Daddy needed a nap, so we let this one play the first time through, and damned if I didn't in my hazy nap state think every single one of these little children was Crystal pulling some kind of awesome trick on us. It'll be nice to see what actually happened. Ryan again tries to create drama about Kara and Simon sitting so close together, and it's dumb, and Ryan calls her his "binkie" and it's still dumb. And the whole time Ryan introduces the Judgery, Randy's going, "Yeah yeah yeah! Yeah yeah yeah! Yeah yeah yeah! Yeah yeah yeah! Yeah yeah yeah! Yeah yeah yeah! Yeah yeah yeah! Yeah yeah yeah! Yeah yeah yeah!" Which is... Turns out, pretty much how the episode is going to go. It's just awful, dude. I sincerely hope you did not watch it.
Lee sings an overenthusiastic Owl City, which is already an overenthusiastic joke about people who have actual feelings, strumming his guitar at you and yelling with a smile right in your face. Imagine if you will that you are an ill-advised freshman and it's about four in the AM and some guy with too much vodka in his sippy-cup is over there on the bunkbed screaming sex noises at you, that's... The song. And it does not matter how much you've had to drink, you know from the first second that you are not giving up even the merest handy. But props for intensity, and for being secretly talented even though you have pretended you aren't tonight, to a hateful degree.
Ellen calls it "a little rock" because honestly that's what she thinks "rock" is. Kara once against mistakes "coked-up" for "aggressive," because it's 1992, and she says this is not his best moment necessarily but that he made that shitty song a better song by screaming it. A song whose entire point is the Postal Service-biting programmed bleeps and bloops, you took those out and abused a guitar instead, so well done. Good work attempting to make something creative out of what would happen if Andrew Garcia were in charge of all music. Simon says Lee is better than the bullshit he just pulled, which is all you have to say. Lee, of course, doesn't know the diff so he just babbles for awhile while his tattoos go, "But we yelled! While holding a guitar!" Listen tats, the song is shit. And you guys sang it so fast -- and loud, and childish -- that we're still waiting for some of those notes to reach us. Like a distant, date-raping star.
Here's the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls. This is where I honestly had to wake my ass up and start the show from the beginning, because I thought Crystal was singing and this week was only starting. Scary but also awesome. But no, it's "Trouble," by Ray LeMontagne, as attempted by little boy-child Alex Lambchop and not Crystal at all, because welcome to cell phone commercials, which by 2011 are expected to outnumber people on this show.
Welcome to being Lilly. It took several weeks, but yeah, that really is the best you have to offer. And as gross as she is, she still doesn't have a neck tattoo, so you do the math.
Tomorrow they combine, and we start picking these boys off one by one. Just keep saying that to yourself and soon this episode will seem less like the brutal assault that it actually is.
Casey will be singing a Keith Urban song. I don't have the tools to make any thinkies about whether the version matters, but in the rendition it's all earnest open-mic head-shaking and "I really mean this" nods to the camera. Pretty sure Casey is the fakest fake that ever faked, and no amount of butterface authenticism is going to change that fact.
When he was good, he was very, very good. But when he was bad, he was Nickelback.
Jackson tries to climb the wall called relevant and Casey's like, "I see you down there!" Ellen thanks him for sitting on a stool because it makes him marginally less gross. Kara is like, "Still not fake enough to make up for how gross you are." Simon calls it his second best, compared to the first week, and says it was almost sincere. But not so much really. It's like when Myspace sends you an "update" and you're like, "Sweetie, no."
More country -- oh, fucking fabulous! -- from the curiously still-here Aaron Kelly, who goat-boy gays himself through some shit I can't even listen to right now. "I'm Faun Tumnus, and the hors d'oeuvres tonight are tiny things wrapped in infant bacon!" There's like one or two lyrics available to be heard through the shitty terrible singing, but luckily for the A-Fed voting public that list includes the word "Daddy." Imagine the worst thing you ever did hear, and you're not far off from this bullshit. It sounds like scrambled eggs. Huevos rancheros, in musical form. It sounds like Big Mike literally just gave birth to him backstage and he's still woozy from the epidural. I hope they rip him to bloody bacon-wrapped tatters and he goes back to the womb to finish developing into a person.
Jackson is like, "The fuck was that? Just kidding, you were amazing because I have no brain left in my stupid head." Ellen is like, "I want to make you into an omelet and eat you with some salsa, but I forgot to have an opinion about your horrible bad singing." Kara is like, "You really try hard and that counts when we're talking about how many levels of shitty you can be and so desperately are." Simon says it's "rubbish" to call him out on singing whatever stupid song this is, and says "cheesy and shitty" is the lane and he stayed in it. Then Ryan wanders in there and makes even more hash of the joke that Aaron's performance has become, quickly realizes he has no exit strategy, and throws the little child into the faces of wolves. Because honestly that's more charitable.
I just hate... Everyone in the world. I was margarita drunk before I woke up to this shit. Do you know what that means? Ryan Reynolds and Sean William Scott showing up being like, "I know it's the early afternoon, but I really thought we should talk about how we're on the same page. You get us. Let's do this." And then in the half-light of dawning horror, this fleeting certainty that this year on Idol, it was just Crystal Bowersox versus fifteen other Crystal Bowersoxes in a burly brawl. And then boom, full wakefulness, in which Aaron Kelly is still around, singing baby songs through his baby nose and popping zits for you right onstage, while Carol Brady's hair shoots you hateful hand gestures. I mean, what a cruel world this world becomes, when you look at the alternatives. When Mike Lynche -- whose talent lies somewhere between "Being Giant Hootie" and "Sperm Production" -- suddenly becomes your best option for redemption.
Todrick singing Queen is like: Redundant. Remember Anwar and we were like, "Sometimes things might get gay"? And now there's Todrick, the messiest gayest person, singing "Somebody To Love," the messiest gayest song. I mean, tricky, because the song has no melody and is just a coked-up medley of various poses and stances and screamings, like any Queen song but with extra Queen-ness, like "And I Am Telling You" but for boys -- so with guitars -- so how do you evaluate it? Wore a jacket, found new gums to show on top of the gums he likes to show us. Didn't fall off the mechanical bull of this song's mechanical bullshit.
I mean, he did well. But in the same way that slalom is essentially falling down a mountain without dying. Something we, as humans, still fuck up. The singing was good, technically proficient in that it is impossible to sing this song, and the judges agree. But it's a "technical difficulty" medal and not a "proficiency" medal, and I think we all know that. Running around and screaming like you've caught fire is a breakdown; running around and screaming on pitch is something we've been watching since Clay and Fantasia. Simon calls it Broadway, which is the most insight they will ever have as a group, and plus shut up. I have made my peace with Todrick, even through that circus carnival of a song I do believe in him, but still: Queen is hard, this queen's harder. Well done altogether, if only because I feel like rooting for your annoying genius ass is the absolutely most hilarious thing I can do at this point.
Big Mike, former Pussycat and current Lion, will be singing Maxwell. Which, I can't say I'm familiar with the Maxwell oeuvre, but there's one song I'm thinking of which is the Kate Bush cover, which is one of my favorite songs on earth because it's the song and album I listen to when I reread Doomsday Book by my favorite human Connie Willis, which I do every year. And if he sings this song I am thinking of -- which is essentially about how men have to stand there helplessly and watch their wives and girlfriends produce a human being out of the area formerly known as their vagina -- I am going to fucking lose it.
ALL WE KNOW IS THAT YOUR WIFE OR GIRLFRIEND HAS A UTERUS. THOSE ARE THE ONLY FACTS WE KNOW. YOU CANNOT BLAME THE SHOW FOR TURNING YOUR WIFE OR GIRLFRIEND'S UTERUS INTO DANNY GOKEY'S STUPID DEAD WIFE. WHEN YOU SING A SONG ABOUT IT, THE PROBLEM BECOMES YOU. YOU ARE THE UTERUS, YOU ARE THE GOKEY, YOU ARE THE SINGLE INDIAN-CHIEF TEAR RUNNING DOWN A RANDOM DUDE'S CHEEK. YOU BECOME THE BABY-SELLING BLACK MARKET WHORE WHEN YOU DO THIS. WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IS, "AMERICA, THANKS FOR BEING RETARDED."
But whatevs. Maybe it'll be like Tracy Chapstick last night and I'm getting all fucked up over... Nope. And you know what? He'll barely hit those falsetto notes anyway, which is the only reason Maxwell charted with this single. So fuck it. We're bleep-blooping unless he does something worth noting in the five seconds.
...Not so bad on the falsetto, but between the fake emotion bullshit and the stupid hand gestures and the "can you believe uteruses" fake-out macho/not-macho daddy-card, not to mention letting the backup singers carry 90% of the load which I didn't even consider he would do but makes total sense, and the camera shaking all over like it's giving birth to the stupidest cow of a baby as we're watching, and some unending glory note out of nowhere and for no reason, and mangling the lyrics into nonsensical, and generally being a total dickhead in every way, we're going to forget this happened. Trash-eeeeeeeee.
Jackson, of course, wraps his hand firmly around the shaft of Mike's life-giving penis. Ellen blah-blahs. Kara loses her fucking mind and puddles herself into some kind of empty-womb barren having-it-all bullshit that I hate to see happen, both as a humanist and as a feminist, and Simon angles for a blowie from his new girlfriend by going similarly nuts on how babies are great and semen is magic and ovaries can fly and whatever, I mean, you know I am Baby Crazy and I like ladies more than people who Like Ladies, but give me a fucking break and I'll say it again: Babies are the new dead people. The mothereffing end. I haven't anything left.
Lee played a joke on us with Owl City which is already a joke about music. Lambchop managed to once again outperform everybody else through blind luck. Tim Urban is plastic sex on a pre-vetted stick, which we already knew but his burgeoning hair needs us desperately to remember. Andrew can proceed right to the hell whose anteroom they're warming up for Lilly. Casey continued to be fake and grody and say nothing at all, and it's getting tiresome. Aaron's crib in his nursery with choo-choos on the wall is calling calling calling. Todrick once again managed to be interesting and relevant without doing anything of worth. And Big Mike is the biggest whore of all time.
Tomorrow: I sober up and Lacey goes home, God willing, along with Aaron and Andrew. Or I'll really get irritated, and you know how that goes.
Is Simon deliberately sabotaging Idol?