I've spent the last hour trying to figure out what's wrong with Meat Loaf because I didn't want to make fun of him if he has a good reason, like Geri Jewell, but so far all I've come up with is that Alexander the Great had epilepsy. Which I didn't know, but is not helpful in terms of proving I'm nice. In other news: PRINCE! ADAM PRATT! RHONETTA GODDAMN JOHNSON! MATTHEW BUCKSTEIN-BUNTING! Kellie Pickler spitting escargot at Wolfgang Puck! Not even Chris Daughtry can tell the difference between himself and Ed Kowalczyk anymore! Which I spelled correctly on the first try! Everybody looks better in all-white, but they can't sing in harmony for shit because that is not what this show is about! Twenty percent of the episode is about making fun of the poor people we already made fun of back in auditions! January through April! Paris sings with the awesome Al Jarreau! Kat sings horribly with Meat Loaf, who maybe doesn't make it. But then the guys and the girls sing really long medleys! Bucky Covington is awesome! Ace got uglier but still can't sing! Kevin Covais might get a little crotchy on you if you're not careful! Elliott is...more confident! Plus happy to be there! His mom can grant wishes! Taylor wheezes and almost has a myocardial infarction from all that running around, plus pot smoking, plus ribs and pancakes for breakfast! I'm not telling you this like this for effect, it's just what it was like! Screaming and then more screaming and then more screaming and there you are on the very edge of your coma with more screaming yet to come and no end in sight! Plus screams! You can play along at home! Just pretend every exclamation point is another commercial break!
Taylor plays the stupid harmonica! The ladies sing too! Mandisa is still not competent to dress herself but also still sounds better than everybody else! Even Clay Gayken from the auditions gets to sing onstage with k.d. lang! Elliott Yamin and a very Red Bulled-up Mary J. sing her painfully pointless cover of "One," and she almost pushes him into the orchestra pit! She is out of control! ADAM PRATT! Carrie Underwood sings like six songs but doesn't talk once because she needs a talking chip upgrade! Toni Braxton and Taylor Hicks push and push, but nothing comes out! She is wearing underwear in public, with heels! You can almost see her Man-Troll! She tries to make him touch it and this makes him very jumpy! It's startling! Burt Bacharach medley! Which is of course the best part! Dionne Warwick goes crazy with her face! PRINCE! Kat and Taylor fake-smile and bad-harmonize through "Time Of My Life," and then TAYLOR WINS! He screams "WOO!" and then he screams "SOUL PATROL!" And then David Hasselhoff cries!
We open on much cheering, and Carrie Underwood looking super-cute in a lovely white dress. Carrie dear? You can stop losing weight any old time. You have a moon face, and if you keep trying to lose the baby fat you're going to end up with a bigger and bigger face as the rest of you disappears like Nicole Richie. The song she's singing is all about "we dreamers" and what "we" are up to, as dreamers. Taylor comes out also in white, with fuzzy hair and a wide-open Muppet mouth and the trembling we've learned to associate with him controlling the twitching. Katharine appears, also wearing a white suit. There are some interesting things like how her fronts are hanging out inside the jacket, and how there's a "healthy roundness" pooching out with extreme prejudice over her waistline. Which is messed up, because she's got a lovely figure and yet each week dresses in order to look like a freak. I hope -- and this is going to turn out to be true -- that this is the worst outfit of the night. The rest of the Top 12 comes out in white. Everybody looks good in white, especially now that fake tans are so readily available. Nobody looks at anybody else, as is always true with group singing, because if they were capable of singing in a group they wouldn't be here. This somehow does not interfere with the intense Jesus Camp vibe going on. For which I blame Underwood. The song is about how they "made it through the rain," which is...weird in the same way that I never liked using the "Had a Bad Day" song for the goodbyes, because that puts the shit in a really weird place. "The rain" involved being on TV for months and being treated like a star. Poor them. This is a trend that will continue throughout: Isn't it hard to be on this show? Because eventually someone will win? Pity the Idols! Randoms crowd the stage and everybody's makeup looks transcendent. It's nice to look at. Also nice: no talking before the song, no talking after the song. Just the song and then credits. It's very dramatic.
Ryan comes out making that face he sometimes makes, where he's almost surprised at all the cheering and screaming. He shoots finger guns at the judges and waves cutely off-stage, and there are Ben Stiller and Heather Locklear. I like Ben Stiller all right, although there's gotten to be a Taylor Hicks kind of thing about how neato he finds himself. There is not a word in English for how I feel about Heather Locklear although I've tried to make it clear to you before. In any case, it's simultaneously bizarre and makes total sense that Ben and Heather are sitting together. Where's Christine? This season has been such a constant writingfest that I haven't been keeping up with anything but W and Entertainment Weekly. The internet is a thing I look at for work and then I go away again. I hope they're okay! I know Heather's on the prowl. But in my ideal dream, that's always true, so it's not scary. Ryan strokes his lack of beard despite the ensuing double entendre, and ruminates about who's going to win. Rocky Covington, I can only assume, sits out in the audience having some ideas. Ryan talks about how close it was last week, and it's interesting, because somebody pointed out that if the lines for all three of them last week were busy the whole time, then it would break out to basically 33 percent each way, and the real votes would be the people who got the most busy signals, like plastic flutes in a classy champagne fountain. I wonder about that, I do.
There's a pointless and long-lived set of judgery montages. Here's what we can learn about the judges: Randy uses the word "dude" a whole bunch of times. He says "dude." Also, things are "the bomb" and then they "have a hot one" sometimes. He also says "wow." Paula, "the compassionate one," gets a montage backed up by "So Emotional," by her sister-in-oxy Whitney Houston. She cries, and crawls all over Randy and Simon, and gives lap dances, and sometimes seems to be electrocuted, and dances like a drunk sorority girl in an ethnic situation, and screams about love like a drunk sorority girl outside the dorm, and pretends to punch Simon and sometimes connects. The montage ends and Ryan's smiling directly into the camera like, "Did you know she gets paid more than I do? Yeah. That's fucked up, right?" The Simon montage involves him touching himself all over and rubbing the lips and stroking the cheeks and eyes and making awesome faces. Simon makes a great "oh God" face when it's done, and then Ryan giggles and fondles himself before shouting out the band, who get louder every single year.
So it's the "McPheever" v. the stupid "Soul Patrol," and we're onsite at home. In Birmingham there are a bunch of toothless trashy white people doing their best to change your mind about Alabama, led by the O'Donahue twins, doing their best to change your mind about the ickiness of incest, and about the inherent spookiness of twins. Absolute failures across the board. Although closely related persons making out is maybe the best thing to have representing Alabama -- and they're certainly nicer to look at than the various people who have dyed their hair gray and brought their harmonicas. Look, I'm sure Alabama is awesome, because God knows Arkansas, against all reason, is the most beautiful place on Earth. But I am telling you that this is a self-selected group of people who are doing Alabama no favors by being on TV. Just like last year. Over in Los Angeles, Tamyra Gray is way less drunk than LaToya last year, and she isn't dressed like a foot in the least, but she is screaming. Kind of like a sports bra, actually, is how she's dressed. And getting skinnier, with the big head issue. So that's the deal so far: no Matt Rogers, no drunk LaToya. Why am I here?
First performance of the False Idols: Paris Bennett wearing shorts (gauchos?) and looking quite hippy, which is weird because she isn't at all. TV is so strange. She sings the beginning of "We're In This Love Together," and then introduces Al Jarreau, with whom I was obsessed when I was younger...even younger than Paris is now! He's wearing a funny hat. This is like the only "with her Idol" thing I can actually buy, because he is awesome. They scat together, and I will say that Paris is not doing all she could to lose the Huxtable associations with this performance. Also, her smile is kind of insane. They sound really good together. She's good at harmony, not surprising. I imagine her whole household like that girl in Josie & The Pussycats that never talked, just sang. With the tortured scanning and all of it. "Paris my darling, if you want some bacon speak up for real / Because Mommy is hungry and I want to eat my meal!" "Yes. / Skooo-be-doo-be dop-blop-boppa-dop deeble-dibble-deeble-dee dipple-doo! Weeeee-ooo!" Paula wobbles around in the audience looking like a moron. But a happy one. It's one of the best things of the night, which is so sad because by the end of this you will forget it ever happened, because you will be much, much older than you are right now.
Chris Daughtry sings , with his "favorite band," Live. (Well, that one I can almost believe, except that he's so generally clueless, I don't know if he knows the band by name.) Ed Kowalczyk looks the same as he did ten years ago, only orange. Live is a band that doesn't write interesting music anymore. They wrote that dumb song about the hospital being struck by lightning and then the babies have other babies and people die and turn into other people's dead babies and it's very beautiful and super-deep and then I think there are dolphins and all the people are bald and scary-looking. Just like right now. And then they didn't write any more good songs after that, because once you start with the placenta music, it's over. Not even Tori Amos can save you after that. Anyway, this song sounds just like most other Live songs, which is like Chris Daughtry squared, because he has no concept of originality or that singing is a whole wide world and not just located three doors down. The other night Joe was like, "I still kind of like Chris," like I was going to give him shit about it. And I didn't know what to say, because...I like his voice, for sure, when he's not goating himself up a storm. But the Chrisness of Chris is in permanent abeyance, because he's cookie dough. He's just startlingly boring as a person. Nice guy, nothing going on in there. So to "like" or "not like," it's a confusing proposition. You cannot ask me to have an opinion about the personality of a faceless blur with noises coming out of it. As a terribly judgmental person, I don't like thinking about the black hole of Chris, because you reach back for your gun, and there's nothing there. I don't wish him ill, so I guess that means he's okay by me.
Especially amateurish is what he looks like standing to professionals, even if they're as boring as he is. He gives a half-hearted "ladies and gentlemen" flourish in the direction of Ed, and they sing, and he sounds like Chris and Ed sounds like Ed and the whole thing sounds like insomnia in action. They keep facing each other at weird moments, so it's like they are impressed by each other's "mystery." Which is awesome because they are the two least mysterious people in the universe. But at least they turn each other up. Or on. Or whatever, the song is stupid. Emily Deschanel in the audience. That's some black-sheep acting-out right there: "Ooh, Zooey set the coolness bar with her good taste in acting parts? Fuck that Glass Family bullshit, I'm going to American Idol and I'm going to fuck Colin Farrell and then I'm buying some Candie's footwear at Kohl's and there's not a damn thing you can do about it."
All Ryan has to say now is the name Kellie Pickler, and people will laugh. He says that pronouncing "calamari" gave her a brain hemorrhage. Yeah. We're going to the well again. The well is dry! How dry? I would like to invite you to a little thing I call "Puck & Pickler," a series of skits in which Kellie Pickler pretends she's a retard and Wolfgang Puck pretends he doesn't want to slap her. She looks really cute, though. They kiss on the cheek, quite Continental, and he says some pervo thing about how her face is the perfect appetizer and she says it's also non-fattening. She's funny! Just not in the way they want us to think! She lies to the Puck that she was embarrassed by her lies of being retarded, and then lyingly lies that he has to teach her about foods, but that there are no eyeballs allowed. He gives her a menu with the AI logo at the top. That's weird. She borrows his glasses, and he says that she looks like a college professor, and she laughs and says maybe people will take her seriously now. It doesn't take glasses for that, Kellie. Just drop the bullshit instead. They talk about escargot and she goes on and on about how he's lying and there's no such thing as snail-eating, and she fucks around, and finally Puck's like, "Eat it now." Just like that. She almost cries about eating the snails and continues to say that in France, they do not eat snails. He finally just shoves it in her mouth. She gags and spits it into a napkin with a fake smile and...the crossed-eyes issue is really intense at this moment. Then they say "Albemarle" over and over, and Puck's out in the audience looking like luggage, and I think Ryan calls Kellie "Whoopi" for some reason. Well, they're both the same amount of funny, and savvy, in the current day.
"Moving from snails in garlic to Meatloaf onstage," Ryan says. A more succinct and insightful transition I don't know if I've ever seen on this show. Good on you, Ryan Seacrest. And you know what? Bat Out Of Hell III is apparently coming out. There's a pattern here -- I didn't notice because the other ones weren't obviously hawking anything. It occurs to me that just maybe, Katharine's hugest idol in all music is not, in fact, Meatloaf. I'm not stating that definitively for the record, because who knows what the hell Kat likes, other than making me happy as pie, but it's an intuition I have. So Kat and Meatloaf come lumbering onstage, red scarf in attendance, and Meatloaf looks scared to death. He has the kind of stage fright where you're afraid to go onstage. Good for a musical performer. He sounds...like a palsied gipper. I love Meatloaf, don't get me wrong. But I heard he went backstage and cried because it was awful, and then literally blacked out the whole experience and cannot remember it. And I am feeling him on those things.
Kat sounds great, all with these intense drama faces about the song, which is "It's All Coming Back To Me Now," which is funny because of how it gave him Memento-ism afterwards. The harmonies are in bloody tatters, because he keeps yanking hard on her register and pulling her off-key. It's like a Sharping Bee. What does this song mean? What do any songs by him mean? Ninety percent of Meatloaf songs are about the Emily Rose-style haunting of one's genitals. He's so great, but I don't know what he's talking about. Bonin'. I know he sings about bonin', but I also know that there are things he absolutely will not do. I respect that a lot. My favorite Meatloaf song is the one about "Will you dance with the wolf with red roses and offer him your throat?" Firstly because Patty Smith is always crazy and cannot help herself, but secondly, I think it's in some small way about bonin'. The creepy Janice Dickinson kind where you might not live through it. I was just a twinkle in the '70s so I don't know, but the movies suggest that this song was less of a simile and more of a metaphor, and that if you weren't careful you might end up with Alfred Molina singing "Sister Christian" at you in a bathrobe and M-80s to the face.
She does this whole acting-it-out thing that is so awesome. The performance, without having to listen to it, is fantastic because his drama involves not killing himself right there, and her drama is like, "I have tension in my mind and it's all coming back to me, but I don't know what to do with this information, and it gives me a migraine of memories and pains of love, and there is mist all around and a motorcycle and a dead lover and curtains blowing in the backlight like Bonnie Tyler, but yet I must deny my heart, et cetera." She ends it almost in tears, so artificial, hands wavering around her face like Britney Spears used to do, just total haunted pain of it coming back to her, and then the second the applause starts: giggles and smiles. That's my girl. David Boreanaz and his exceedingly square-headed progeny are like, "What has happened to Meat Loaf?" And they can't decide to laugh or not.
Song from The Godfather or something, to introduce the "Golden Idols." Moses shows up and beats the shit out of Ryan right there. The first award -- which is code for "cruelly make fun of auditions again, because the three months we already did that was simply not knee-slappingly hilarious enough" -- is for Outstanding Female Vocal. Nominees are Cierra "Fall On Your Knees" Johnson, who has reinvented jazz to sound more like ass; Crystal "A Baby Made Of Crack" Parizansky, who is missing some teeth. I can't believe I missed that the first time, and who made Paula's normally slothful eyes go wide during her scarifying rendition of "Lady Marmalade"; and Princess "Keep Shining, Keep Smiling" Brewer, who claimed to sound like Aretha, but actually sounded like an agoraphobic forced to appear on the show in some kind of Saw scenario. Also I believe notable for the awesomeness of Simon whispering, "Stop her. Shut her up. Make it stop. Please make her stop." She wins, and Ryan says she declined to attend because she wasn't interested in more abuse. Guess what? Neither are we. Then comes Outstanding Male Vocal. First is Marlowes "Weird Is The New Awesome" Davis, one of the fifteen creepy unfortunate gay boys who were legion this year; Derek "It's Nigel! It's Nigel! It's NIGEL!" Dupree, with the scary schizoid aggression and the extreme hyperhidrosis; and stupid fucking Crazy Dave Hoover: Still obnoxious, still gross, maybe actually crazy, maybe actually exploitative. He wins, and Ryan says he can't be there either, but it's a fake-out because there he is. He comes out yowling and falls on his face off the stage, but of course he's fine, because people like that always are, and he dances around stupidly and everybody cheers for him and his issues, and Ryan sends some girl to give him the award, she puts it down and walks off...and, like, that's the joke. The end. I hate the Golden Idols.
Then: MORE Puck & Pickler. Are you kidding me with this? Two hours and it still went over, but at least we get this pointless shit. They bring a lobster over and Kellie falls off her fucking chair and into Puck's face. He taunts her with the lobster. This is so stupid. Even Kellie is getting tired if of it. He's Austrian, not French, but you get the feeling that he, and this stupid show, seem to regard her as the Lucille Ball of our time. She pokes the lobster with a fork, and he taunts her with it some more. It's not as exciting as it sounds. There's more laughter. Why?
Ryan congratulates Puck on his patience -- still hating The Pick, I see -- and then there's the Boy Medley. First there's "Taking Care Of Business," which is I guess as typical male as you can muster with this group (all the Girl Medley songs have "Woman" in the title; the Boy songs have no theme at all). They're all dressed in black, and here's the skinny: Ace making a stupid face and then singing horribly. Kevin wiggling around and blinking. Bucky sounding magnificent but still looking kind of nasty. Chris Daughtry being the exact same as every other fucking moment of the day. Elliott riffing over them singing the chorus with his boss eye all a-twitch. Taylor dancing like an asshole and then whipping out his goddamned harmonica. Which I have to say, he can play like a riot, and the other upshot is that it demands too much attention in order to play, so there's lots less twitching. Or maybe it's just localized in the mouth area and we can't see it. The thing is that they are all wearing black, and they look pretty great, and in the background there is that green dripping Matrix stuff. I guess because they are wearing black? Or because this show is a serious indication that the sheepening of America has been fully accomplished? Why is it there? Is that a "boy" thing? Keanu Reeves is at least as overwhelmingly masculine as Ace Young, I will give you that.
The second song in the medley is a song I have literally never heard in my life. Joe and I have fun saying we don't know who Natalie Merchant or Stevie Wonder are, and some readers have a great deal of fun helping us out with that, but I'm being honest. I don't know this "Tobacco Road." Let's Google. I just wish there were some website that could provide, like, a guide to all music. That would make things so much...ah, here we go. Tobacco Road is the Seven Sisters of North Carolina? That's fun. And it was a movie about poor people, okay -- I don't watch those -- oh, it's a song by a country music writer named Loudermilk! Most excellent! And was performed by, among others, someone calling himself "Spooky Tooth." That's all I needed. Thanks, the internet! Ah, the feeling of being fully informed, and yet knowing you're going to get emails anyway. Here's how it goes: Chris makes pissy faces, Ace falsettos horribly, Kevin grabs his crotch and joke-sings the bass line. And then the last song, "Don't Stop," by Fleetwood Mac. What is the point of this? Is there anything more manly than Fleetwood Mac? Paula cries and wiggles around. They run out into the audience to shake people's hands, and nobody will look Ace in the face. I'm so over Ace Young. I was never really under him, but I thought he was a funny little fake thing, and now he's just irritating. I wouldn't shake his hand either. They all run back onstage, and the best part is how Taylor almost has a heart attack and can barely get the breath to sing along. That's fucking hilarious. "They killed my fat ass with Fleetwood Mac."
Then a pimpomercial, with...that same Fleetwood Mac song again! What? Maybe they really will drop him with it. The segment is a total cheat, just a clip show of pimpomercials past, and some outtakes, most notable for Ace's arms, Taylor jackassing around, and Kermit the Frog selling right the hell out. The framing device is that Taylor and Kat are sitting in a convertible watching this crap at a drive-in movie. There's a date for you. I bet Taylor would be like, "I rented out this whole place so that we can watch me making an ass of myself, baby. That sounds like fun, right?" Ryan and the Final Two hang out onstage and he gives them cars, and it's as anticlimactic as ever, but Taylor gives good fake, of course, pretending to lose his goddamned mind about it, screaming and bending and wriggling and hooting. Cut to the McParents for some reason, and they're like, "We're totally rich, dude." Kat's like, "Great! Another car! I feel like a star!"
More Golden Idols, this one for Proudest Family Moment, and it's Elliott's mom crying, Kat's dad crying, Chris's wife crying and talking major ex-stripper game about how much her boring husband has done for her children. Yikes. Ryan pretends this is all very touching; I don't know, he was there. Maybe these things were quite touching. The winner is, of course, Elliott's mom Claudette. She rambles and talks crazy like a mommy will and loses track of herself altogether and says she's going to sleep with her Golden Idol and Ryan's like, "Whatever, cutie." Then she introduces her son.
Elliott Yamin. Singing with his "idol," Mary J. Blige. Not even trying now. He sounds kind of strainy and his smile is manic at the beginning, but he gets it together with a quickness and sounds beautiful. He's also wearing a very cool jacket. I'm so over hearing anybody but U2 do this song, and not in that super-fan way -- U2 can suck my nards -- but, like, why? Why cover this song? Mary J. Blige comes out in some Bono The Fly sunglasses and acts crazy. Elliott hides on the corner of the stage and does stupid dances while she wails. I cannot tell you if this is good or not, but I think...it is moderately good. She does a crazy windmilling move like she's reaping the whirlwind, and they finish up on a duet, which is great because of the awkwardness of not knowing how to deal with each other. They awkwardly hold hands -- a theme, tonight -- but I have to say that live, this was probably awesome. I have that feeling. Mary spares Elliott exactly three quarters of a glance the entire time, which is fine. Because (a) say what you will, but she is the performing machine they aspire to be, and (b) she's like the only currently relevant person we're going to see tonight, with her stupid U2 cover, so I can see why she wouldn't roll over for it. Elliott's so overjoyed to be there that she's said her goodbyes and vanished before he even realizes the song is over. She's quite excitable, Mary J. Maybe she forgot her situations backstage and had to go grab them.
Then more Carrie Underwood, this time singing "Don't Forget To Remember Me," okay, with her very good band. She, like the finalists every year, is a total sex bomb. I'm going to let Jesus take the wheel on this one. The song is boring, all about going off to college or something, and then life sucks after college, the backup singer's harmonies and the Underlings are the only thing that make this palatable. But they do, and the wall-eyed fiddler is no slouch either... Oh shit, it's over. I forgot to remember to recap it. She even reminded me!
The Randy Jackson award for vocab goes to Rhonetta "Bitch Can't Move" Johnson, with her mental illness and her filthy mouth and her silver boots. She's the Sharon Stone of L.A. street culture. Which is redundant. Ryan lets us know that she's "working" tonight, which actually earns a few boos from the previously brain-dead audience. Ryan thanks Nigel "for the info," which is undefined but funny, and cut to Simon not being impressed by any of this. We go live to a fake Rhonetta talking about how she doesn't want the award, but then she does, for pawning. Then she beats up a PA. It's dumb. You could do better.
But for "someone who sends out all the right signals," we turn to...Taylor Hicks? Sure, if the "right signals" are "my airway is obstructed" or "jam your wallet in my mouth, please." Again with "In The Ghetto," that well-known song about the Jewish ghettos of Prague, or so I've been informed via illiterate email hundreds of times. Toni Braxton comes out with wrists flapping all overdramatically. And her labia. She's wearing a nightie, and has trunk legs, and cankles. So she's still a dude, and Taylor doesn't know what to do, and keeps forgetting whose line it is so he like hums with his mouth open the whole time, and their dancing is awkward and not good. He sounds good. She sounds like a fella. At one point she shimmies back up on him and tries to put his hand on her batch, and he freaks out and jumps across the stage and then she laughs with us, like, "Aren't we sassy?" in order to put off the shame of being physically repelled by a fat gray-haired uncle of somebody. Toni Braxton goes WOO! almost as much as Taylor's stupid ass. Maybe that's why she's his "idol." I don't want to make the Braxton-Hicks joke again, but there it is: a painful, ultimately futile, irritating time-waster for everyone involved.
Time for the Girl Medley in all black, and since they're all ladies, the creativity in song choices might just blow your mind. We start with "Man, I Feel Like A Woman," a song I hate every time like it's the first time. Because it's not a freaking song, Kat's visibly uncomfortable singing it, and she looks to be getting pretty tired. Everybody looks fantastic except Mandisa. Paris looks adorable. Kellie looks like she's in a scary motorcycle gang from the future. , they sing "Trouble (The Girlish Woman Remix)," and Kat makes hilariously manic cute faces whilst singing about how "evil" she is. Kellie is actually one of the best onstage right now. And Mandisa, of course. Whose choreography is basically just hip-swaying, in case the black was too slimming. Melissa still looks like a stripper, but she's wearing these black pajama pants and looks like Viet Cong. I hope Taylor's dad doesn't have a flashback and attack her. Finally, they sing "Natural Woman," and of course Lisa Tucker sounds really great. Paris sounds weird singing with all of them together like this because she sounds different from everybody else. Kinnik is somewhere going, "I wish I could feel like a natural woman." The thing about this song is that Carole King is such a gifted songwriter, and I was not a woman in that era, but I've always thought it would be weird to burn your bra and take back the night and then go home and listen to Tapestry. (An album, I hasten to point out, that I know the words to cold, front to back.) Like, did you just skip that song and "Where You Lead"? Or do a whole Lisa Alther Kinflicks brain-freeze cognitive dissonance deal about it? It's not some big weird statement or anything, I just always wondered how the ladies of the time worked that out. The last song is Mandisa's song on the record (which, I mean, be serious: it should come with your breakfast cereal) and she takes center stage doing "I'm Every Woman (Except For You Gay Ones)," and rocks the hell out on it of course, even though it was toward the bottom of the list for me personally over the season. Ryan claps for the Girls and their Medley. Those are like all of his favorite songs in the world.
More Golden Idols. At what point do you just admit you don't have two hours of material and let it go? Never? Cool. Best Impersonation. Nominees include Kenneth Maccarone, who is NOT A GAY LADY, HE JUST LOVES CHER, and also singing like a scary computer voice. Man, Joe hated that guy. There's Seth "Fine Budding Cannibal" Strickland whom I do not recall, but he loves Michael Jackson and has the face of a person who seems to be normal and then he masturbates in public and you're like, "On reflection, we should have seen that coming," and he has a speech impediment. Then Clay Gayken himself, Michael "Colonial-Era Graveyard" Sandecki, who is just so hard to look at. He seems nice enough, and clearly has some stuff going on with him personally, but I mean purely from an eyeball standpoint there's gotta be something we can do. Remember how he peed? Let's watch that again. I swear this takes longer than it did the first time -- but on the other hand, it was the exact same amount of funny. He "wins," and they bring his tragic ass out onstage for more abuse. He's wearing earth tones and jumping and hugging and whatever, looking like he's going to crap himself. His gel is...you can see his scalp. He's so bleak. I think there's a strong possibility that there are medical issues at play that we should know about, in the interests of full disclosure. I honestly do. He gets that hangovery face-twitch of nervousness as Ryan asks him to sing for us, and he starts into "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me," Jacob's most hated song in all the universe, and the whole time his face is going crazy with the nerves. It's difficult to watch. Then a creature comes out onto the stage behind him, very lurky and scary and rubber-looking, and we swore it was k.d. lang for the longest time, not as a joke, but just like, "Why her? Why not Clay?" And then...it is Clay.
Clay Aiken, 2006. Smirky, creepier than ever, wearing a strange dark brown wig like he's in witness protection, or distancing himself from alleged photographs perhaps, the burnished melted-plastic skin of him as usual, floating in an eldritch manner a few inches off the floor. He moves around like he's on casters, which is actually the creepiest part. He has a face that says, "I am used to applause," and also says, "So why aren't you applauding?" He looks so fake and prosthetic now! He looks like Alan Cumming in the dream sequence in Romy And Michele's, like that. Mushy. And the look on his face is very...I don't know. Like if you're really good, he'll show you his stigmata, but you have to adopt a child from a foreign nation first. He scares the piss out of me. Nobody should be burdened with a bubble of praise like that. It turns you weird. Tom Cruise, Roseanne Barr-Arnold-Whatever, Oprah, Sharon Stone again, Lindsay Lohan, Michael Jackson, Liz Taylor, all the crazies, this is what happened to them, and you can see it happening on this hobbled, tiny little scale with poor old Clay. I wouldn't wish that on a bad person, and Clay's not a bad person, but like, God forbid. If I got that rich, I'd hire a person to punch me in the face once a week just to keep things real. Like how Simon will pay you to step on his genitals, only not pervy.
Finally Sandecki realizes Clay's standing right behind him and he loses his ever-loving mind, and we've hit the ceiling on how difficult this kid is to watch, so you can kind of be more detached about the awkwardness of this kid losing his mind and Clay being all, "Yes, my child. It is me. You may gaze upon my visage -- for it is both beautiful and terrible -- but do not touch the hem of my garment, lest ye be punished in accordance with that punishment meted out to the wife of him they call Lot, son of Haran, son of Abraham." And the fact is, he does a good job maintaining, for all that it's an ugly sight, because he stays standing up, which I was not expecting. He's so full of happiness and joy that it's hard not to be happy for him, even if you don't get it. To like a violent degree, like a "hockey season tickets" degree. Like this is the example that I would use -- "Even Clay Aiken has people that would freak out like this if they met him" -- if that weren't actually what was happening. It's so extremely mysterious to me I don't have a different tape measure for it. He's singing like a stuck pig, of course, but he's clearly having a good day, and that is lovely. Ryan finally puts the kid on a stool and puts his arm around him so he won't harm himself while they listen to Clay sing this awful song. I'm sorry but I can't stop thinking about how he is creepy as shit now. I always found him likeable, basically -- not as a guy, but just as a person -- but now he's neither. He's like a spooky vampire! He's like Siegfried & Roy, the haunted Mentos commercial that is them. Like how you imagine Elton John has boys brought to him, and it's very dark in the room and he's like, "Kneel," and they have to eat a peach without using their hands or something. That gay elder statesman vibe where they can do whatever creepy shit they want and nobody will mind -- which seems a bit premature. I just had his horrible thought that he collects people who look like him and somewhere there's this Howdy Doody ranch with freckles and protruding bones and razor-cut bangs. I mean, that's what I'd do if I were him. Whatever, he gives me the creeps and he always has and whatever. He's not a bad person or anything, he just gives me dark premonitions. Totally my issue.
And we're back live with Burt! Bacharach! Who just won his sixth Grammy! Will there be a medley? There will! He sits at the piano and starts playing "What The World Needs Now" and Taylor sings, but you don't see him for a second, and Burt's singing along to himself, so for a second it's like he's Taylor's ventriloquist doll, but then Taylor appears. And he does sing it straight, which I appreciate, because Burt Bacharach is on the list with Alexander the Great and Spinoza and Harriet Tubman for me. He makes a cute little face at Burt, but so would you. Kat comes out in a lovely red dress -- possibly the most flattering thing she's worn all season, notable because for once it doesn't transform her into anything approaching a hoss. Ace sings a bit from "The Look Of Love," which is really the best Ace song. Well, or "Bond Street," which is my favorite song, but also has no words. He still just looks like nothing to me. Melissa looks classy in her flamenco dress and her piles of diamonds, but you can't silk-purse a face like that. She and Ace awkwardly hold hands, and she tries to pull back and he's all not so fast, and it takes her the length of this part of the medley to extricate herself, and finally she just has to actually jerk her hand out of his grasp. Kellie looks...amazing, actually, fucking up the very first line of the snippet from "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" but sounding great. Bucky looks pretty neato in his little suit and very conditioned hair, and I do very much hate the song "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head," but when Bucky sings you don't have to listen to the stupid words, because he Boomhauers the whole thing, so it's just his lovely voice making sounds. Mandisa starts into "I Say A Little Prayer For You," doing the trade-off of vocals with the backup (Paris, Kellie, Melissa) that's always been my preferred arrangement of that song. It sounds amazing. Lisa Tucker sings "Alfie," another song I find pretty uninteresting from the Bacharach songbook, and sounds really amazing. She looks great, commands the stage, keeps the What the Tuck Is Cooking faces to a minimum.
Elliott sings "A House Is Not A Home," sitting in a chair that seems to be a chair. You could power a steam engine with that vibrato. He's like a stevedore of shaking. And the added wattage of the intensely manic smile. The desperation is a turnoff, especially because his is such a lovely instrument. The thing is that I think by the end of the tour, with real experience, he is going to be so, so awesome. Kevin sings "What's New Pussycat," and cannot keep his hands off the squirrel for anything while he's doing it. I never thought this song was particularly gross, but...I don't need to be hearing any fucked-up shit about "sweet little pussycat lips" from Kevin Covais. Kellie and Paris and all the ladies bounce up and down behind him, and it's like literally the most fun Kellie's ever had in her entire life. I don't know what else to say except that it is gross and I will take pleasure in deleting it off my TiVo the second this recap goes live. Then Kevin, Chris, and Ace line up and take on "Arthur's Theme," and I am saddened to report that none of them can really be described as doing "the best that they can do." Chris's vibrato goes insane and goatlike, and against the smooth backup of the other boys it sounds vastly stupid. Then Paris takes on "Close To You," a song that is impossible to do in a fresh or new or original way -- and does it in an amazing, fresh, and original way. It's beautiful. She should have done this on the show. Way to go, P Funk!
Dionne Warwick comes out. I heard that your nose keeps growing after you die, like your hair and your fingernails. I submit to you that this is what has happened to Dionne Warwick. She still sounds pretty good though, singing first "Walk On By" and then "That's What Friends Are For." This is like one of the most exciting people to appear tonight. How awesome. She's wearing a wacky dress that's all black ruffles at the bottom, like she can sing you a song and Swiffer your dining room simultaneously. The top is lace and sparkling beads on a smart jacket. Very glamorous leisure lady. If Dionne Warwick was your grandmother you would have all the motherfucking psychic friends you ever wanted. Plus an awesome grandmother. For some reason when she starts the second song, the crowd goes wild. She gives it the most dramatic phrasing in the history of music. Kat and Taylor show up with the other kids, and Dionne's phrasing is so erratic that it forces Kat and Taylor to avoid completely any runs or showboating or fucking around, which is kind of cool. She then fucks the last note up the ass, though. Which is remarkable to hear. Ryan gets all "You go girl!" with Dionne Warwick afterwards, and she vaguely nods in his direction. "Still the diva! We love it!" Ryan's very pleased tonight and there's just vibes of appreciation shooting out of him in all directions like a little sun no bigger than your thumb. It's lovely.
Once last Golden Idol as we head into Day Four. Best Male Bonding. This should be stupid. To the tune of "Love To Love You," with the gasps and squeaks, the nominees are: Ace and Chris for hugging, Ryan and Taylor for lying on the stage and not touching, and the Brokeback Cowboys for crying on TV. They actually show the whole damn "Brokenote Mountain" thing again. Don't forget to remember to ignore this. The only deal going on here is that Matthew Buckstein is hot. ["I actually yelled, 'Buckstein!' S5 broke me, people. (Buckstein: Call me.)" -- Sars] The fake trailer is seriously like a cigarette amount of time. The best one, Michael Evans, never gets any screentime at all, which sucks because he's great. Buckstein, it turns out, sings like if Keanu Reeves were a country singer, which takes the edge off; Garet is like, you don't want him ever to go to the big city, because there are too many dangers and he'll end up like Requiem For A Dream. The cowboys win, and they come out singing "Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys," although I'm guessing there was an original selection that got vetoed by a higher-up, to go with the whole "gay is funny if you're not really gay" thing. Unsurprisingly, Michael is still the most talented one, Garet is still tragic, and Buckstein is to be seen and only sometimes heard. Like any good country singer.
Ryan's all, "That's all the guest stars this evening! No more surprises!" But he's got a twinkle in his eye. Twinkle in the Sprinkles! So I think there will be surprises. Then: ADAM PRATT! YES! Ryan mentions the results, and the people start to cheer, but then the applause turns into pant-shitting screams as Prince! PRINCE! Appears! ADAM PRATT AND PRINCE! IT'S TOO MUCH! Prince is tiny and permed and wearing a purple suit, and he's got ladies with vagina skirts, just like Jehovah wanted. My goodness, he's so cool. I always thought people who loved Prince were in a cult, and then I joined the cult, and now I am one of those people who's like, "$300 is not that much money. This is Prince we're talking about! Who needs air conditioning? He's cool enough for my whole apartment!" He sings TWO songs! He pretends to have a cell phone! He is wearing flares to hide his heels! Like we don't know! I love him no matter what, but I have to say I prefer Pirate "Doves Cry" Prince to Zoot Suit Secretary Hair Prince. Just a little bit, not a lot.
Still, I like how he can play all instruments at once with his fingers and toes, and I like how he's cool enough to go on this show and still seem like he's a savvy businessman, when you know he's been in the Prince bubble so long, he doesn't even know the basics of what goes on. Somebody scheduled this for him and didn't tell him about it until ten minutes ago when they were at Kodak already and he did some kind of mental backflip and decided that this was a valid way of getting people to talk about Jesus, so he was like, "I'm in." I would be so scared if I were in charge of an event where Prince was going to come, because you don't want to tell anybody just in case he's going to fuck off at the last second and go breed hyenas with flamingos or whatever. Kevin Smith has the great story that involves, in part, Prince's assistant going, "Prince does not understand why we cannot find him a camel at 3 AM in Minneapolis. That is not Prince's problem." Normally SNL finds humor in exaggeration, but not with Prince. With Prince that shit is like a documentary. "Jump in under the waterfall and climb the rainbow tree" are not just words, they are the experience of Prince.
Now the experience of cheese. Taylor starts singing "I've Had the Time Of My Life," which is how you know it's going to be awful. Kat is dressed like Mariah Carey with the train attached to her finger like a fairy princess, and she sounds completely unfocused and crappy. Taylor's totally in his element because he's not an artist, so this is like any other song. Played-out songs are the same as real songs to him and Chris. The lack of sensitivity he has to the spectacle of this show is what enables him to show so very much of his ass all the time -- that's what he's about. Being a spectacle. Luckily, he has a fantastic voice and a certain needy amount of charm. But still, this song, besides being way too concrete and connected to other stuff, is always going to sound karaoke. And then also the defensive "Made It Through The Rain" thing again: "I have had the time of my life! That's what friends are for! I had a bad day! But it was great!" Kat gets it together momentarily at the end, and then loses it again, and then Taylor screws one note SO bad, like there was this blurty kind of laugh when it happened from everybody in the room because it was so very wrong. They pants around and do the hand-dancing of the movie when Baby's dancing with Johnny's regular partner lady, and then when they're done, they don't forget to remember to hug each other. Ryan actually says out loud that "they've no doubt had the time of their lives," and Kat rolls her eyes because this show is over at this second, as far as she's concerned. For us, that point was way back.
There were 63.4 million votes last night, more than any president has received. Which is a fun tip of the hat to American Dreamz, but actually a statement that is pointless, because you can't vote for the president over and over for four hours, or the president would be Li'l Bow Wow. Sorry, "Bow Wow." My bad. Kat's eyes are shiny, like a little kid up past her bedtime. Way too much energy focused on two people for tonight to be healthy. I bet the second you get your media shit done, after this, you sleep for five days. I can't imagine having to be onstage and "on" for months like this. I would absolutely lose it. So this British dude comes in with the envelope, which is dumb, like that makes this legit, because he's got an accent so of course we'll buy it, when actually I don't know why everybody always gets all "independent review and verification" about stuff like this anyway. Like, it increases the overall legitimacy of the show that the results are soooo important that a random British guy has to deliver them. Kat's almost crying as Ryan drags it out a few seconds, then opens the envelope.
Taylor wins, Katharine hugs him, Taylor goes woo, the lights go nuts, Birmingham goes nuts, Paula's eyes are dry, Taylor's dad cries, some people in the audience look nauseated, his brother has emotions of some kind. David Hasselhoff cries and cries. Some lady who looks like Joni Mitchell and Lisa Kudrow's beautiful baby all grown up claps. "What would you like to say to your fans?" asks Ryan. "Thank you"? Even a "God bless" wouldn't go amiss at this moment. But you and I both knew Taylor too well for that. "Soul Patrol! Sooooooooooul Patroooooooooooool!" TiVo's like, "Fuck it. The end."
My powers of deduction lead me to believe that he then sang that "Do I Make You Proud" song, which is a song that I didn't mind, especially in comparison to the other song, and then maybe there was a speech and the judges tried to act enthused, and McPhee's mom nailed her in the forehead with a spitwad on which was written "DISOWNED." Then they went to get all the actual singers onstage for hugging and confetti, but they'd already bounced, except for Meatloaf who was curled up in a corner sobbing and out of it, and Mary J. Blige, who flipped out on all the Matrix stuff and tried to kill Joey Pantoliano in the audience, but Boreanaz and Bucky stopped her because they are my True Life Heroes. Then Denise Richards showed up and she and Heather Locklear had a Battle of the Bands to determine who was more awesome, and Heather won by a neck, but Denise went home with Ben Stiller. Then I figure probably they called somebody to come pick Tawny Kitaen up, because she'd misplaced her left shoe and most of her dress, and was attacking the members of Maroon Five that were skulking around for the after party. Lotta anger there. David Hasselhoff finally managed to put himself back together, and then he had a nice long talk with Adam Pratt, and they decided to work together on some projects.
Out in the back lot limo crush, Prince's ladies got into a fistfight with the Carrie Underlings, because you always yield to Prince, the rule is "the driver to the right OR Prince," but then he was like, "Everybody, I need to tell you a story," and it made no sense, and Mandisa kept correcting him, which really pissed off Live, but then Prince went off on Toni Braxton like Kirk Cameron about how she needs Jesus, and then she un-unbroke his tiny little nose. (She does need Jesus, though.) And Ace got drunk on champagne spritzers and got a little handsy with Chris, but Chris was nice about it, because he's a nice guy -- so nice, in fact, that when Constantine starting moving in on that shit, Chris introduced him to Melissa McGhee. Paris ended up somewhere in Glendale trying to remember her long-distance card number, and then Katharine finally had Kevin's baby, and it was the exact same size as Kevin. He had beautiful blinky brown eyes and a funny little face, and never misused his vibrato, or twitched and fell sideways for no reason, or smiled when he shouldn't.
They named him Calamari.