Mandisa is hitting the bottom of her range on every line, what are you supposed to do? Turn it off? Not with a damn hour and a half left.
Bucky "Superstition" Fucking Fuckington sounds amazing, as usual. (Joe R. is here in Austin with me, and he says that the hair is very fluffy and that he is making the same motion over and over, bow-legged as if he has rickets, but if I look, I'll say something to insult the billions of trailer people that read TWoP and can operate email, so I'm content to just listen to his absolutely amazing singing voice.) Oops, Bucky's talking. FF! Melissa "Lately" McGhee has been gargling salt water ever since Stevie Wonder's roadie, but that doesn't help when she screws up the lyrics in front of Stevie Wonder, and he tells him not to touch her, awesomely. She wears a dress and my premonition, that she will be totally boring, does not miss. Lisa "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" Tucker...sings, kind of. It's lacking in vitality to say the least. Then the best thing that ever happened, happens: Kevin Covais sings "Part-Time Lover." I have nothing to say beyond that. Joe's still crying from laughter and it's been like ten minutes.
Katharine rocks "Until You Come Back to Me" and looks gorgeously with child. Joe R. says she's going to give birth onstage like Fantasia last year. If you're stuck on dirndls, find one with a waistline that works, my dear! Taylor Hicks sings "Livin' For The City" exactly like Steve Winwood with a neurological disorder in the "Urkel," or dipshit-pothalamus, of the brain. Paris "All I Do" Bennett is loved by Stevie Wonder, and still a great-singing robot, start to finish. Joe notes that she's dressed this week like Rudy when she was pretending to be Theo's "real world" loan officer. Wasn't that cute? This kind of isn't: she fully pulls a Taylor Hicks and sings at Ryan, like a perfect asshole. Joe notes that she is, in fact, seventeen. I don't care. Chris sings last again, "Higher Ground," in a way where he wants to sound like Stevie Wonder and the Chili Peppers, but actually just sounds like Chris, with cheesy '90s guitars grindin' and yowlin'. His entire head is denuded now and he looks like a penis with a soul patch and burns. There are also: a smoke machine, mic stand hijinks, and a severe cred issue. Worst night ever? Possibly. Great TV? Certainly not. I hope they ALL get eliminated Wednesday. What if they threw a fake competition and nobody voted? I think Ace would somehow still win.
Wednesday
Last night, Ace was bad, but he's fine so it's okay. Pickler got called out for going to "Dolly Parton School" by Simon, but I think "Nasally Up In Your Nasal Academy" is more to blame. Elliott has a very powerful, very beautiful voice, and he will be fine for a good long while. Mandisa failed to rock "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing," but her natural heads-above-the-children skill and talent pull her through. Bucky sounded awesome as usual, and went VO-5 crazy! Melissa was good, but not as good as last week, which I assumed would be her best-ever performance. Lisa just gets more and more boring, and Paris just gets more and more Star Search. Kevin sang "Part-Time Lover" and that is definitely the best thing that has ever happened in my life, or in Joe's, apparently, because he's still laughing, and crying. Katharine was amazing and wonderful and beautiful, and is still in need of a Starting Over clothing redo. Taylor sang "Spazzin' In The City," and did it up right. Chris sang "Higher Ground" and it was nice but it had nothing to do with American Idol.
Tonight, we start with the best pimpmercial there ever was. Chris sings "All I Want" by Toad The Wet Sprocket, in the forest, surrounded by creepy animatronic Lynchian woodland creatures. Bucky flops out of a car trunk and then everybody hunkers down around a fake campfire, and Bigfoot shows up looking like a comic book back-page ad for candy that explodes in your face with the fruity power of sweetly blushing, screaming fruit. McPhee pulls them all over, and then Yeti guy reveals himself as Ace, smiles deliciously, and Kat melts with pleasure and joins them around the fire. It is so fucking awesome.
Stevie Wonder sings a song; everybody cries, Elliott almost dies.
Ace is in the bottom three, and the whole world stops spinning. I think Kevin went, a little. Kevin, Paris, Kellie are safe. Taylor fucking Weebles around all over, safe; Chris is obviously safe and there's a group freak-out anyway. Melissa goes up against the wow-less Elliott, and does not prevail. Sad, even though she's wearing a Bedazzled scarf instead of clothing. Mandisa and gorgeous Katharine are: both safe, and the hope of mankind. Lisa and Bucky duke it out, Bucky's of course safe because he's great, and is even looking slightly more acceptable these days. So: Ace, Melissa, Lisa. Ace goes back first, of course. Lisa's safe, Melissa goes home. That sucks. The cumulative five seconds she was on the show really showcased her beautiful voice and performance skill and Floridian flip flop-wearing "earthiness." Ah well. week, Lisa I think.
Tuesday
Ryan's wearing a really, really distracting tie. It pulls focus all night; for this, we are thankful, because it's so very boring. I love Stevie Wonder, but the thing is that I prefer to listen to Stevie Wonder, not kids singing it who were born after I owned the album. Ryan gives some kind of limp speech about how it's a whole new stage and a whole new game, because it's the Top 12, but the radical hugeness of the stage is not really that noticeable for us out here, because our TVs have not changed size, and will not do so no matter how much they keep bringing it up. There's a sign in the audience that reads I LOVE YOU ALL. How nice. I admire the sentiment, because they are all great people, I guess, but it does seem to run counter to the entire signage concept. The stage looks silly, like an alien spaceship, of course, and Ryan goes on and on about the killer sound system. Which again, we don't know about, because the speakers on our TVs have not changed. It's like a print ad for a color copier. The band plays to demonstrate this indemonstrable thing, and the backup ladies dance around boredly. What this is actually going to do is make the audience act weirdly out of focus with what we're actually seeing, and probably make us adjust our takes upward. Maybe that's the point.
There's a long memory video of their journey and "Keeping The Dream Alive" and the first three things we see are Bucky, Melissa, and Chris in a cowboy hat, so we're fast-forwarding through that. There's a chick in the audience with a sign that says "Paula Abdul is My Idol!" which is excellent. We are introduced to the Top 12 yet again, and they all look very well-kempt. We meet the judges. Randy's wearing another candy-striped shirt, possibly one we've seen before. Paula's hair looks lustrous, but the bangs hang funny and make her one eye look very weird and mushy and drunk. Ryan asks Randy about the Dawg Pound being gone, but Randy says the whole audience is the Dawg Pound now, and I wonder: if the first synthesis was integration with women, and the was the integration of the non-celebrity audience, then...does that not mean that week, we ourselves will be the Dawg Pound? Is there anybody in this world that doesn't watch this show? Because they're , after us. Ryan and Simon are very cordial and tender with each other and discuss how this week is really "make it or break it."
Stevie Wonder is the theme and I'm not entirely sure who that is, but I think he wears sunglasses a lot of the time. He comes into the practice room to visit the Idols wearing a brown track suit, and they start crying. Well, Pickler and Elliott start crying. And don't stop. Of course. They dance around and sing as Stevie plays the piano. I think I would be one of the criers, if I'm being honest. Stevie talks about something, I'm not sure what, something about how, like, the show brings people together, in the heart of music or something. It's very Castaneda-via-Santana, this talking, and they repeat the clip on Wednesday.
Ace talks about how his song was released when he was two years old, and Stevie laughs. In interview, Ace chokes and cries and whines about how he was standing to Stevie Wonder, and it's moderately okay, but then he says this: "Stevie Wonder is not just battling blindness, but he's battling the same thing that we all are, which is life." I love Ace so, so much. He's like the Ashton Kutcher of music. He cries and it's sweet, but then he gets all smarmy and fake and O Brother Where Are Thou smirky about how he's "overjoyed" to have met Stevie. With the tears still glistening in his eyes. I never know about Ace. Every week I get more paranoid! I hate it!
Onstage, Ace sings "Do I Do" in a black henley and jeans. He's very shouty, dancing all around with these weird little grunty faces and gasping and moaning after every single line like it's "Liquid Dreams" or a Britney Spears song. He heads out into the...oh, the catwalk is just part of the show now. How sad. Why is that sad? I feel that it is a bad thing. Like, they're all just Bo now. He broke down the barrier. The band is going completely insane -- that's how it's going to be from now on. If you're here for the vocals, I'm sorry to tell you two things: A) that has never been the point, and B) you will never hear them clearly again. Why does Ace's hair keep getting puffier? Why does he stare like that? Why is his stupid brother twitching like Hicks?
Randy loves Stevie Wonder, of course, but knows he can be hard to sing. He says that Ace started out kind of off-key, got okay in the middle, but that ultimately it's just really hard to sing Stevie. Which is Randy for "sucky." Paula too, actually. "It's so hard, you can't be blamed for failing. At least you tried." The crowd boos and Simon openly laughs at them, because they are sheep and they are idiots. Paula, of course, thinks it was fantastic. What she loves about Ace, you see, is his "spirit" and how he puts "everything into it" and how he has cool dance moves. Simon tells Ace he's lucky the audience is so stupid, and Ace laughs until the boos help him to understand that it was not a joke he should laugh about. Well, what Simon says, in the interest of journalistic integrity, is that Ace is lucky that the audience "is very easily pleased." Same diff. There is signage: "Marry me Ace! Or at least give me a birthday hug!" Can you imagine making a sign? I can't see myself at the show period, honestly, although it would be fun to go as a freakshow situation, like that shopping center church with the drum kit and amplifiers. But to make a sign? With glitter? And it could say something like, "marry me or at least give me a birthday hug," and then...what? Ace might see the sign, and hug you? Is that really what you want? To win the award for most openly needy, creepy sad sign? I hate that so much. Simon explains the totally obvious fact that this will not be the best vocal of the night, and calls it "a bit manic." I think between "manic" and "gulpy," we've got it covered. Ryan and Ace smile at each other and Ace blathers on like a total himbo about how it's all so new, and the stage is so, so big, and there are "so many new faces!" No matter what Ryan says, Ace is like, "Huh? Oh, sure!" Ryan talks and Ace doesn't know what's up for a really long time, and then as Ryan reads the numbers, Ace smiles completely vacantly into the camera.
Surprise surprise, Kellie Pickler's "not that familiar" with Stevie Wonder's music. Is she like Profit? Did her horrible home life include living in a box? Because I don't know what, if anything, she's actually aware of in this world. She is blown the fuck away by all things large and small. She and Stevie talk about nothing, about how she has a hick accent, and he jokes that he thought she was from England. She believes him, because she doesn't know what an "England" is. Maybe she thinks it's another word for "minx" or whatever. He says that Kellie sounds like she would have a lot of fun with his music. She asks us for a refresher on what that word "music" means, and mispronounces at first, and then...I don't know. Tries to ride her bus pass down the street and giggles about how hard it is to keep your balance on something no wider than a credit card. No, because she doesn't know what those are either. Yawn. They sing together, and he helps her out, and then she blows raspberries and giggles and acts all cutesy with Stevie Wonder. Ryan calls this song "a departure," and I think this is also a Bo issue: where is it written that they get to sing whatever one-note thing they want, and that if they are forced not to do that, it's some kind of apocalypse? I know they have their niches, but this whole episode is like, how abhorrent it is that this icon of music is being forced on these poor kids when they should just be able to sing Martina McBride bullshit all the time.
She sings "Blame It On The Sun," which is not a song I'm familiar with -- I'm wearing false eyelashes as I'm typing this! My favorite animal is the meercat! -- but she sings it like Kellie Pickler. Like, instead of putting a country spin on it in anyway, she does a karaoke version, but with a total hick accent. That's the country part that keeps it in her area. That's so dumb. Speed it up or slow it down or something. Don't just sing it in a stupid impenetrable accent. She's never sounded this silly before. She also looks completely ridiculous. I don't mean to be awful about Kellie Pickler, because I don't really care about her at all, but this week she was just so fucking egregious. She's wearing a strapless black sheath dress and looks like she's playing dress-up; the hair is very sophisticated, fake eyelashes out to here. She looks like it's Halloween, and she's going as "a woman." There's a little Ethel Merman in there on the long vowels, too, which is creepy. ["I don't understand why she went with this song, or why they didn't let her scale it up a couple of keys. It's way too low and her register is like the unfinished register in Bad Ronald." -- Sars] She smiles directly into the camera whenever she can. Also, the backdrop is a spooky full moon with clouds, which would be strange, but the song's about the sun, so I don't even know.
She starts yelling at the judges all Kevin-stylee before they even start talking. To Randy: "I cain't dance in this dress! I got mah shoes on sale!" He calls the performance a non-event, and says it's like it didn't even really happen. That's my favorite thing he's ever said, both in the way that he said it and because he nailed how I felt about it. He also mentions she was singing it too low, but I can't remember enough of it to know if that's because she was hitting high notes in the Paula part of the song at the end which necessitated that crap. Given the boring, shitty nature of the entire performance, I wonder if she wasn't just left to her own devices this week, like the singing coach and the stylists and whoever were like, "Pickler, you good?" And she was like, "Oh, you're just a grumpy old bar!" And they were like, "As per usual, we have no idea what you are talking about. We're getting sushi. Catch you later." And then she tried to pronounce the word "sushi" for like an hour, gave up, wandered into Katharine's closet and picked out some classy big-girl clothes and arranged the song herself, on a Fisher-Price xylophone, and then ate a whole bag of Reese's Pieces and got so, so sick. And then Mandisa found her crying in the bathroom and was like, "You're a little piggy, aren't you? Oh, sweetheart. We shouldn't have left you alone in the mansion." And then they all felt sorry for her so they took her to the forest, and she got eaten by a yeti, and that's what went wrong here.
She screams at Paula that she was "a lot nervous!" and giggles moronically, but Paula returns the serve there. She thinks it was all too safe, and that "the razzle-dazzle didn't show up," but she says that Kellie looks "gorgeous," and there are so many places to go with that, but they all make me too sad. Simon tells Kellie flat-out that "Everything went wrong tonight," that it was so totally boring and that it "felt like it was never going to end." All too true. He knows he can say this because first of all, she's in no danger, and second of all, the kind of attacks he's making can only help her. He says she looks like she went to "Dolly Parton School," and she giggles stupidly some more about how it's "without the assets." Without question, he says correctly, this was her "worst performance so far." She gets tears in her eyes, but she's still spunky, but she's a little too dim to know what's going on, but she's on top of it, but she's pissed, but she's gracious. So much going on, considering how little is actually going on. There's something cynical about the way she keeps pushing it. Maybe I do blame her, after all. She takes ten fucking minutes to sit down to Ryan, because she's never seen a dress before, or a stool, and Ryan says that Simon is not a fashionista, "you know what I mean?" Of course, she does not. Ryan! Don't get metro with the hicks! It always turns out poorly! She starts talking about her new eyelashes. "Fake eyelashes! I feel like I have taraintulas!" He asks if she is not, in fact, arachnophobic, and she agrees that she hates bugs, and whatever, "but they're not real tarantulas!" Ryan's like, great. He's totally over it. "Why not stretch this bullshit out to three hours so I can have these scintillating fucking death-wish conversations even longer at a stretch?" I love that.
Elliott is such a huge fan of Stevie Wonder. Know how I know? Because he keeps saying it, both with words and with big, fat tears. Far be it from me to judge -- I cry every week when I watch The Office, I am not a finger-pointer when it comes to crying. But I mean, "Squeeze 'em out, Elliott." I wonder if he'll actually cry while he is singing. I swear he has spent the majority of this season weeping on camera. All the Idols unanimously choose him to sit with Stevie Wonder in the practice room first, because they all know how hugely into Stevie he is, and it's very sweet. I might have teared up. He sits down with Stevie and cries some more. He sings for Stevie, who tells him he should sing for a living. It's not that I'm not touched, or not happy for Elliott -- I am both. But he has the thing like Melissa, where all we've seen amounts to like three things, and two of them are him crying and the other one is sweating from diabetes, and that's not a personality, that's a Shel Silverstein poem, and I think he's probably very awesome, but I'd like to know for sure.
He sings "Knocks Me Off My Feet" while sitting on a stool in a white suit jacket. I have come to recognize the stool as a code from the show to yours truly to start drinking within five minutes. He still looks like the guy that goes and gets your car at the dealership. Not the fat one with the chaw and the credit card machine, but the other one, the one that doesn't talk and has that awesome cigarette/motor oil/sweat smell of a mechanic, and smiles and ducks his head the whole time. He looks like that guy. He misses plenty of notes, but he's okay. I mean, he's great, but the song is so meandering that you kind of have to pay attention or you'll get lost, so pitch stuff is easier to see. He keeps grinning maniacally into the camera, but I don't think it's because he's having a great time; I think it's because he is friendly, and very desperately wants us to know how friendly he is and how very much fun he is having. He wraps up with a shouty loud note, intended for Paula and the crowd to go wild, and they go wild.
Randy mentions the obvious thing, that this is in Elliott's wheelhouse to a terrific degree, but that, paradoxically, it wasn't his best performance. I agree. He thinks the last couple of weeks were better, and that you shouldn't gild the lily, but instead should focus on changing the delivery so that the comparisons aren't made. However, he did have "some flavor and vibe," so if you know what that means, you know to what degree Randy is praising him. Paula likes that he cried in front of Stevie, basically. But he cried in front of Steve Guttenberg, he cried in front of Seacrest, he cried in front of the dude at McDonald's. Simon says it was the best so far, but that it didn't have the "wow" factor. He did a good job, but was nervous and unoriginal -- it was a "good rendition of a Stevie song," which is not enough. Elliott takes it graciously, Ryan mentions the sweating again, Elliott laughs it off again. Ryan asks Simon how they can make his night better, and Simon requests a bit more "wow" factor. All the factors, I cannot keep them straight.
Mandisa is looking awesome in a black lacy dress with her hair pulled back. She says tonight is being wicked intense and that the judges are hard to please tonight, and that her shoes are killing her. Ryan gets down on the floor and unstraps her shoes for her and mentions that her ankles are nicely moisturized. And then sits there with her shoes in his hand. It's really fucking creepy in a quatrain kind of way, like, this kind of dynamic is creepy anyway, but you add any kind of foot action in there, and I just flip out. Oh, how they giggle. Stevie walks into the practice room, and Mandisa crawls under the piano and really tries to get it together for Stevie. She said he thought it was good, but she wonders what he really thought of her, because he is magic. "I was really impressed. I think she could sing anything," is what he really thought.
"Don't You Worry About A Thing" begins at the very stark bottom of her range and for the first bit sounds very unattractive and flat and bleak. She does cute little barefooted moves, though, and that is fun. The voice finally gets up into her actual register, into her diva place, so I guess that's why the first part sucked. She's really fun dancing around. She should lose the shoes from now on! She could be like the barefoot diva girl. No, that's too weird. Never mind. The whole song is a lot of fooferaw, on and on, and then that one run over and over and over at the end. Which is a song structure she is vastly better than. Also, I guess it sounds like the Sex And The City song, which she is also way better than. She gets to riffin' at the end, but that goes on not very long at all, and then she strikes an awesome pose. Randy says she was not as great this week -- she did a good job, but wasn't too original. He admits that she's the best so far, and points out once more that Stevie's hard to sing. Paula agrees with Stevie Wonder that Mandisa can do anything. Simon also calls her the best so far, and says it's finally become a competition tonight. Ryan brings her her shoes, for some reason, realizes that was weird, and then chucks them into the audience, and Simon gets one of them, and I have no idea why any of that happened.
…The thing is that in the grown-up world, you can like one thing about a person, and not like another thing. Saying that somebody is good-looking does not mean that they are a good person. Saying that they have a good voice doesn't have anything to do with how they act, or how smart they are. It's imbecilic to think that anyone can be so easily reduced to a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down situation. I have no opinions on Bucky as a person -- I don't know him. If you liked Bucky's voice, but hated his look, or the way he talked, or what those things implied about his upbringing, you've approached the real heart of him the exact same amount from two different directions -- which is to say, not really at all. I don't know Bucky. I love his voice, hate almost everything else about him, and that's how it is. He seems like a nice guy, and if you know any TV shows where people win prizes for being nice, would you recommend me? Because I will strike down all competition in that arena with a mighty and strong hand. I'm pretty sure Bucky's on this show for his voice, though, so I guess I'm a thumbs-upper. He talks a whole lot about...something, I don't know what. I assume Stevie Wonder. Forever and ever. Finally, we cut to him singing, and Stevie tells him he gets too sharp when he's overexcited. I think Bucky takes this in stride, or maybe he explains to us how you fix a carburetor. Just sing the song, kiddo.
He's wearing girly jeans and singing "Superstition" with strange lanky dances and this weird dance that I liken to the Bobo as performed by Steamboat Willie, and which Joe of course sees more as a bow-legged attack of the rickets. Bucky's hair is very fluffy and pretty, but doesn't fit anything else about him. He's not a pretty man. There's a funny falsetto moment that he actually nails. Is this, the hair, because I said he was dirty? Because this isn't helping with that. This aggressively clean thing just makes the whole enterprise weird. Like lipstick on a hog, as Kellie might say.
Randy loved it, loved it, and we learn that Bucky laughs exactly like our President. Randy says it wasn't the very best vocal, which it never is, and which does not detract from the voice at all, because that's not what he's shooting for. The fucking audience just does whatever they're supposed to do; it's like Punch & Judy where all the kids yell, like, "He went that way! That way!" It's embarrassing as an American. Paula loves it, or something. Simon says it's one of Bucky's best performances so far, and the crowd goes nuts, and then he makes fun of the "Jessica Simpson hairstyle," and the crowd boos. Bucky laughs, and responds in some way. Ryan offers to flat-iron his hair for him. That's one. He then asks if Simon's accusing Bucky of having gotten extensions. That's two. Everybody laughs. Ryan laughs because of his overwhelming level of gayness. Simon laughs because he wants to fuck Ryan, I think. Bucky laughs because he has no idea what is going on.
Ryan mentions how Melissa beat Ayla for the last women's spot, like I wasn't already predisposed to hate this performance based on it being boring old Melissa. She talks about how they've been working seventeen-hour days and not sleeping, and that her voice has gotten "a little rough," which I kind of thought was the point. Everybody on the whole continent hits pause after her line, which is about how she has been "gargling and swallowing" something, which turns out to be olive oil and not the wages of sin. Gross either way. She talks about how she fucked up the lyrics in front of Stevie -- holding the lyric sheet in her hand, we see -- and she tries to hug him, and he does a funny voice about "What's wrong with you, girl?" and he tells her not to hug him. It's hilarious and totally cuts the tension. "Don't love me! Just sing the song right!" Awesome. She says it was a great experience and that he went out of his way to put her at ease. She crosses her fingers that she will remember the words, and also points out that we've never seen her in a dress. Have we seen her at all, really?
She sings "Lately" (that's the "I'm a man of many wishes" one) wearing a black dress and sitting on a stool, so I hit pause and grab a lovely cocktail. You know this is going to be boring. She's at extreme stage left. I like this song; I wish she were singing it faster. It's very unending. I have nothing to say about Melissa. She bores me so terribly! I think she's nice, needy Floridian, and I think she has very nice, flat, flattering hair tonight. Toward the end of the song, of which she mangles nearly every word start to finish, she stumbles dramatically around the stage and keeps thumping herself. Which is funny, but doesn't really demonstrate the "wow" factor as I understand it, Taylor Hicks.
Randy bugs her about the utterly fucking wrong lyrics, and she gives him sixteen alibis, which is always a huge turnoff. He says with even that aside, her pitch was really wrong, but that at the end he "remembered why [she] is here." I miss Ayla so terribly much. Paula tells her to wear dresses more often and -- of course -- gives her a pass on the words of the song altogether. Just openly says that isn't a concern. Simon says it was her best performance so far, and I disagree with Simon rarely, but passionately, and this is one of those times. He calls it "edgy" and "contemporary" and "very strong." I have no idea what he's talking about. Ryan and Melissa laugh about how bad she fucked up the lyrics. She's so going home.
Lisa is equivalent to Little Stevie Wonder anyway, right? She laughs about how even knowing it was Stevie Week she was still shocked to see him, and she cries in a somewhat believable fashion. Stevie has to talk her down for a good long while, and they sing some Whitney together so she'll chill out. It's sweet.
"Signed, Sealed, Delivered" is not a song that personally hits me in a musical place. It's complex and layered and interesting and all, but it's just naturally kind of yelly-disco and I don't know how a person could impress me with this song, so I don't have much to say. ["This is why I took odds on Lisa going home last week. The song only has like four notes and one of them was really mad at Lisa." -- Sars] Lisa looks very cute though, like the coolest teenage girl in the world. Which is three things she is not, nor has she ever been. Good on her as a performer. She misses a screaming note really bad, but gets back on track. It's maybe her least polished performance so far -- it's very anxiety-inducing to see her thinking about what she needs to do before she does it, because we've not really seen that. JPL stares, bored, in the audience, even though all he ever sang was boring non-songs like this.
Randy says the ending was boring. No, I think what he's saying is, the very end was hot, but the penultimate part was boring. Or something. Paula says Lisa "shines" when she goes outside of the melody, and therefore when she took chances, she was good. The implication is that she did this not nearly enough, but the audience doesn't understand that. Simon calls it one of the best performances tonight, and explains that this is because she commanded the entire stage, in a way the priors did not, because they were "swallowed up by it," and notes that "there are a lot of good singers in this country," but -- over the intensely irritating sound of Randy babbling repetitively about how far up Simon's ass he truly is -- that she has the "it" factor. Randy has never sounded so stupid to me as he did just then. It's sad. "The it factor the it factor yes it factor yes yes the it factor." Like fucking Renfield. Ryan and Lisa shake and wiggle and are prodigious together.
Kevin, I just don't get it anymore. It's like Everybody Loves Raymond to me. People think it's funny, or they hate it, or they have deep feelings about Patricia Heaton or whatever, and I don't understand any of it. How can you actually care? Kevin and Ryan have a hugely fake conversation leading to checking out the signs of Kevin, and his sex appeal, and this is stupid and we're fast-forwarding a little bit. Ryan calls him "the only guy stronger than [Ryan] on American Idol" and they laugh dorkishly about it. Kevin says that Stevie made him very nervous, and Stevie tells him, "Kevin? Relax yourself." Well, okay, maybe I'm obsessed with Kevin Covais. Or maybe I don't care about him at all. I just don't know. More blah blah about the sex appeal. Stevie Wonder even laughs about Kevin's sex appeal, and he doesn't even know that Kevin looks like a newly-hatched lizard.
Kevin then...sings "Part-Time Lover," blinking the whole time like a Morse code message to us to rescue him from this slow death by shame. He goes sneaking across the stage, singing, smiles beatifically, sings, then does a move across the stage the other way like he needs to pee. Then he...he's not singing. Just blinking and making noises. His crotch goes a little crazy for a split second and then I looked away from the television so I don't know how that turned out. I don't even know who to be embarrassed for anymore. His family stands around being weirded out in the audience. Kevin Covais just referred to himself as someone's "lover." Not just once but several times. What do you do with that?
Randy laughs and can say nothing except that he loves Kevin, because how are you going to talk about the singing? He's not singing. He's Kevining. He is glad the kid stayed in tune, he's glad that the dance moves are weird, he's glad the kid is wearing makeup. "I look pretty, right?" says Kevin. Maybe this all a joke on us by Kevin. I'm running out of theories as to why this is happening. Paula points out another sign, which says "Kevin Is My Heaven," and it is being held by some girls that I can almost believe actually think that. Paula talks some more of that squishing bullshit and cracks on his dancing, which is funny, because she kind of means it. She praises his ability to stay in time. Simon thinks Stevie would hate it, that it was appalling, and Kevin starts to get angry. Heart on his sleeve and all that crap. Randy and Paula fight Simon on it, and Kevin snots that he wasn't expecting much from Simon anyway. Ryan giggles that Simon is his Hell, and Kevin is like, "You're not the only one." He smiles into the camera and makes a succession of awesome Kevin faces. What is he even doing here? Remember that Highway To Heaven where the little genius boy went to college and he fell victim to hazing and peer pressure? This is like that, kind of, to watch. But it lacks the "wow" factor, and has no moral values to impart, beyond how all stage kids are the same underneath the surface.
Ryan is up the booth when we come back, so he doesn't get to have the gigglefest slumber party with Katharine like usual. She tells us how much she loves Stevie Wonder and how she would pick him to work with, no matter what, just cold she would answer the question "Stevie Wonder," and so this means a lot. She talks about how amazing it was that everyone freaked out and cried, and then sheepishly reminds us that she's already Hoovered one Stevie song, so hopefully we won't kill her dead tonight. Katharine rocks on the song alone with Stevie, and then tells us that both he and Aretha are cool with her singing this song because she is awesome. Up in the booth, Ryan amuses himself by saying "cue host," which is him, and again -- mirror or a camera? -- and then crosses his fingers for Katharine. Who is singing "Until You Come Back To Me" in another pregnancy scare outfit, doing such cute little dances with her feet. She looks like Snow White in that dress, just weirdly fantastical. Her makeup makes her look entirely too much like Rebecca Jarvis, and so now it aaaaaall makes sense. Her voice is far and away the best of the night, and her fronts are...dramatic. She is about ten times more confident with the song than anybody else, just riffing all over it and having that crazy range. And smiling and being beautiful. I am so taken with this girl.
Randy calls this the Katharine we fell in love with at the auditions, and tells her she was "the bomb" and she geeks out. Paula says that her voice "pierces through the heart," and calls tonight her best performance ever. She smiles and giggles. They are correct. Simon tells her she's "good," just straight up like that, and she makes a tiny "Woo!" He hearkens back to Kelly Clarkson at this stage in the competition, and draws a total comparison, freaking out everybody, especially Katharine. She is completely out of it for the duration, babbling to Ryan that her shoes are broken and that her outfit is full of trouble in some way, and it's clear that he is joking about stuff with her that we don't know about. He asks her questions, and she's so flustered and overheated that she babbles to the point that everyone collectively forgets what the question was. Ryan waves to Lance Bass in the audience. That's three. Up in the balcony, Paris and Taylor dance like utter fucking assholes.
Taylor calls Stevie Wonder "an American Idol," and then is kind of sexy talking to Stevie Wonder, but then he sings and it goes away again. "Taylor has feeling, and I am believing that that feeling is coming from his soul," says Stevie. Taylor tries to explain that the song is personally meaningful, and much like Levon, it basically amounts to how the song mentions "cities," and they have those in the South, so it's a shout-out to the cities of the South, many of which Taylor has heard of, or something. Taylor then is pretty endearing dorking out some more with Stevie. He sings "Living For The City," looking more like a drunk lawyer than ever and sounding exactly like Steve Winwood. He keeps it together all the way through to the end of the first verse, and then loses it and becomes yet another hot mess. First, though, he dances in a not terrible way, and I realize that he's another one I don't need to look at, ever, if I'm going to respect him as much as he deserves. It's a bummer that the band continues to be so loud, because I think this might be really good. Once you get to the la-la breakdown, though, it's all the Taylor bullshit for the rest of the song. He does a stupid dance around in a circle several times like a robot, and goes "Woo!" a billion million times, and makes stupid faces and jerks himself around like a freak. Still, he held off WAY longer than he needed to, and I am appreciative and grateful for that. There are cheers for one million years.
Randy quiets them down, but they immediately freak out again. You do know there are signs telling them to do that, right? That this is not spontaneous? You didn't know that? You should know that! Randy says that it was a "hot" and "fearless" performance, and brings up the Bo-like legitimacy of Taylor based on his history of gigging. Paula shows fuckup asswipe solidarity by doing his stupid robot dance in her chair and talks about how the band is smiling, the people were dancing, that he makes the whole world happy with his singing. And yes, I can agree. But I think what they need to remember is that the ridiculous and stupid antics are not an integral part of what makes him a great singer. Proving my point, he pulls out his stupid harmonica and even the judges are like, we're on a schedule here. Simon says that he's "like every dad that ever got drunk at a wedding," and the crowd and Paula and Randy freak out and whatever, it's stupid and ongoing, and he explains that the difference is that Taylor can sing. Which, I agree with both parts of that. Taylor fiddlefarts across the stage to Ryan like a damn fool, and Ryan talks about how the audience was dancing all crazy. Ryan brings up a "rumor" that one of the stylists suggested dyeing Taylor's hair, and the crowd shits themselves, and then it's interesting, because Taylor first says we'll have to keep watching, but then admits that this never actually happened, but winks at Ryan and they agree to pretend that it really did, as though the audience is stupid enough to fall for it. And they kind of...are.
Paris loves Stevie, Stevie loves Paris, Stevie is reminded of Fantasia. He makes her cry, and it's very sweet, and counterintuitively, she's the only one I can entirely buy with the crying. Isn't that weird? Well, not counting Elliott, because he's painfully sincere. She sings "All I Do" in a strange denim skirt and a weird old lady jacket, but she doesn't look like an old lady, just like a funky, cute girl. She has the strident tone from her auditions back, that old-timey amalgam of the greats. It suits the song, but mostly it reminds me of why I liked her in the first place. Also, her dance moves are lovely. I've missed this retro sound in her voice, so this is a nice performance. I should never have let Joe R talk me into hating her. This is great! Two hours is a lot to ask, but it's a lot of filler and that's good for recapping. This could be the shortest recap I've ever written, frankly. And we have FOX to thank for that. Two and a half hours in which nothing whatsoever happens except a blind man making children cry.
Randy also feels the return of the great voice and the whole too-young/sounds-old thing she's got going. I'm glad I have backup on that. Paula says she could teach a lot of adult performers how to do it up there, and Simon wonders at how the first half of the show was whatever-to-crappy, but the second half is brilliant. Exactly. Thanks for saving us, Mandisa. Then Paris does the unforgivable and I just don't know what to do about it. Ryan asks whether she wasn't feeling more comfortable tonight, and she responds...in song. She sings a line from the song she just sang, and goes "Woo!" and just Taylor Hickses all over herself, and it's fucking sickening. Well, she's a kid. She's gotten ahead of herself like this before, so I'm not going to just hate her again. Ryan refuses to sing to her, and she does it again, and Simon is embarrassed for everyone. Just everyone. It's painful. Ryan tries to sing, and it's bad, and he and Paris laugh, and it's over finally.
Chris is...now completely hairless and denuded. He looks like a penis with a soul patch, as I've stated previously. Good thing he's too good for this show. He talks about worrying, because Stevie Wonder is not his thing, but thank God Stevie Wonder wrote a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. Whatever, dude. That's so stupid. I mean, I'm not so much of a freak that I'll actually email him about the nature of things, but it's like...talk about the one-trick pony. You can't exactly pretend to be blown away by Stevie like the rest of the kids, once you've done that. "It was so amazing to meet Stevie Wonder, whose songs fill me with dread."
He sings "Higher Ground," and supposedly does this as an admixture of both versions, the original and the Chili Peppers. Mostly, it sounds like Rock Star: INXS karaoke air guitar bullshit that you can barely hear over the coked-up sound system. There is a fucking smoke machine. Question: if you're selling him as the real deal, the one authentic "rocker," why do you do the cheesiest shit to him? Same as with Bo last year, the whole "For The Love Of Money" with the giant Bootsy Collins bling and getup. Maybe Chris is actually just the boy version of Kellie Pickler. Too much band, WAY too much makeup, too much looking like a singing penis. You can barely hear him, but it's fine, because he always sounds exactly the same every week anyway. How boring. How just stupidly boring. I hope he bites it on Lieber & Stoller night or something. Has he seen the fuckin' show? It's not the Chris's Comfort Level Show. Fucking get it done! That drives me absolutely apeshit. You'd think he would have thought that through. Also, the amount of makeup and weird hairlessness make him look like James St. James. Which is terrifying.
Randy says that every week Chris figures out a way to make it your own. Or, in this case, Flea's. I can't believe nobody called him on the note-perfect Chili Peppers cover he just perpetrated. It's not exactly like the Chili Peppers are too underground and hip for the judges, you know? Paula blathers about how she openly is admitting that she doesn't care what he sings, how he sings, whether he shows up, because no matter what, she can rest assured there's junk in the jeans, and that's all she cares about. Simon really, really shows his ass here, going on and on about "thank God for Chris" this and "you could have a hit with that" and how he took this huge risk and just blew the doors off and how Chris should just invent these wonderful re-imagined versions of classic songs from the dawn of time, and it's embarrassing. They did this with a cover last year too, a country song, wasn't it? So icky. So Ryan and Chris embrace, and then immediately stand ten yards away from each other. He talks about getting on the elevator with Chris, and Chris was being intense and preparatory and whatever, and Chris babbles in return about how he hates all music except for working-on-your-car music from 1996 or later, and thank God for the Chili Peppers, because as we all know, they hate all soul, R&B, all that kind of music just as much as Chris does -- Chili Peppers are like, "Funk? Hell no!" Just like Chris. Kanye West writes down Chris's name on a list somewhere. Chris apologizes if he freaked out Ryan in the elevator and Simon cracks a joke about Chris being scared of Ryan sodomizing him in the elevator and Ryan snaps at him and then they have a big old sloppy tongue kiss while Chris stands by, nervous and anxious and realizing there are worse things to be scared of than a black 7" by the Godfather Of Most Music. Recap footage, and then Ryan says goodnight and smiles lingeringly into the camera. Good night, Ryan.
Wednesday
Ryan looks great, the audience looks terrible and run-down. I wonder if there's some kind of Conservation of Hotness thing going on there. Remind me to keep an eye on that. There were 32 and a half million votes last night! Over in Temple Grandin, Taylor's acting like an idiot, and everyone else is being well-behaved. Simon has his shirt unbuttoned to the navel; Ryan flirts with him about it. We remember all the many tears of Elliott, and how Stevie talked crazy about the show a little bit. Elliott was great and will be here forever. Kellie and Bucky were worried, and they both looked ridiculous, but at least Bucky rocked it. Melissa cannot remember the lyrics to any songs, or indeed any words period. Mandisa saved everybody, and then Lisa and Taylor were great. Katharine was fucking fantastic and Chris was Chris. Paris was amazing. Kevin and Ace were just weird and did not sing well, but were great fun to watch, and that's how they work. Kevin got snotty with Simon again, and was praised for it again.
Best pimp-mercial in the history of the Ford family of automobiles. Chris plays the guitar alone in the woods, and sings "All I Want," by Toad the Wet Sprocket. That is a song I enjoy very much, because it reminds me of when I had feelings. It's great for about five seconds, right, like musically I mean, and then Bucky comes flying out of a trunk, and all these scary fake animals appear, like a blinking owl, a plastic deer. It's completely an Old Navy commercial. No, it's like a Geico joke about an Old Navy commercial. "New clothes are fun!" The freakiest part is that Kevin sounds best, out of all of them. They all dork out and sing around a campfire, then a Sasquatch shows up with a horrible plastic grinning face and a giant head. Lisa invites him to sit and they roast marshmallows, smiling like freaks and singing. Kat shows up in a park ranger outfit, looking like ten miles of hot, and I think she attempts to pull them over or something. The Sasquatch removes its head, and underneath it is Ace, who smiles at her all limpid and rosy and adorable, and she melts, relents, and has a seat with them at the campfire, and they sing and laugh and...I don't even know why it's so awesome. I can tell you that I rewound it six times before continuing on, which meant that the thing cut off right when they were revealing the evictee, even though it's obvious, so I had to go to the end and rewind back to that part to find out, but it was fine, because this is the thing that makes this show worthwhile for me: this shit right here. I can also tell you that I have watched that few seconds of this show more times than any other part of this show, ever. More times than any Nadia performance, more than "Alone," more than Paula and Constantine's mom, more than any A-Fed at Anna's request, more than when Ryan threw the water at Simon, have I watched this stupid ad. It has taken over my life. Good, good job.
Back in the studio, Elliott loses all control about how great it was, because we're on the same page a lot of the time, and this in turn tickles Ryan, who giggles at cute little Elliott, and then introduces Stevie Wonder, who will be singing a very long, very Stevie Wonder kind of song, which I will be fast-forwarding, because it is not my job to crack on Stevie Wonder. Kevin is wearing an awesome argyle sweater, and Ace is wearing a shirt that says "God Rocked Out," and they are all still amazed that Stevie Wonder is there. Still! The kids dance for him, and then after he's done, the cast of the horrible show The Loop, each of whom I very much like besides the show they're on, which is beneath them, clap for Stevie Wonder, because FOX makes literally no sense whatsoever.
Okay we're going for the three lowest votes. Ace was "energetic," "spirited" and "manic." Kevin was dancy and made-up, stylish, and appalling. One of them is in the bottom three, and they both know it's Kevin. But it's not! It's ACE! They both almost pike straight into the air and then they both kind of get really sick. The crowd wigs; even the camera guy can't believe it and gets all joggly. Ace nearly starts crying on the stage. ["Once again prompting me to wonder, post-Radford, what would happen if a contestant actually blew chunks onstage during the live broadcast." -- Sars] Paula begs us to vote if we love him; Randy thinks it's weird and there were lots of people "worse than him," and would like Ace to pick better songs. George Michael songs, if at all possible. Simon is a little surprised he's in the bottom three, but says it's a "wake-up call" and that he needs to both "choose better songs" and "perform better." Stop sucking, basically. I agree. I believe in Ace, but I can't do that if he doesn't fulfill his part of the bargain.
Ace is still having trouble with the concept, coming back from commercial, and there's pandemonium in the crowd. So up in Temple Grandin, Kevin's safe, remember, and we move on now to Paris. Who was unbelievable, seasoned, and "a performing doll." Paris's family is so deeply cool. She's safe, of course. Kellie lost her spark, lost her razzle-dazzle, and "everything went wrong." She's safe and can't believe it, which is ridiculous, but she doesn't have the option of just watching the whoring that goes on with this show, so I get that she was worried. Taylor was "hot" and "fearless," makes people happy, and was like a drunk dad. He spazzes sideways, he's safe, he goes woo, he spazzes the other way, his drunk relatives scream in the audience. For Chris, the crowd goes crazy, and Ryan continues the lie that he made "Higher Ground" his own, and also says that he was fantastic, and the best of the night, by a mile, because not even Simon is immune to the power of the smoke machine and the shiny lights and the new sound system. None of those things are actually fucking true, but you know, he's so talented that I'm not going to flip out. Melissa forgot the lyrics but can sing, has a distinctive voice, and was edgy and strong; Elliott had flavor and vibe and passion and a great voice, but lacks the "wow" factor. Of the two, it's Melissa in the bottom three. There are boos. Ace ignores Melissa entirely, onstage. She's alllll alone because nobody's ever seen her before.
One more left. Mandisa can sing anything, and "made the show a competition," and of course she's safe. Elliott pats her sweetly. Katharine was perfect, gave her best performance so far, and reminded Simon of Kelly Clarkson. She's safe. Lisa ended well or shined all the way, depending on the judge, and took control of the stage. Bucky was enjoyable, different, and had stupid hair. One of them is in the bottom three...and it is Lisa. Still not surprising. Bucky is sad but not really all that sad, and Katharine is either shocked or yawning, I can't tell. More boos. The three of them stand onstage and we stare at them for awhile in their shame. After the break, one of them is sitting back down. It will obviously be Ace.
Back from commercial, Ace heads back to Temple Grandin after bowing deeply to the screams, and his stupid brother stands up and claps seriously as Ryan has to tell him several times to fucking go sit down. He's completely out of it and freaked, and does not want to banter with Ryan at all. I think Ace needs a hug or something, that's what I think. So it's Lisa and Melissa, so Melissa is going home. She smiles graciously. This might be the prettiest she's ever been. She's like, "Duh, clearly I was the one going home," but not in a weird Mikalah/Brenna way where she's asking for tears. Just like, "Yeah, regrettable." We remember her journey that we never saw, but it's so generic and the usual that we might as well have. We see her fuck Ayla over through no fault of her own, and then that one really amazing performance. She dances around sadly onstage as they watch it, to the awful "Had A Bad Day" song, which: I wish they would cut it out with that song, because no, she didn't. She had succession of great days, actually. Don't focus on the negative like that. TiVo gets bored before the sing-out, but I'm guessing she fucked up the words. Or at least, I hope she did, because to nail it now? That would just be sad.
Coming up: two weeks of Joe R. in a row as -- I'm guessing -- Lisa and then Kevin take their bows for the last time. See you there!