I don't know about you but I've been warily excited about the whole Las Vegas twist this year. I mean, on the one hand everything's been kind of awesome this year and on the other hand, this show will always getcha. Well, somehow they've done both: It's all the collective psychotic breaks and Mean Girl meltdowns of Group Night, but also in the grossest location on earth, with everybody already getting styled to death, singing one of the most high-stakes Themes of the entire year. The Rooms of Doom were a pressure cooker but this is more like rock and roll suicide, sous-vide style. See how they run!
"As we whittle away at the remaining contestants," Ryan says -- truer words -- it turns out we're looking for our Top 24, which will be revealed tonight in that Running Man makeover they gave the Chair last year where it's onstage with all the lights and it feels like you're being forced to play some kind of Jigsaw Killer game. How I miss the class of the old Chair, the long waxed-hardwood walk into fate, the elevator that obviously smelled like pee.
They have cut Chris Medina's hair or strapped it down under a hat, and introduced John Wayne to black-people music. Gossip Girl-looking Colton is crashed out, like a dirty-faced little angel, and of course Casey Abrams and Chris Medina are getting along together in the cutest, most Mountain Dew/Cheetos way possible. I wonder what that's like; Chris telling Casey about his pretend wife and Casey playing sad songs on made-up instruments.
But Whom Will Ashley Sullivan Be Taking Down With Her This Week?
Good question. The answer is, of course, "all of us eventually," but in particular I can't say for sure. She's blonde and she's not Lauren Alaina, which does not narrow things down.
Blu is a second Byrd, a vocal coach who does not have faith in Thia and her teammates. L Alaina is with a girl Denise and with Scott, and they are working with Ken the sexy vocal coach in the droog hat. Lauren tells us some things about feelings or something and looks pretty close to cracking, so that'll be fun.
There are fully fifty vocal coaches this year. Ken keeps changing into cuter and cuter outfits. Molly DeWolf Swensen casts an eloquent eye around the room, assigning each and every person and object its own unique number of stars on the Molly DeWolf Swensen Ratings Scale Of Excellence.
Blu eats the face off of Thia and her little girl-partner, and we learn that she is the Simon of vocal coaches. I think there's something scary inside of her, I don't think they're trumping it up. Little girls start to cry, and then she threatens their actual lives. She wants to lay in her bed and watch them choke onscreen and refuses to take responsibility for them. Then she tells the little girls to sex or Hunger Games each other, it's all bleeped so I don't know what really happened but their eyes bugged out, and then she starts talking about eating roadkill. It's all pretty amazing.
But who actually knows who the Beatles are? "Nobody, you old fuck." Get off my lawn! The Beatles are on iTunes now! I need a Zune! For my tunes! I tell people I was at Woodstock! "Look, my memory goes back as far as Maroon 5. Anything less is asking a bit too much of both of us, frankly." Evan Rachel Wood in that horrible movie! "Dude, even Evan Rachel Wood is like from a bygone era. She's married to Marilyn Manson, Marilyn Manson fucked JFK, quod erat demonstrandum you are going to have to learn my language if you're ever going to market to me correctly."
"I don't know much about them, other than that they're amazing," faints the shallow fake oversinging monster that we call Jacob Lusk. Jovany same deal. Some girl has never heard a song by them in her entire life. Dude, I know nerd girls that have only heard the Beatles in their entire lives.
Jimmy Iovine and a bunch of chicken-skin olds from Interscope come in wearing hoodies and skinny jeans and, I don't know, beepers, and they yell at them about how maybe you should listen to a song like once before you try to sing it. L Alaina is like, "I don't know who those old dudes were, but I think I'm embarrassed."
Jimmy throws gang signs and orders some label-free kicks off the internet from Japan and puts on a Palestinian scarf and buys some food off a local vendor truck. The kids are still not getting it.
Jimmy talks about his drug days and how he almost joined the Manson family and what it was like seeing Anita Pallenberg's shaven vagina for the first time. The kids are still not getting it. Jimmy beatboxes, puts on a zoot suit, Cross-Colors, busts out a yo-yo, nothing. Jimmy shows them his tattoos.
Jimmy takes them to see the stage show, which is full of hipness and roller blading tricks, just like in the Sixties. They come away with the idea that the Beatles are about Cirque de Soleil acrobat clowns fucking each other upside down. Which is kind of true about the Stones/Bowie axis, but that's advanced jelly and we don't have time for it.
Jimmy shows them his 4G network, his Prius, his Shepard Fairey prints: "This is what the Beatles are like." They pick nits from each others' Brazilian blowouts. "Paul McCartney was the Ryan Tedder of his time," Jimmy pleads, wearing a giant red faux fur and cowboy hat, peeking over his Bootsy Collins star-shaped sunglasses.
"Imagine a band that started out like the Jonas Brothers but whom -- in the time it took you to grow up into an adult person -- they had driven all the way through music on a magical bus and ended up pulling us all along behind them into the future.
"They managed to get fucking everybody on that bus, kicking and screaming and crying. Everybody in the whole world finally agreed on something, and it was about sharing, and beauty, and striving intellect. It was pop culture Camelot, and it died on us right when we needed it most. Can you understand that this is why Baby Boomers will never shut up about the Beatles?"
Nope. Jay Z still hasn't figured out a way to use them. Durbin sings a wailing "Get Back" with Stefano, and it's pretty exciting to be honest. Randy loves it, Steven locates them in "the way-out-osphere" and "sweetland," and they're both doing pretty great.
The Myspace girl Karen, and Pia they actually went to high school together and already had a band together. They are both very much from Queens. Ryan loves them because they are polished and plastic and well-spoken. Their "Can't Buy Me Love" is fairly professional, their harmonies are not quite as expected given the history, but the Judges are impressed. Steven Tyler actually has a gift for metaphor, we're learning.
Haley, the girl with all the face that sings like Leona, does a sweet but limp -- I don't even know this song -- and then also Adepopo does it. Lusk throws down his ridiculous Antony Johnston lady drama, and everybody sits there and waits for him to calm down, but he will never calm down. These three also do not harmonize that well until halfway through, but since it's all about Jacob Lusk it doesn't matter. I wish Adepopo had chosen a less dramatic person or persons to sing with. Anyway, in the end it sounds pretty great and J. Lo is impressed by their making it their own, collectively and individually. Randy encourages Jacob Lusk to get even more pandering and showboating, and Jacob explains that he has not yet begun to unleash his effect.
Rachel Zevita sings "Eleanor Rigby," of course, wearing a veil, of course, surrounded by Orientalist parasols, of course. And if you didn't already know exactly who Rachel Zevita was, that's an efficient primer.
Lauren Turner and her hair and her mom-face sing the usual OTT "Let It Be" with Jovany. Coulda been worse, coulda been "Imagine," but it sounds pretty and you can already tell this is going to be a season of wailers vs. gospellers.
J. Lo just straight up loves Tim Halperin and his hipster OneRepublic "Something," and my girl Julie Z is on the other piano, and they are just about the greatest thing in the world. She gives the camera a smirking "we got this" and then they both stand up and do a fantastic duet standing up. That is intimidating as hell, what these two are doing. Red lights and a fog machine. How awesome.
The group comes out in Randy's golden sneakers, Jerome the Bar Mitzvah kid, Lakeisha whom I don't remember, and then the big Earth Wind & Fire hair of Disney-face MILF Tatynisa whose name I never write down fast enough. It's like a sub-"Hey Ya" take on "Saw Her Standing There," and it's pretty, but you have that problem where there's no I in team and three divas simply cannot harmonize without something being lost.
Randy is not terribly loving it, except for Tatynisa, whose name he pronounces the way I usually spell it; J. Lo rearranges his ratings backwards and tells Tats she can do better. The judges are confused, their feedback is confused, and of course the group picks and chooses from the various contradictory things they said like they're trying to avoid certain chocolates in the chocolate box of life.
Sexy Nashville duo Kendra Chantelle (still named that, I see) and Paul McDonald (the formerly cute Bradley Whitford-looking yacht-rocker we haven't really heard yet) do "Blackbird" with a guitar player doing the work, and they sound not great together. She does well, but Paul has one of the most annoying voices and onstage personae we've seen in a while. His voice is breathy and pretty, but so affected onstage he looks like he's having a stroke. Leo DiCaprio in Gilbert Grape. It's creepster.
Junebug sings an angry "Help Me" with some girl; then two ladies sing "Ticket To Ride" dressed like former Supremes; John Wayne and his two guy buddies from the bus do the Cocker song. I don't know, it is all so dramatic and Steven's doing his stuff out there in the audience. I'm as confused as the people.
Ashley Fucking Sullivan, what bullshit is she perpetrating this week? Oh yeah, she's going to get married, because they're in Vegas, and she's trash. So she goes over to Forever 21 and picks out some gross pleather outfit for her wedding, and literally says this shit right here: "We're getting married in the same place that Britney Spears got married," she says. For that 24-hour period that Britney was married, in Vegas. Let's relive those memories. If he gets cold feet, she says, she'll kill him in his sleep, "My Precious," she says, stroking his face. If anything, I blame the boyfriend more. Dating someone so deeply compromised is halfway to pedophilia in my opinion.
While I do believe that if we waited until we were perfect and everybody else was perfect nobody would ever get laid, I also think that the time to be getting laid is not out on a ledge 32 stories up. You know what I mean? Ashley Sullivan getting married is like Snooki taking the bar exam.
It's offensive not just because she should not be allowed to make any decisions on her own, but also -- and do I even really need to say it? -- we are in a time in our country where everybody should be treating marriage with the respect that it deserves. Enjoy the 1138 federal benefits and protections enjoyed by married couples, Ashley! After all, giving women the vote only opened the door to infants and pets voting.
Anyway, I only recently figured out that I was even capable of the normal thing and started dating again, so it's not exactly sour grapes because I have no current dog in this fight. And I would be disappointed if Ashley didn't do something horrible, so I guess I got what I wanted. And when you look in the boyfriend's eyes, you see a similar inbred sort of fevered craziness so I guess I can't judge either of them more harshly than the other. I just wish she would get off my TV; she gives me hives. Can't we just skip to the murder-suicide that is the clear endpoint here? Do we really need to sully the Beatles to get there?
Blu's tiny young victims Melinda and Thia finally take the stage, doing "Here Comes The Sun" with their biggest pageant smiles. They don't sound too bad, and Thia can toe-touch like a motherfucker, but their weird blinking and shouty delivery give Blu and Ken pause. The Judgery are not impressed by much beyond Thia's phrasing; J. Lo calls it "cute" and the little girls start crying; J. Lo had high hopes for Thia despite the fact that she's wearing bike shorts under a skirt, which is like the number one sign.
up Ashley and that girl Sophia I can't figure out. Ryan pretends that Ashley's marriage is real, and she bounces around on the red couch and her eyes roll like a terrified horse and Ryan's like, this is so funny, he goes, "And how has that played on getting ready for this song, have you been mentally all there?" (My emph.) Her response is a strangled garble and then she starts pulling out her eyebrows.
The second J. Lo sees them she groans and stares at the table and hates Ashley and waits for her to go home. Ashley by the way is still wearing her pleather wedding pants. It's lame and dumb and Ashley looks like a drug addict; "I've always liked you, from the start," Steven says, which of course he did, and the other judges hate on them too. Screw Sophia for even making the choice to sing with Ashley, of course, and then screw them both for their explanation to Ryan which is that essentially their arrangement (which was the usual arrangement, don't be fooled by this) was simply too creative for the judges.
Scotty, L Alaina and Denise Jackson come out of a phone booth singing "Hello Goodbye," and it's pretty cute. They're pretty cute, these three, and Scotty's a lot more game for this than I thought he would be. They run around the phone booth and do this whole Benny Hill routine and it's great. The phone booth thing is funny, because that's when I turned off the Evan Rachel Wood movie, she's in the phone booth in the middle of a riot singing "Everything's going to be all right, everything's going to be all right" and it's so fucking stupid. Have you seen this movie? They go "Strawberry Fields Forever" while pointing at a field of strawberries. It's so dumb. They sing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and a guy wearing a nametag that says Maxwell shows up with a hammer.
Carson and Caleb H do a virile and fun-loving arrangement of "Please Please Me" (I think) that the judges find odd; Casey and Chris Medina do some kind of Blues Traveler thing where they dance around on a bed and it's adorable. Chris's hair is still very much with us, but any time you see Casey it's just about great. Then they joke about fucking each other on the bed, and even that is cute. But I think I'm getting tired of Chris a bit ahead of schedule.
Robbie, with his Group Night team of Jersey's Aaron Sanders and frigging Jordan Dorsey, sing "Got To Get You Into My Life" with a whole Stevie Wonder thing going on, but I think that Jordan cannot continue too much longer despite being very tall, so let's focus on Robbie and his giant boyband mouth because we're going to be seeing it for awhile. Aaron Sanders, I would like to know more about him. He's intriguing. Also, at the end of the song they sing their own echo, which is always embarrassing for everybody. All in all, very exciting.
And then we're done? Time for cuts? What will happen tonight, then? I thought I was getting two hours of people flipping out but instead it was just this people-singing-well crap.
So let's see: Thia, step forward. Scotty, Jordan, Ashthon, Robby, Lauren Alaina. Randy babbles for a second and then puts those seven people through. (Through to what? Not Top 24, no way. They're just through to whatever comes .) There's crying, and then "Hey Jude" starts playing while we cut some people... Including -- NOOOO! -- Molly DeWolf Swensen and my man Carson. Oh no! And Caleb Hawley! What are they doing? They are decimating my heart right now.
Molly DeWolf Swensen is like, "I guess I'll go back to being a gorgeous, brilliant White House intern with degrees from each and every Ivy League college. Somehow. Perhaps I'll just marry incredibly well, or become an astronaut or fashion icon. I've got a triathlon in about ten minutes anyway, so peace."
Denise, Ashley and some other people I don't know who they are, they get cut. Ashley throws punk rock horns and forgets to take her meds -- she's still like getting lemon juice in a comma splice, just painful and shameful and irritating to each of the senses all at once -- and then everybody else goes through. So they just cut like less than half of them? And now we're at Top 40. So it's to be presumed that I was right and those twenty people are going to be stranded in the Vegas desert and hopefully find their way home eventually.
Up : This part proves, surprisingly enough, the hardest part of the entire process for one Jennifer Lopez.
I have to admit that's becoming one of my favorite things about this season. She is like the Rob Lowe of compassionate judgery now. "You are litrally the most heartbreaking cut I've ever had to make."
Credits, and the Chair. Interesting. That makes this a different episode, which means the season might be shorter. Or maybe they'll put IGB back on the schedule or something, because there were already less episodes in this season than usual. Who knows. The arcane arts of this show are something I'm willing to bystand.
Naima the gorgeous Different World janitress. Haven't seen her in a while, actually; they always pick her out of the crowd but we haven't talked face-to-face since her audition. She thinks about her kids and will show you them on her phone, it's what moms do. Her last solo is, once again, "Put Your Records On" wearing even more authentic stuff all over herself, even, than usual even, and on her walk to the Chair she's wearing a gorgeous blue pantsuit with matching earrings and Billie flower, and J. Lo instantly loves the outfit. Then that's when Naima starts to weep.
They're like, "Stop talking about how and why you've failed, because obviously you're going through. 24 from 40, right? You're not always consistent but you have this great sob story going, to which we can barely relate, but freakin' look at you: Duh, you're going through to Top 24." J. Lo begs her to keep it together and stay consistent, and Naima admits she's been in love with her since the Fly Girl days. (If I were the age my birth certificate says I am, I would have to admit the same thing, but let's say I'm not, so I don't.)
Jacee, Chris, L Alaina, some girl, some other girl. Pointy, blonde, needs a bra makeover, and her name is Hollie. She was the one that Randy told no and then J. Lo gave her thirty chances and she finally nailed it with the Miley Cyrus song, and J. Lo looked at Randy pleadingly the second she started singing because it was awesome, and that's how she got her ticket. But let's see. She walks like a hoss, we never knew that, and she has an accent or speech impediment I think we did at one time know about, before she forgot she existed. At solos, she sang that unending fucking song about "no one, no one, no one" from Juilliard hoodrat Alicia Keys, which is enough that I don't care when she doesn't get through.
J. Lo tells her she was outvoted and wanted her in the Top 24, and then starts to cry, and then she explains that if she comes back in a year or two she'll win the show because she's so talented. Wow, can you imagine J. Lo saying that? Backed up by Randy Jackson? J. Lo just takes so much time explaining the ins and outs of this and how much she loves Hollie, and it's really neat. Randy begs her to come back and their final words are J. Lo going, "You're awesome, Hollie." It's well... sad.
More people we barely ever met are cut. Lakeisha, and then this Alex Ryan who I guarantee we've never seen before in our lives and looks like a grown-uppish and even gayer David Archuleta.
Junebug finds a way to make these cuts entirely about him, of course, and then makes his way to the Chair. We remember the time he sold Jacee out to a band of cannibals to feast on his chubby flesh and how this show has never actively created a villain character like this, and see some seconds of his final solo, which was a pretty arrangement/crap vocal rendition of "Hello." He's a fucking mess by the time he gets to the stage and narrates his existence for them for a long long time and it's super annoying. I can't wait to see Ryan deal with that shit on a live show.
Randy takes us back to how he stabbed Jacee 37 times in the face and we reiterate fucking exactly what he already said and points out that this doesn't matter. Welcome to Randy constructing a narrative for the season that we'll be hearing about forever, and it's so dumb, and then he shakes his head sadly but then -- twist! -- finally puts Clint through. He flops around on the floor and hugs everybody and I mean, he's cute and all? But that is a lot of drama queen shit to be dealing with every single week. Stop being a mess for just like one millisecond so we can breathe.
And but also, is that really the only storyline they can think of Junebug? The Jacee thing? Frankly it makes me care less about Jacee than it does make me think anything different about Junebug, because Junebug is 100% Junebug all the time while Jacee is not going to last no matter what happens.
The egregious amount of face that we call Haley Reinhart did her usual things she always does -- looking like Cathy Moriarty's baby with Eva Longoria, wearing a vagina-bearing babydoll, showing off her R Crumb thighs, screaming and grunting like she's being pistol-whipped by Jacob Lusk -- and as usual it was pretty awesome. We revisit how she got a certain amount forward last year, and she's like, "Um, clearly that did not discourage me." I like the way her brain works when she's talking. They put her through and for one second she actually looks her age.
Deandre was the greatest and cutest of the group of stage-mommy babies from Group Night that activated Durbin's Asperger's. His solo was ukulele-related and his voice is like a magical pony flying through the sky, and he looks like a Bratz doll turned into a boy. I don't understand how he is not already famous, frankly, looking like he does. Plus from little we've talked to him, he seems like a pretty cool kid. Then they cut him, for some reason, maybe because he's 16? J. Lo's like, "You could be a recording artist right now, so don't worry about it." She literally goes, "You have a magic little voice."
She's like the mom in Prince Of Tides telling every one of them that they're her favorite because they're better than the other ones. My little brothers figured that one out after just like five years, it was hardly worth the effort. But maybe J. Lo just honestly is like that, like she just honestly does love the things before her more than she's ever loved anything. Maybe we are getting closer to understanding La Lopez through this process. Previously all I knew was that at one time, she had a little, but then later on she had a lot.
I can't believe we've only put through three people, this shit's been going on forever. up is Paul Young, formerly the sexy Colonel of Chicken who then opened his mouth and became annoying and his cuteness leaked out through his twitchy moronic Doobie Brothers crap. Also, he sang an original song in a stupid hideous white suit for his solo, which is annoying on all levels. Let's take the worst things about the voices of James Blunt, Adam Levine, and whatever other wispy-voiced speech therapy crap pop's got going on right now and put them all in one place.
At least he can write a decent song -- although titling it "American Dreams" is kind of douche on an epic scale -- and you know what, I think my hate is going to flip over on itself again at some point, like with his less-intelligent brother-in-"artistry" David Cook. I am not looking forward to that shit, not one bit.
Ashthon, all we really know his hair and pretty. So in her solo, she gave herself a Farrah weave and did a stripped-down, pretty awesome version of that Whitney Houston song about wanting to dance with not just anybody but specifically somebody who loves her. I don't really love Whitney Houston these days but even if I did, I still wouldn't dance with her. She seems like a surprise vomiter.
J. Lo reminds us how Ashthon was the only thing that kept her Group Night Group together, and the Judgery ask and ask her if she is down with the pressure of this insane show, and she just nods at them and is beautiful some more and keeps her mouth shut, which more than anything is a good sign that she can handle this shit. They tell her she's the whole package even though she's been up and down, and J. Lo gets a little worked up about her. Outside, one of the Laurens eats her own lips off with envy, which is awesome.
up: An "unprecedented meltdown," per Seacrest, and then J. Lo threatening to quit because it's simply too hard. I can't wait to find out if the meltdown is a cause or an effect, i.e., does J. Lo melt down or is there a meltdown which causes J. Lo to melt down. I'm hoping it's the latter, more crazy = more fun, but either way I know Steven Tyler is going to give J. Lo a hug until she gets herself under control, which is something of a pop culture Moment. Is it not?
Just keep your dirty fucking show-biz paws off Brett Loewenstern, please. Make it fast or put him through, or else I'm going to be right up there with J. Lo and the possible sequential meltdown that is about to occur. I could deal with Caleb because we still have Colton, but there's no way you could ever replace Brett. There's Durbin, but that's not really the same thing at all.
"An uneasy hush has fallen," Ryan explains, and Brett leans on some girl with all the weight of his hair, and then Chris Medina gives us some dramatic speech about his entire life before we see his solo, a fairly uncontrolled and not especially lovely version of... I don't know, maybe it's Coldplay? Yeah, it's motherfucking "Fix You."
Which flips him right the fuck into Gokey territory. We're officially fucking done with Chris Medina, are you kidding me? That is some unconscionable bullshit. Maybe he'll show us a picture of a wheelchair with one tear coming down some dude's face like the Indian chief. He refuses to talk to the judges about anything but his fake marriage and his dedication and all that, and it's fucking nasty. Way to whore it out, dude. I hope it feels good, because you didn't get through anyway.
But hey, you can get just as much attention from being pretend-married to a brain damaged girl in a wheelchair whether you're on this show or not. Buck up, chum. And stop threatening to leave music behind, ya freak. Dropping this one just in time. That was close. But after all, it was the thing that brought the Judgery together in the first place, so it makes sense that both Ryan and J. Lo are pulverized by this latest thing.
Randy whispers to J. Lo awesomely about how she's doing a great job and she let him go as sweetly and encouragingly as possible, and the boys are all over her about how she found the perfect words -- which she did -- and everybody outside fucking loses it too, Ryan's like this emcee of group meltdown. Except for Colton, who could give a shit, which is awesome, because don't encourage this behavior.
Any sympathy I had for the suckiness of being stuck in a relationship after your fiancée's accident, and I want to be clear about this because I do understand wanting to stick by the person that you love and I do understand the Prior Walter guilt of it all and I do know that you are stuck not just in terms of shame logistics but also in terms of love, where you've already given your heart to somebody and then what, like you're going to take it back? I get all that. And none of it matters, all of that is gone, the second you start using it.
Martyrdom is a drug like any other. The short-term benefit, that great-feeling victimhood and heroism, are always going to outweigh the longer-term truth that what was once somebody else's tragedy is now a waste of at least two lives, and everybody's time. It's not a box you can get out of, but it's also what grief and the grieving process were designed to help us burn off. Get us back home to ourselves so we can live in their honor, rather than the other way round.
I just cannot see him gone fast enough. I thought nobody could be more cynical than Danny Gokey, but at least he has the excuse of being Danny Gokey, broken in six different ways even before his wife dropped dead. And I always loved him for that, not because of the wife stuff. I loved him precisely in spite of the wife stuff, because he desperately needed it. But this Medina shit, I feel like I failed to spot the Mole until he was right behind us. Thanks for taking him out, J. Lo.
Anyway, that's the end of the episode, this stunning cliffhanger about how maybe J. Lo will quit the show because she just pushed a girl in a wheelchair off a porch into the brambles and what kind of a person is she turning into. (Spoiler: She is not going to quit the show.) But I guess that makes tonight the rest of the Chair episode? And then we'll have Top 24.
Which is in itself going to be interesting, because there's no gender-balance this year technically, but week is still three nights long. So either it'll just be "some twelve" and "some other twelve," or else -- and this seems very likely somehow -- it'll just coincidentally be BVSG anyway. We'll see.
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