Ryan tells us that tonight is "a tale of two cities" -- those being San Antonio and Long Beach, just like the ones Dickens wrote about.
After the credits, we're in San Antonio, specifically Sunset Station. As always, the local media makes much of the event, which looks to be held in the main room of an old train station. Vincent Powell is a contestant who is returning from a season I either didn't watch or don't remember, and apparently he's also a big Mariah Carey fan. He sings "Rock Me Baby" and has a decent and soulful enough voice that Randy monotones "Hello" at him somewhere between the first few lines. But then Vincent builds from there, obviously impressing them. Keith asks how far he got last year (it was to the end of Hollywood), which Vincent now blames on Randy sipping from his Coke cup at an inopportune moment. So it was last year, when I was here. I still don't remember him, though. None of the judges has anything negative to say, but they manage to fill some time before giving him a four-way yes. He's pretty excited about going to Hollywood, mostly because he'll see Mariah there. Has he already forgotten that he just now met her?
Up are Derek and David Bacerott, who make me think of nothing so much as the Menendez brothers. Except the Menendez brothers had more TVQ than these two tools, who sing a "duet" as though from separate rooms. Randy gives multiple nos, Mariah says no and Keith says no after getting tired of waiting for Nicki to come up with a polite way to also say no. Mariah tries to explain to them the basic rules of harmonizing, but they're argumentative and yammering until Nicki has to explain, "Your part of the audition is done." The guys shut up long enough to hear Nicki lie that they were great, but it's a no, while Randy explains that they're not only bad -- they also have terrible attitudes. Amazingly, they argue all the way out to the post-audition interview and multiply through the magic of editing into a crowd of yammering, self-justifying, never-shutting-up Menendi. I'm going to have nightmares about those two.
The contestant is Savannah Votion and she has both a five-year-old daughter and an outfit that advertises that there was no C-section involved. She sells her straightforward story of early, unprepared motherhood in a speaking voice that has me a little worried, until she sings "At Last" for the judges, who sit raptly throughout. She strikes Randy and Mariah as a natural, Keith claims to be able hear her whole life story in her voice (which, okay, because there doesn't seem to be much), and Nicki agrees that she was born to do this. So she's going to Hollywood, no surprise.
Two bro guitar players attempt to accompany a harp player in the parking lot, but only one of the three instruments is even remotely in tune and it's not either of the guitars. Cut to the audition room, where Ricky Jo Garcia is slaughtering a diva classic I won't name, but I Am Telling You She Is Not Going to Hollywood. Mariah tells this doomed young woman that it doesn't matter what she says, as though she were going to say yes anyway. So now it's time to meet Cristabel Clack, a worship leader who's 29. Her son is asleep on her husband's shoulder outside in the waiting area while Cristabel sings an Alicia Keys song that draws out not only Keith's increasingly famous listening face, but Mariah's listening hands. She's trying to bring listening to a new level. One, two, three, yes, and when she goes whooping out to the lobby, her baby barely stirs. So everybody wins!
Time for another one of those nominee people. It seems one Ann Difani from Arkansas got nominated by her husband Jordan, which led to Randy showing up at a college football game, breaking the news to her and presenting her with her audition number in front of literally dozens of screaming Razorbacks fans. Here in San Antonio, she croons a Faith Hill song, which seems about right; both of them are equally unthreatening. Mariah makes her commit to the country thing, and Nicki asks if she's prepared to be away from the husband who nominated her for months and she says, "absolutely!" The husband comes in and gets to be part of the moment when they give her their four yeses, one at a time. So she's good, but not good enough for the simultaneous yeses, apparently. How embarrassing.
There's now an American Idol app, which seems a lot like The X Factor app, in that I don't pay attention to the hosts' long-winded pitches for either of them.
We come back to San Antonio's Day 2, where we visit the River Walk with a mariachi group. Turns out their singer, Victoria Acosta, is also a contestant. We see her singing on the river in Spanish before shifting to Fergie's "Big Boys Don't Cry." There are plenty of decent singers tonight, but nobody's really blowing me away and they're beginning to run together. Keith's with me; he was hoping for more, though he doesn't know quite what, so Randy asks her to sing some mariachi for them. Which she does with a lot more emotion and connection to the music, and which probably contributes to her getting four yeses more than anything else. This... is Mariachi Idol.
San Antonio's specially branded montage of over-singing losers is made to look like an old sepia-toned Western, but with the same kind of punishing performances that have Nicki saying, "There's always Auto-Tune."
Ryan meets a guy who is willing, nay, expecting to be called "Papa Peachez." His explanation of how that arose from working with homeless people and singing is not really an explanation at all. "I'm really just a big black woman trapped in a little boy's body," he assures us in an interview. He dances like a little girl, however, and it would seem frequently. He starts singing some original, autobiographical, riverboat-sounding song that goes on at some length. Nicki thinks he's a superstar, Keith thought it was a little theatrical, Mariah declares him quirky and Randy basically tells him to get serious. Here's the thing, Randy -- I don't think Papa Peachez was kidding. Nicki votes "a billion Sicilian yes," and when Keith and Randy tell him no, Nicki argues for him. Mariah says yes, so it's a tie. Apparently San Antonio means Randy is the tie breaker and after some wheedling from Nicki and Peachez, Randy changes his mind. Such as it is.
The contestant, Sanni M'mairura, has a mom from Tanzania and a dad from Kenya. So he'll probably be president one day, but for now he leads a song-and-dance group. He speaks a little Swahili for the judges and sings "Who's Loving You" by Michael Jackson. His voice is a decent match and he throws in a lot of extra notes. The judges like him, especially how he doesn't try to sound like Michael Jackson, so obviously he's through to Hollywood. I agree that he didn't try to sound like Michael Jackson; it just seemed to happen.
The last San Antonio contestant is apparently a bit of an emotional basket case at the moment, which Ryan somehow managed to coax out of him in the holding room. This is Adam Sanders, a high-voiced, vaguely Grimace-shaped kid who's rather star-struck by the judges until he starts belting out "I'd Rather Go Blind" by Etta James and turns out to probably be the best singer in the San Antonio round, putting that high voice right the hell to work. Randy and Mariah give him a standing ovation and everything, and all four of them just sort of sputter happily before giving him their yeses. We'll be seeing him again. And Ryan narrates, "stay with us, we're only halfway through," doing his best to make it not sound like a threat and totally failing.
Coming back, there's a fake movie trailer-style montage intro, complete with Ryan's trailer-style narration, even though nobody narrates trailers any more. I'm not recapping the fake trailer, because the stuff it shows will be happening soon enough, I'm sure.
Tonight's second hour of Long Beach auditions are being held on board the Queen Mary, docked in Long Beach. As usual, we open the sequence with a shot of some local DJ talking about the auditions coming to town, the local DJ in this case being Ryan Seacrest. Conflict of interest! People are shown converging on the boat, causing nightmare traffic all over town. Ryan, Keith and Randy show up for the day, but Mariah's still stuck in traffic and Nicki is at the rehearsals for the American Music Awards, as illustrated by some cheap-ass bit of Monty Python-esque animation. Today's first contestant pretends not to be disappointed at facing two dudes. This would be Shubha Vedula and, of course, she's got to endure some lame comments from Keith and Randy about her name before doing "Something's Got a Hold on Me" quite well in fact. Then they make her endure some talking to the empty chairs of the absent judge, before giving her their two yeses and then talking about her name some more after she leaves. I'm sure it's all quite fresh and new to her.
Mariah finally shows up, dressed for the Oscars and then we transition to the men's room, where a very nervous zombie calling itself Brian Martinez psychs itself up. Apparently the bathroom thing is actually part of his story, as he comes out and tells the judges that a producer heard him singing in the bathroom and advised him to... try out for Idol. What, he didn't sign him on the spot? How awesome can he be? Keith tweaks him for his nervousness before letting him sing "You'll Be in My Heart." Which is when we learn that if a producer tells you in the bathroom to audition for American Idol, he does not mean it as a compliment. Randy and Keith quiz him a little bit about that alleged encounter before sending him on his way. "This wasn't a good experience for me," Brian interviews. Or any of us, really. I hope you're happy, music producer from the bathroom.
A guy named Matt Farmer rides in the backseat to his adorable daughter, Cadence. Outside the audition room, Ryan gets Matt to tell him his backstory, which starts with an IED in Iraq, a photo of an upside-down Humvee with its back end blown clear off and the word he got from the doctors that the brain medication Matt would have to take would render him sterile. And yet here's little Cadence, repudiating that prognosis with her very existence. So of course Matt carries her right into the audition room. The judges let him talk about the tattoos on his arm memorializing his fallen comrades, and then he sings "A Change is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke. He's a good singer, but I'm even more impressed with how that two-year-old stands quietly to him and doesn't try to wander off or interrupt like mine did at that age (and let's face it, still does). The judges like him too, and give him three yeses. And then he and his wife are cute with their daughter some more. So his wife is there? Either he was pandering by bringing his daughter in the audition room or Cadence doesn't like her mom much.
Stephanie Sanson thinks she's all edgy and shit with her purple hair and her whole band there, but then she announces that she'll be singing Adele's "Set Fire to the Rain" so obviously she's full of shit. But she adds another layer when she starts jumping up and down and screaming the lyrics, waving her extended middle fingers, all the way out of the audition room. The judges mock and flunk her in absentia, although Keith says Nicki would have voted to send her to Hollywood. Whatever, Stephanie clearly accomplished what she set out to do.
So Nicki finishes up rehearsing for the AMAs and shows up just in time to hear an audition from a cruisewear-clad nerd named Jesaiah Baer, who's singing "Settle Down" by Kimbra. She's barely started when fire alarms go off and strobes start flashing. It looks like an evacuation is in order, although the judges move so slowly that if there were a real fire they would already be meeting their richly deserved fate at the bottom of the harbor.
We come back at 2:00 PM and learn that, apparently, the alarms were triggered by nothing more than smoke from a cooking fire at a neighboring restaurant. Jesaiah gets to come back to the audition room and start over, after Ryan makes a crack about how the fire was the result of Randy's lunch being made. Turns out she can actually sing, with some decent jazzy bits. Now if she can just stop fiddling nervously with her captain's hat during all the compliments she gets. Leave that thing at home when you go to Hollywood, sweetie.
Cut to a bit about how the ship is supposedly haunted. Ryan wanders deep in the boat amid some mysterious noises and some cheesily-edited fake ghost footage. Some of those fake ghosts supposedly join a run of bad auditioners, because that's hilarious.
Micah Johnson is going to be the last contestant of the day. There's something up with his speaking voice, which he reveals is the result of a complicated tonsillectomy that resulted in nerve damage and the permanent speech impediment we now hear. Cut to the audition room, where Mariah admits that she's had some nerve damage of her own but in her arm, which, for Mariah Carey, is also a speech impediment. Mike explains that this is pretty much how he's going to sound for good, but then he launches in to "Chicken Fried" by the Zac Brown Band, leaving his speech impediment far behind. Impressive. Randy calls it the biggest fake-out ever. They gush about how awesome he is and he's in, big time.
A ten-year-old sings us a snippet of "Valerie" on deck and vows to be the American Idol in five years. At which point I'm sure we'll see that footage again. The second day of the Long Beach auditions starts with Rachel Hale from southwest Arkansas with an accent to match. She sings "People Get Ready," not badly but with a few too many Jan Levenson from The Office faces for my taste. The judges don't seem to watch that show, though, so they're totally into her. Rachel's going to Hollywood and Randy declares her the happiest contestant ever. I don't think that can be true and I didn't even watch this show for most of a decade.
The auditioner, Briana Oakley from Antioch, California, plays the bullied card right off the top of the deck, which she blames on her appearance on Maury at age 12 as one of America's most talented kids. That's sad, but I'm not sure what else she expected. Apparently things are better now after she changed schools, so she's going to sing "Up to the Mountain" by Patty Griffin. Don't hear much of her on this show, but Briana pulls it off, doing that slow start with a gradual build that more and more people seem to be getting the hang of on this show. The judges love her, Nicki to the point where she can't say anything but "wow" for a while before telling Briana that the stars have aligned to bring her here today. With Briana's whole family (and Ryan) peeking in through the curtains, they give her four yeses, and the whole fam comes swarming in to celebrate. Sure, she'll have to change schools again now, but for now it's worth it.
One to go. Matheus Fernandes is 21, but looks much younger given that he's wearing a t-shirt and a sweater vest and is roughly the height of a parking meter. He doesn't have dwarfism or any hormonal issue, he explains; he's just really short. Matheus also endured some bullying while failing to grow up and is a little overwhelmed just presenting himself in front of the judges. [Note: Also, he was on The Glee Project Season 1 and went pretty far in the competition, which NO ONE is acknowledging! Come on! -- Rachel.] He sings "A Change is Gonna Come" beautifully enough that even singing a line to the judges begging for a chance doesn't hurt him. Keith loves his voice, Nicki assures him that they're looking for a unique, special person like him, Mariah says he brought her to tears and can sing anything to her. Randy says, "Yo," and tells Matheus he's ten feet tall right now. His parents are brought in as the judges each give him a yes and a hug. Ryan concludes that Matheus ended up being one of 50 auditioners going from Long Beach to Hollywood. That'll be a brief trip. Tomorrow, Oklahoma. So apparently we're visiting all the states this season.
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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