Tonight's episode begins montage-style, with a title card telling us it's Audition Day in Portland, Oregon. The famous Rose Garden is clearly the venue (the indoor part of it, that is), and after a few quick clips of nervous hopefuls, Ryan's in the middle of what he calls an "eclectic crowd," telling us this is the show's first trip to Oregon. "And this is American Idol. He never seems to get tired of saying that.
Idol titles, and then Ryan welcomes us to the city with shots of its bygone days, downtown, the Columbia River, the bridges, etc. Basically everything but Ramona Quimby's house on Klickitat Street. Ryan says there were "thousands" in line, which probably means two thousand. Ryan works the holding room by pretending (possibly) to get his fleece caught on the door handle while trying to enter.
And then we meet our first Portlander, Brittany Zika, who's a 21-year-old blonde, wearing Clark Kent's hat and glasses. She shares a dream she once had of singing "Gravity" onstage with Sara Bareilles, which actually came true, if you can believe that shit, which, in this day and age of audience members routinely and successfully soliciting a shot onstage, you probably can. So now, why not parlay that success into an American Idol run? She trips trying to step onto the oval and claims they call her "Tripster the Hipster." Okay, I like Sara Bareilles, but I already hate this chick. She sings "The Story" by Brandi Carlisle and, surprisingly (and disappointingly) pulls it off quite well. Her eyes pop out in surprise when they compliment her voice, making her the opposite of most contestants. Then they make her take her hat and glasses off, because it's never too early to transform the nerdy girl. Anyway, she got three yeses, so we'll be seeing more of her, even if she can't see us without her specs.
We come back from the ads at 10 AM, and Ryan hearkens back to the weirdness that went down the last time the show came to the Pacific Northwest with a freakshow montage from Season Six's Seattle auditions. But Ryan assures us that five seasons on, people know better.
So of course we meet a skinny 18-year-old goofball from Philadelphia named Ben Perdom, who burps and cleans his nose out and talks about how sick he's been. So this should be spectacular. He explains to Ryan that he sells cable TV on the street, which just makes me picture someone going up to people with a long coat and quietly singing, "Would you like to buy an HBO?" His demonstration to Ryan, alas, is a lot more prosaic, and a lot less impressive. Ryan: "If your singing's as good as the pitch...anywhere near the pitch...let's just get in there." Of course the pitch is not good, and neither is his singing. He throatily croons both "Born This Way" and "Superbass," and the best thing I can say about him is that he can tell which way the room is going. But they make him stand there and listen to their nos anyway. Out in the hallway, he makes the excuse that he was too sick to attempt his falsetto, but luckily the wacky editors are prepared with a remix of his audition in Alvin and the Chipmunks mode. Hilarious!
Ryan lets some awkward teenager welcome us back after lunch at 2:01 PM, and then shows him up by doing it himself, I guess just to demonstrate that this isn't as easy as it looks. Way to big-league the poor kid, Seacrest.
Anyway, Jermaine Jones, the towering love child of Malcolm Jamal Warner and Al Jarreau, is here to talk about his musical church upbringing and get lots of support from his mom. In the audition room, he insists that his height is "six-eight-and-a-half," and he's there to sing "Superstar." He has a very strong, rich voice, and when he's singing his lisp isn't nearly as noticeable. The judges love him, although they call him on being nervous, like that's hard to notice when he's sweating so hard he walks out of there only six feet seven inches tall. But he's going to Hollywood, and when he calls his "mommy" to break the news, she screams so loudly and persistently that he literally worries that she's going to break his phone.
Day two begins, after addressing a potentially day-ruining issue with Jennifer's inability to locate her black tights, and the contestant is a poor man's Britney Spears named Britnee Kellogg, complete with small children climbing all over and single-mom status. In the audition room, she tearfully tells the judges that her husband held her back while she helped him pursue his dream of playing basketball, and then he went to pursue other women, so here she is. She's singing "You're No Good," apropos of (ahem) nothing. She has kind of a country-blues tone, and Jennifer even sings along. Sure enough, they all vote yes without any discussion. Before heading out to collect her Golden Ticket, Britnee asks Jennifer for advice on being a mom and being a singer, which cues her entire family flooding into the room while Jennifer says it takes a village. I was kind of pulling for Britnee before she asked for parenting advice from Jennifer Lopez.
is an overenergetic brunette named Sam Gershman, who expects a reaction from the judges when she announces that her dad's name is Ira. Fortunately the editors are there with the crickets sound effect, as they have been since before this show started. She oversings "I'm a Woman," and she probably wouldn't be terrible if she just dialed it back a full turn or four. She hits the notes, at least, but she hits them with a thirty-pound sledgehammer. Steven says she's a little Broadway, and they all agree that this probably isn't for her. No shot. I think she just broke Jermaine Jones's phone for real, and he wasn't even talking to her.
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Rejoining the auditions at 4:19 after Ryan tells us about how green Portland is, we meet David Weed, a nerd from Idaho who wants to get out of the fast food industry. Well, I don't think his version of "Tom Sawyer" from Rush: The Musical is his ticket out of there, especially given that he can't hit the high notes. And of course, with that song, they're all high notes. Randy asks what his other dream is, and after making him further humiliate himself with his almost-as-bad standup comedy, they all give him a no. So it's back to saying "Do you want fries with that?" which he admits kills him a little bit inside every time he has to say it. Ask Ryan for tips, maybe.
Ryan tires to lighten the mood a bit by pacing back and fourth outside the window behind the judges with a potted tree and the entire camera crew. It's funnier than I'm describing it, but only by a very small amount. Still, he seems to think that justifies his taking credit for the day's improvement, which is marked by the audition of one Romeo Diahn from Liberia. Originally, that is. It seems he was only a baby when his father sent him and his family to a refugee camp in Ghana to escape the civil war in 1990. Eventually they made it to America, and thence to the American Idol auditions. Which is a natural progression, of course. He (widely) sings in a natural reggae style while Ryan tries to chat up Romeo's people outside the room. After a long pause, a giant in an emerald monochrome Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops finally asks Ryan, "So who are you?" Awesome. More people should ask him that, just, in general. Inside the room, Steven votes yes, Jennifer overcomes her worries about how Romeo will fit into the competition (because the last thing you want is an outlier, good heavens) to give a "little tiny yes," and Randy gives a regular yes. Because whether he's a good singer or a fine singer, dude lived in a refugee camp, after all.
Coming back, a baker at what I assume is Voodoo Doughnut decorates a "Ryan Seacrest Doughnut," which looks a lot like our host rendered in frosting, although he himself declares it "too short."
Then it's time for Naomi Gillies, 22 and from Boston, to come in and ask Steven for permission to sing one of his songs. Sure enough, she sings "Cryin'," and they all love it, smiling and nodding all the way through her relentless barrage of vocal gimmicks. Unreserved yeses from all three, so she'll be going to Hollywood.
There's a montage of the judges shooting down a succession of losers, some of whom really don't take it well at all, and two of whom border on violent. Those women really wanted it.
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So again, Ryan decides to cheer things up by introducing us to Ben Harrison, a cherubic 28-year-old from Eugene, Oregon who says "rock and roll" a lot while making a jazz-hands face. In the audition room, he claims that he keeps getting kicked out of bands due to lack of experience and his deceptively youthful aspect, but canny Randy asks if it's not for lack of talent. We're about to find out. He sings a couple of lines of "Somebody to Love" by Queen. Let's just say that it's not his face getting him kicked out of bands, but the sounds that come out of that face. Worse, he then buries himself by blowing a kiss to Jennifer into the awkward silence. But he leaves in a good mood, because he's still got that baby-face, and he and his family are about to go stuff it full of pizza.
It's now 6:45 PM, and there's a montage of nos to raise the stakes for what's about to come .
That would be a contestant named Jessica Phillips from Brooklyn, New York. "Tell us about your boyfriend," says Steven, who has clearly been briefed. Jessica explains how her boyfriend of five years had a stroke last Easter, spent a month and a half in the hospital, then finally woke up and didn't know who she was. Under those circumstances, a lot of people would probably either find a new boyfriend or claim to be his live-in employer, but Jessica interviews tearfully that she's now become more of a caretaker. For example, we see her helping him with speech therapy, much as Ryan Seacrest presumably helps Dick Clark. The boyfriend himself tells us that he would be nowhere without her (presumably she was the one who arranged for the subtitles to be put on the screen while he spoke). The judges are a little overwhelmed by this story, and obviously really wanting to like her.
After a long pause, she sings "Again" by Faith Evans, and Randy soon looks relieved that she's actually not bad. Jennifer nitpicks Jessica's breath control, but it's no surprise when they all give her a yes. Outside, she has a joyous reunion with her boyfriend, and tells us that American Idol will now allow her to get back into music, which is how they met. Presumably his audition will have to wait for a later season.
So that's it for Portland, and Ryan tells us that 45 contestants from here will proceed to Hollywood. If we ever see anything in Hollywood, that is. First, it's St. Louis, tomorrow night. I expect my recapping to become rather arch.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.
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