More going home, going home, going home. Why is this on here? Why is this such a huge deal every time? It's one of the things where I feel like I don't get something basic, like why Ryan always says how many people voted and the crowd screams like that matters somehow or means anything in reality. Maybe the going home thing continues on from the obvious thing that there's a secret wonderful part of us that thinks we are terribly special, and would like that confirmed by Simon Cowell. So the going home part is the part where everybody can suck it.
That cute quarterback? Can suck it. The girl with the pretty hair in French class? She can suck it. Mean garbage man? Suck it, mean garbage man!
Ryan sits the kids down and asks them some damn thing, I don't know. Let's see if we can retroactively figure out the question he asked by the things they say.
Casey: "I had no expectations of getting past the stadium, so you want to go to the level, and the level, and so on and so forth." [My, um, emphasis.]
Crystal: "From an outside view, it's just you don't see how much work goes into this... It's been a crazy ride."
Lee: "People outside of here say 'Oh, you have a week off" but no, not really... It's totally different than I would have ever thought it would have been. And it's made me a better person and just it's made me realize a lot of things about myself that I probably wouldn't have known, but... Staying true to yourself and just kind of doing what you want to do mixed with trying to do the right thing on the show is just a hard thing to tackle."
Crystal: "Being pushed to give more of yourself and strive harder and work harder than you have ever worked in your life just makes you a stronger and better person."
Casey: "I never thought that I would get this far. But to me it's winning ten million in the lottery or winning a hundred million in the lottery."
Crystal: "I'm cool with whatever happens. We're at a stage where anything's attainable."
Casey: "You get like personally at least 150 text messages a day!"
Oh my God this is the longest segment I've ever seen on this show. I wonder how many people made it through that part. What we've learned is that Crystal likes to take the things other people say, and make them be about her. Big shocker there. Also that American Idol has looked her diabetes in the face and just smacked it really hard, because she has never been healthier than right now. Which just seems like it has to be a lie, right? Or does she just really not take care of herself?
Oh shit, now Randy Jackson is talking. God damn it. And Crystal is telling him what a good job he did all year. I can't do this. I cannot watch this happen. Bleep-bloop.
Casey, for his swan song because obviously he is toast and knows it, goes home to his high school, and the fat Americans crowd all around, and his earnestness is painful to look upon. They play that mysterious "Angel of mercy/ How did you find me" song that you hear all the time on TV. He curses at the camera, and there's a liquor store and some truly desperate young women. Then Casey takes us to the Fort Worth hospital, where his imperiled life was once saved. I don't know what that's about, but he used to have straight dark hair, and also be cute, and now he looks like this.
It's all very mysterious, because I don't know that we necessarily knew about this near-death injury at all, so I don't know what to think about him going back to the hospital and interrupting everybody's day so that he can be like, "Remember me? No? Well, I'm on TV." His mom is just as creepy and confusing as Casey is, lecturing the doctors intensely about how he wanted his guitar in bed with him and she put the guitar in the bed with him. Then onstage, Casey is on his knees while like a million people scream at him. Grateful, or just a weird sort of group masturbation of him? None of this is real, you idiots! He's not actually famous! Back in the studio, Ryan asks how awesome it was for those doctors to get thanked by the famous Casey. His answer is not really very relevant.
Perez Hilton is looking good! I think if you're going to make it in this world, you have to learn your way around hating Perez Hilton. I think he's just great. People like to get so upset about him and how he's evil and whatever, I'm not really sure what the problem is that people have with him, but it's like, if you're in LA, you'd better be his friend, and if you don't want to die of toxic cognitive dissonance, you better figure out how to make that work inside your head. Me, I just love him. But I don't know that Young Hollywood can just get there so easily, so it represents a challenge and an overcoming of that challenge, you see, to look him in the face and not punch him. And that makes you a better person, as Crystal would say about her own travails.
Perez has discovered a person online and has decided that he's better than Justin Timberlake, and Ryan touches him, and it's weird for everybody. Then the Travis Garland person comes down the stairs. He looks just like the French guy Perez liked last year. I think Perez has a type but also that he believes in breaking real talent. The performance is pretty cool, like they have a Stomp! thing going on with the kids hitting big oil drums, and there are several different squads of dancers. His moves are sort of manic and weird, and the girls who are his dancers are just intensely whorish, but I have no opinion on the song.
It's pretty fucking crazy that this person who literally didn't exist five minutes ago is now singing on the biggest show of the entire world, with a trashface monster up there dancing with him, on the third-from-last episode. So many moving parts came together to make that happen. Somebody said, "I can clear a space for your pet singer, Hilton. Let me call you back." And now it's happening. I think that I would like this song in real life, if I didn't have to see him be so nervous and sweaty singing it. Then he goes up the stairs again and things get magical and there's like a castle wall that assembles itself beneath him, and all the dancers pray to him, and he takes a little nap. It's sort of fantastic, in a self-dramatizing way. I'll have to check into this Travis Garland. Well played, Hilton.
Crystal honks on her harmonica on the plane home, just sort of wheezing and blowing into it, and then by 10:45 that night she's getting interviewed on local Toledo TV, and them tomorrow it's 7:15 AM and it's also Crystal Bowersox Day. A cute homosexual screams her name in a very scary intense way, and she signs his pec. Then she plays a funny sort of game with the crowd outside her limo, poking her head up like Kilroy over and over, giggling crazily to herself like an infant. She hits a girl in the face with a flower, and then gets the key to the city. The music gets real fucking earnest so we can go see her kid at her dad's house for a barbecue.
Kid's cute, dad's cute. They love her very much. Her dad is like a hippie, but also a motorcycling enthusiast. One of the signs says, "Crystal Is Our Sunshiny Idol!" She refers to this performance as Bowerstock, because she has been fooled into a somewhat false sense of self-importance. She sings an awesome song, throws out a pitch, does all those things they do in Toledo, and screams all gay at the camera, "Home sweet home, right?" She cries on Ryan about the state northwest Ohio finds itself in, and about this original song she has written that, thank God, has given them some small amount of hope. What a drag. You know when you're allowed to just kill me? When the thought of how many lives I have changed causes me to well up and start crying. When my sheer awesomeness is too overwhelming for me to discuss things in a rational manner.
Lee also throws out a pitch, and cries like the whole neophyte starstruck angel that his narrative has created for him to be, and that Magnetic Zeroes song that they play all the time happens. Lee cries his way around the paint store, and "The Boxer" plays and he's got rabbit eyes and can't handle it for even a few minutes at a time, because of all the screaming and the crying and whatever. I wish that I could point to a particular performance and say, "They are setting him up to win based on this," but I can't think of one to base it on. Maybe "The Boxer," but do we really believe that?
He sings that song for a huge crowd and generally the show acts like he's going to win, and he starts crying in the middle of the song, which makes his parents cry, which is awesome. Then he addresses the crowd, which is less awesome because he can't talk. Back in the studio, and he and Ryan kind of nonverbally agree that he is awesome. Simon checks in, with very eloquent eyes, and you can see him thinking, "If this moon-eyed virgin act is legit, then I'm a monkey's uncle, but damned if it isn't compelling television." Ryan asks Lee what's like to have a dad, and Lee says it's pretty good. Ryan's like, "Yeah, I bet it's pretty cool."
The thing is that I don't drive, and I work from home, so I don't listen to the radio at any point during the average day. I would have to make a major and not a minor adjustment to my routine in order to just happen across Justin Bieber. I'm sure he's fine, and honestly, given my maturity level and general interest in shitty things and bad music, I'm sure I would love him. He is an Internet sensation! But I also think it is fun to keep records of things and personal ways of being, and so for no real reason whatsoever I have decided to keep my streak of having never heard a Justin Bieber song going as long as I can. Am I missing out? Probably. Am I really, though? Probably not.
So it came to pass that I muted the TV at this point, and I can only say that some of those little lesbians, they know how to dance. Oh! And apparently some light drumming. I wonder what his songs sound like. He always acts like a total wigger -- even on Silent Library, he walked like he'd been shot in the thigh and his pants were falling off -- so I figured it was rapping or something, but now there are drums and rockets flying across the stage. They do funny dances. Are they all from the Internet too? Is he from Canada? I bet he's from Canada. They got weird ideas up there. DIM THE LIGHTS!
Lee, you chose "Simple Man" and have grown from lamb into a gazelle per Ellen. Simon for you picked "Hallelujah," which the show has decided is your Moment.
Crystal, maybe you're a man. Maybe you're a lonely man who's in the middle of something. But you did a great job.
Casey, you are just the worst. It used to be that you weren't that bad, but your continued presence has become a joke.
Lee, you are one of the Finale people. What say you babble a bunch with your mic turned off. Lee's like, Can do. up? Crystal is also safe. Yay! The completely obvious Finale we've been slowly trudging towards since about halfway through the season! It doesn't feel like we wasted our lives AT ALL.
But if we hear Casey sing the song about the fathers and the daughters one more time, I think we will all age fast-forward 100 years, so I'm going to turn this crap off and bid you adieu until time. Be good to your daughters, bitches!
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