Hot Man on Man Action

S12E07

Ryan's intro tonight is laced with superlatives: "The most sought-after title in television history," "the most intense week of their lives," "the best singers in the country," "this judging panel...will accept only the very best," and "shocking eliminations that will shake you to the core." Okay, that last one was hyperbole rather than a superlative, but you get the idea: it's Hollywood week, when the contestants will be winnowed down to twenty guys and twenty girls. Would that it were only a week.

Montage of people being awakened by their parents to go to Hollywood, because if they weren't living with their parents, they wouldn't have auditioned in the first place. Planes, LAX, buses, hotel rooms, and a few score of uniformly excited and variously deluded people, all of whom are cut loose to stand on the stage marveling in awe. Ryan points out something unusual about this batch: it's only males. Damn, Frank Herbert's White Plague has struck American Idol! No, it's just that the female contestants will be covered week. See, already the "Hollywood Week" thing is exposed as a lie.

The judges show up, and from the stage they address the one section of auditorium seats that's actually occupied before getting things going. This early on, there's no fine-tuning; guys will come out in groups of ten and take turns singing a capella for the judges, sudden-death style. And to add to the pressure, the contestants' families are up in the balcony. Ryan doesn't say that the losers' loved ones will be dropped through a trap door to certain maiming, but the implication is clear.

The first group includes Micah Johnson, the guy from the Long Beach audition with a nerve-damage-caused speech impediment. Again, it disappears when he sings, "Benny and the Jets" this time. Keith gives him a standing ovation and everything. Now Ryan tells us that he has to wait until the rest of the line sings before they all hear the decision. I guess he did say "sudden death," not "instant death," so my bad. A few more guys I don't remember also sing, as though to build suspense, but obviously Micah is through, as well as the other three guys we heard. And then so do some more guys, like Nate Tao, shouty mop-head Gabe Brown (who earns more standing ovations from the audience), and Gupreet Singh Sarin, otherwise known as The Turbanator for his trademark headwear. It's like he's the only Sikh on network television or something.

Then we're reintroduced to Karl Skinner, an already energetic spaz who outlines the lengths to which he's already unnecessarily over-caffeinated himself this morning. So he should be good as long as he doesn't go into V-tach. He sings "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," which now that I think about it should be this show's theme song. Some hairy weirdoes make him seem like a shoo-in by comparison, but he's gone. So is Dustin Watts, the firefighter from Baton Rouge who looks better than he sounds, and Dr. Calvin Peters, who is going to continue being a singing doctor rather than becoming a singer who used to be a doctor. Then Cortez Shaw uncorks a high-volume version of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" that he hasn't even bothered to change the key on. There seems to be some disagreement among the judges, so that'll have to be milked for maximum drama. Which of course means a commercial break right here.

Coming back, Ryan editorializes that Cortez made a "poor" song choice, so now there are nine other dudes in his line waiting for the judges to make up their mind about him before they can get on with their lives. Mariah says she enjoyed him. Nicki interjects to say he did "a poor job, and I was very, very disgusted by it." Whoa, too soon for Nicki. "You ain't Whitney," adds Randy, always good for an unnecessary interjection. Randy says it wasn't unanimous, but Cortez is still in. And don't do that again.

Choir director Curtis Finch, Jr. impresses the judges again, as does subway busker Frankie Ford. Lazaro Arbos from the Chicago auditions comes to the stage, and we're reminded of his sad story in his own words. Which, given the stutter he lives with, helps fill a lot of airtime. I bet the editors love him; he utters one sentence and they've gone most of a minute without having to make a cut. And then of course he launches into song, a Robbie Williams one this time, and kills it. Ryan's narration remarks on Lazaro's visible flop-sweat during brief clips of other guys in his line before we learn that he's moving on to the round. The group includes some unfamiliar faces but decent voices, like Trevor Blakney, Bryant Tadeo, and Charles Allen, all of whom skate though, except Bryant. That's because Nicki rakes him over the coals, getting him to admit he's tired before saying they're sending him home to sleep. Psych! She's kidding. He's not only gotten passage to the round, he's gotten a valuable lesson in never admitting you're tired.

At 7:00 PM, the day's about to close out with a line that includes Brian Rittenberry, the burly country singer from the Charlotte auditions with the not-dead-from-cancer wife. It's not unanimous for Bryan either, but Mariah says, "For now, the whirlwind has to end here." It's going to be a very bad week for Brian if his wife's cancer comes back.

So we're already on to the group round. "It's the most demanding and strenuous night of the competition," Ryan narrates, which, along with clips of some of the most fraught moments of these rounds from past seasons, reminds us that this is always a mess. He adds that some guys started forming themselves into groups as soon as they found out they were safe. And yes, that sound you hear is God and the American Idol producers laughing, because producers Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick announce to the assembled survivors that for the first time, they're assigning people to groups -- irrevocably. People are called up onstage, grouped off, and assigned a list of twenty songs to choose from that everyone in each group has to agree on. Poor Lazaro has to not only struggle through introducing himself, he doesn't know a lot of the songs on the list, being Cuban and all, so that narrows down his group's options. Meanwhile, Army Sergeant Trevor Blakney and Lee Pritchard, possible two of the reddest necks the producers could find, have been thrown together with the two gayest guys in the house, but are flexible enough to be open to something like "Moves Like Jagger." Looking at Trevor's physique, however, I suspect that's where his flexibility will end.

Then there's another group called the Couch Potatoes, made up of socially awkward Charlie Askew with gospel singers Curtis Finch, Jr and Nick Mathis. They're off to a slow start, but other groups are already at work with vocal coaches, including the group that includes Johnny Keyser from last year. The group that includes Gupreet, as well as some guys named Mark and Chris and a kid named Peter, are a little slow picking a song, but quickly come up with the group name "Three Men and a Baby" for themselves. Other groups are shown rehearsing everyplace they can find a few square feet, while another group is tensely debating changing songs at this point.

The night drags on, people begin to collapse where they stand, and at 4:00 AM, the group known as "Country Queen" (scan up a few paragraphs and you'll know exactly who I mean) is dealing with Trevor's unfamiliarity with the lyrics, which he's wishing they would work on rather than choreography. And he's also generally acting like a big whiny baby and preferring to waste time bitching rather than resolving anything. Clearly he's part of the "Army of One" generation of recruits.

with the Math-Heads, who apparently had a decent night. This group includes Matheus Fernandes, the vertically-challenged guy who is reintroduced to us in the kind of clip that indicates he's clearly doomed, otherwise why bother? [Ed. Note: And there is still absolutely no mention at all of the fact that he made it pretty far on The Glee Project.] It's the Karl Skinner principle.

Indeed, he kicks off his group's version of Queen's "Somebody to Love" with a shaky falsetto note. The rest of the American Idol band kicks in, and the group (also including Nick Boddington, Mathenee Treco, and Gabe Brown) does better as a whole, and Matheus redeems himself on the bridge. By now, the judges are having too great a time to care about the weak beginning. Nicki says they did well, "however, today is the day that people are sent. Home." She takes forever asking them one by one to step forward, with Gabe last, but she remembers him at the last minute and says they're all through. They go celebrating into the room with Matheus on Gabe's shoulders and injuring his balls. The indignities never end for that guy.

After that relatively triumphant beginning, we come back at 11:00 AM with the group round still going on. Normal Hills, which includes Johnny Keyser from the Chicago auditions and also last year (year: a Pete from The Office lookalike contest), started out confidently with their decision to take on "Reach Out I'll Be There" last night, but this morning he's not sure of the lyrics. Now his three groupmates are giving him something of a hairy eyeball. Once they're out onstage, he sure enough blows the lyrics, and then Kareem Clark is off-pitch, and they all end on a fairly sour harmony. To ease into the bad news, the judges ask who picked the song, and Johnny admits he never heard it before. "What planet are you from?" asks the Australian in the room. They go into a huddle, and Kareem is the only one in the group to get cut. Which must be extra embarrassing after backing up a guy who forgot the words. And who's already been eliminated from this show once before.

The segues into a bit about the rapid bonding that's happening among the groups, which of course serves merely as an ironic transition into the latest trial in the life of Charlie Askew and his social awkwardness. While Charlie had a bout of some brief but intense illness that had him laid out on the hallway floor for a while last night, his groupmate Curtis Finch, Jr. told us, "I'm here to send him home in the first place...so I can be on American Idol and not American Airlines." So I guess Curtis is not a church choir director. Fortunately for Charlie he recovered and seemed to pull it together. Just in time for Curtis to totally upstage both him and his other groupmate. Or at least he tries, but the other two can nail the high notes as well, and all four judges are on their feet after that. Randy summarily sends them all through, just like that.

Coming back, Micah Johnson and his group The Four Tones take the stage to sing "Hold On I'm Coming," and all four of them coast through (including Vincent Powell, Marvin Calderon, and David Willis). Young Love, featuring Zach Birnbaum, Nate Tao, the dreaded Cortez Shaw, and a Mohawk-pompadoured kid named Elijah Liu sing "Some Kind of Wonderful" in matching leather jackets and at least three of them go through, though I don't see Zach in the celebration room. Then another group blows the lyrics, and another, right after boasting about how easy their lyrics are. I don't know, though, they seem to be keeping up with subtitled words on the screen like "Forty deep, doughless sew my tiiiiiie." Unless those aren't the correct words, of course. By a non-unanimous vote, Paul Jolley and Will White from that group get to go on and the other two return to the obscurity they never really left.

Gupreet's group, B-Side (in other words, not Three Men and a Baby), is up and Gupreet messes up the words too. But he sings "too never dingbat a dim dow away ba da da da da now" with such confidence and commitment that the judges don't seem to mind. The same can't be said of the rest of the group, though, and they end the song in full-on faceplant mode, complete with overlapping subtitles. Randy bitches about it, Nicki loved it because she loves Gupreet, and Keith announces apropos of nothing that his Sikh name would be Keith Turban. Deliberations take place over suspenseful "music" that sounds like someone's cell phone, and all four of them are through, even though Randy thinks it was "all parts terrible." So although Nicki gets her way and Randy warns, "Be better time!" Nicki congratulates the real winners: "Good job, Idol judges!" She maintains afterward, in front of the guys, that it's not forgetting the lyrics...it's how you forget the lyrics.

After the ads, the judges remember that maybe they should start eliminating people, so it's bad timing for Last Minute. When they come out, one of them smarmily dedicates it to Mariah and Nicki. Which, when they start singing, they probably regret. In fact, they come apart so hard that at some point the Idol band just straight-up drops out on them. You can almost hear them looking at each other and using that magical, nonverbal, telepathic communication that exists between musicians with years of experience playing together to say as one, fuck this. Keith is moved to coin the word "wrongest," Nicki declares them all equally bad, and they get the axe en masse. And deservedly so. In fact, none of you come back year, or indeed ever again.

Ryan tells us that in this atmosphere, the group is the only one attempting an a capella performance today. During rehearsals, they asked their vocal coach what she thought of this plan, and her answer was basically what you say when it's too late to correct a huge mistake. Indeed, after their performance, Keith takes them to task for forgoing the "rockin' band," but two Devins and an Adrian make it through anyway. Tough break, Other Guy. Or, since I suspect he was the one who pitched the a capella idea in the first place, totally predictable break.

Up : Mo Flow, including Burnell Taylor. He would be the former Katrina refugee who moved Mariah to tears at the Baton Rouge auditions. Alas, he moved his group's vocal coach to annoyance at his tiredness during group rehearsals. And in Mo Flow's group performance, he turns out to be the weak link. But he's one of two in the group who get to move on. Moving Mariah Carey to tears earns you some slack, apparently. Good to know.

Super 55, the group that Lazaro ended up in, spent the night helping him learn a Beach Boys song, "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and one of the other guys in the group complains that Lazaro is holding them back. But then he's not the only one who messes up the lyrics anyway (nice one, Scott Fleenor). After they're done, Mariah gently quizzes them to tease out their understanding of the various issues they encountered, which I think they pretty well grok. And it turns out that Lazaro (and someone named Christian Lopez) stay in it, while Scott and the kid who spent all this time bitching about Lazaro get the boot. And then the latter kid has the nerve to weep bitter tears to the interview camera about how unfair it is that he "helped out this person that ended up taking the spot that I wanted." Then he "congratulates" Lazaro by talking about all the time the group spent perfecting Lazaro's performance. Way to keep it classy, guy whose name isn't worth my time to check.

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to be over. Mariah cuts Trevor and Lee, but JDA and Joel are still in it. Trevor takes it hard, going outside and weeping over the barricades about how he's never failed before in his life. Let's just hope the Army will take him back after this.

DKSK is made up of the four youngest guys in the competition. One of them is David Leathers, Jr., the last male to be eliminated from the Vegas round last year. I guess he's no longer billing himself as Mr. Steal Your Girlfriend after that. Also in this group is Kayden Stephenson, the kid with cystic fibrosis. They're doing "The Longest Time," complete with an ambitious key change. Alas, there are some lyrical issues, particularly with Kayden, which is a problem with a harmony song like this one. Kayden begs for a second chance, but David Leathers and Sanni M'Maurura, the kid with the parents from Africa, are going on. Don't feel bad about forgetting the lyrics, Kayden; your voice wasn't that great either. That kicks off a montage of ejections, including Griffin Peterson; Clifton Duffin, whose parents first got to hear him sing at his audition; and still Kayden, who promises to be back year.

At 7:30 PM, the day is winding down. But Oz, the group that includes Frankie Ford, is arguing in front of the interview camera right up until the moment they're called to the stage. Ryan gives us a little backstory from last night in which we learn that Frankie, the subway singer, doesn't have quite the same musical knowledge as the rest of them. But he apparently made up for it by being a pain in the ass all day. Oh, and then having an emotional meltdown and crying right before they go out on stage. So this should be awesome.

Sure enough, when they come out to attempt "American Boy" and end up with something that should get them all deported. They're not together for the opening harmonies, and their individual performances are nothing to write home about, except for that of Charles Allen. He alone is like, "Fuck these losers, I'm bringing it." When the travesty finally grinds to a halt, Nicki tells Frankie that they're been pulling for him, but he fell apart, and "you lost me." She says she loves him, which can't make him feel any better, like, "you sucked bad enough to override all my really strong reasons to keep you." She then turns to his groupmate Papa Peachez, who admits that the group was a hot mess, blaming the big personalities involved. Nicki says they have to be ready for that, and after some deliberation, they boot Frankie (despite Keith's advocacy for him) and Papa Peachez (who she says was saved by one person changing their vote). She warns Papa Peaches that he needs to stop being complacent and step up -- but right now step back, because he squeaked through.

As for Frankie, he's going back to singing on the train, and he currently looks like he just got hit by one, emotionally. Leaving the premises, he seems pretty angry and upset, blowing off his former groupmates when they try to follow him to offer words of support. He tearfully vows to be back year, saying he didn't come here to lose, and finally walks away crying as though having just been thumped by a playground bully. Well, that was uplifting.

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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By M. Giant

The morning of group performance round dawns all too soon, at 6:35 AM. Hurried, bleary primping ensues in the hotel bathrooms, and the judges show up looking obnoxiously fresh and alert. Ryan reminds us that members of each group will be judged individually on the spot, to either get the immediate axe or be allowed to move on to the solo round. The day is starting with the Math-Heads, who apparently had a decent night. This group includes Matheus Fernandes, the vertically-challenged guy who is reintroduced to us in the kind of clip that indicates he's clearly doomed, otherwise why bother? [Ed. Note: And there is still absolutely no mention at all of the fact that he made it pretty far on The Glee Project.] It's the Karl Skinner principle.

By M. Giant

Country Queen, the group that includes both a drill sergeant and a borderline drag queen, is finally up. They're doing "More Than Words," and the other country guy in the group, Lee Pritchard, is less than on top of the words. JDA (pronounced Jada), the one with the glitter, doesn't do much better. Joel Weyman manages to get through his part, but Trevor Blakney is a total train wreck, pacing back and forth while alternately warbling and huffing into the mic while the judges just wait for it all to be over. Mariah cuts Trevor and Lee, but JDA and Joel are still in it. Trevor takes it hard, going outside and weeping over the barricades about how he's never failed before in his life. Let's just hope the Army will take him back after this.

By M. Giant