Since they spent last episode in relative obscurity, it's time to bring Ikaika and Paul back to the spotlight. Assuming we don't notice these things, the editors slap some heretofore unseen bits into the "previously" segment: the eight guys sit chatting at a table, at which time someone asks Ikaika if it's his first trip to the mainland. He pretends he's offended. Jacob nods as though it's normal for him to wear a beret, and Paul chips in that he thinks Ikaika's gullible and "not all there." This reminds us that we are right to laugh at Ikaika, and all Hawaiians, because they're not from a contiguous state. Then, back to Episode II territory, where Ikaika tells Bryan he doesn't "vibe" with the other six, especially Paul. , Paul tells us he and Heather have a "flirtations bond," but that his Mississippi girlfriend Carrah is everything a guy could want. He loves her to death, Paul says, as we see shots of her basically feeding him her lower lip. The screen splits, and as Paul embraces Carrah, we see the scene with Heather where he teases her with a cherry. Carrah's coming to visit, Paul says. "Oh, forget it. They're so over," predicts my friend Dan. Paul turns toward the screen and grins, "No way. I'm the master juggler. I invented juggling. Watch and learn."
This show is less about eight guys, and more about Paul's passion (for girls), Paul's sacrifice (staying celibate for two episodes) and Paul's dreams (of nubile young female groupies). They should change the credits to reflect this.
Trevor is nervous. Again. Apparently, he's desperate to make the cut, and it dawns on me just how pathetic one person can be -- his life dream involves Lou Pearlman, for God's sake. Whatever the result, there will be therapy. The guys practice harmonies with Mini-Lou, singing Love Potion No. 9, and then the guys rehearse the dancing. Ashley actually hops into the confessional to tell us Trevor's by far the best among them, which is nothing we haven't heard before but it's just nice that Ash is participating like a good little guinea-pig. Erik says he's struggling to "feel the vibe," despite having "felt" three people six times last week. Paul admits he constantly compares himself to the other seven, "sizing them up" to help measure his own performance. Trevor stares right at the camera and says he thinks the fifth spot will be a toss-up between him and Erik. Cut to the guys closing out "Love Potion No. 9," and TyJuan -- a human love potion sprawled in the corner, looking frisky in neon orange -- says it's getting better, but still has a long way to go.
Malia's coming to visit, and Ikaika's thrilled (because, you know, she's the hottest girl ever) but nervous because she's shy and hates cameras. Well. This will be fun for her. Bryan Chan, probably desperate to get the hell away from them, tells Ikaika that he's staying with Ranger Mark so that Malia and Ikaika can have some naughty time. Delighted, Ikaika makes a fist and they tap knuckles. "Ikaika's not motivated by money and wealth and whatnot," Bryan says, adding that he could see Ikaika giving it all away for Malia (and thus improving Bryan's slim odds of making the cut). The editors recycle footage of Ikaika saying Malia's the most beautiful girl in the world -- so, for Ikaika, Hawaii -- and that he wants to marry her, he'd die before breaking up with her, the only thing he loves more than Malia is hyperbole, etc.
At night, Paul and Mike and a few others are roaming Orlando with the groupies, who are in a girl-band called Herizon. Almost wistfully, Ashley says, "I want to ice-skate," and for a second he's captivated by the dream, by the sting of icy wind in his hair during a quadruple toe-loop, by spinning and spinning and feeling so free in the spandex pantsuits and makeup -- well, damn, since he's stuck here in this lousy Lou band, he'll have to settle for a night at the local rink. Paul skates with Heather and her friend, one in each hand, while his voice-over tells us he loves the challenge of making a girl want him. "It's up to me to take it to the level," he says, mentally elevating himself to stud status. Mike and Ashley skate around pointlessly, and Mike snags the confessional by promising to talk about Paul -- he says the guy should tone down the flirting, while Paul says it's getting harder to restrain himself.
Heather and Paul are lying on the gym benches in the Testosterone Zone as he breaks the news that Carrah's coming to stay. Heather looks shell-shocked. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asks. Here's a guess -- he's jerking you around. She feigns interest in whether the two of them will survive long-term. "She's been there through a lot of the crap," Paul says of Carrah, adding that it'll be good for her to see his life is in Orlando but "I don't think she'll be able to see exactly what's going on." Translation: While Carrah's here, Heather will get nothing and like it. We see a photo of pretty Carrah and then a freaky shot of cross-eyed Paul, who says he'd die if he broke her heart. So watch for the touching funeral episode in the couple weeks, the one your whole family should see.
Trevor and Paul, roommates unless Trev used his ass again to bump someone out of a bed, are lying in their twin beds at night as Paul talks about himself. He doesn't really have any other areas of expertise, I suppose. He tells Trev, "I'm not planning on hurting" Carrah, but.... and we are supposed to bow our heads in sympathy because he struggles oh-so-hard to be noble. "My mind is on Me... achieving this goal," Paul says. Trevor nods, unwilling to start another bedtime chat since last week's with Ashley did not go as planned. His Discman is sitting on the bed, with the cords stretching up near his right ear, which Trev is cupping with his hand. Paul doesn't notice. "I hope I'm strong enough to not totally dis her," Paul says, as Trevor pretends he's not secretly listening to Britney Spears. "It's tough, but it's fun," Paul says, grinning then laughing. Trev chuckles along, clueless and quietly blessing modern electronics equipment.
In the morning, Ranger Mark is in full lackey mode, driving Ikaika and Paul to the airport to pick up their ladies. Ikaika says he'd had a crush on Malia for seven years. "I just want her to hold me and tell me it'll be OK," Ikaika says, forgetting that no one cares. Paul laughs way too hard. "You let her talk to you?!" he thinks. Ranger Mark guffaws and only half-jokingly says they should boot Ikaika out of the Man Van to keep it free of Effeminate Emotional Crap.
The hills are alive with Paul's nasal twang. Walking though the airport, his voice-over tells us he's nervous, but there's something about seeing Carrah that makes him feel... and before he chokes out the word "horny," he sees her at baggage claim. You know, to complete the metaphor, they might as well have had her coming off the conveyor belt. They hug and kiss immediately. "Paul and I's [sic] relationship is, um, very strong, and I think we're both good for each other," says Carrah on tape. Um, that's nice. They hug more while the screen splits to show Ikaika running frantically through the airport. As he tries to find Malia at her gate, Paul starts walking to find Ikaika, lugging the baggage in one hand... and Carrah's luggage in the other. "She might not have come, dude. Malia has pulled stuff like that before," Ikaika says, as though that's not an alarmingly immature prospect. Ranger Mark goes to ask if she ever made it onto her flight, and Ikaika squats nervously on the spot, which helps a lot if Malia's lost and looking for him. Maybe if he puts his ear to the ground, he'll hear her approaching.
The commercials look so much nicer in fast-forward.
Ikaika's checking on Malia, finding out when her flight arrives. "Malia," he says. "Malia?" asks the attendant. "Malia," he says. "Malkovich malkovich, Malkovich," says John Malkovich. Without her last name, they still locate her info and inform Ikaika she's arriving later -- I guess he messed up the time. Ranger Mark fakes relief: "Well, gee, thank God." Ikaika's happy, and his orange shirt glows a little brighter. "I thought that she was lost, dude," he says. Cut to his wide grin as Malia de-planes, a flower tucked behind her ear. They hug in the middle of the flow of passenger-traffic. "We should get out of the way," giggles Malia. "But I don't want to!" Bunim-Murray blurs all the passengers so we can't see them glaring and flipping off our reunited lovebirds. As they walk away, they buzz right past Ranger Mark, who whistles to snap them out of their reverie. Everyone gets introduced, and they all hold back quips about Carrah's black tube top. As Ikaika ignores Ranger Mark and fawns over Malia, Paul and Carrah look on awkwardly, their relationship looking painfully lame in comparison. Paul admires Ikaika's devotion. "It's nice to see that, and Ikaika's so happy," he says, pretending to care. "I want to marry her," Ikaika says again. We gotcha, buddy -- and while you're listening, do you think she's attractive at all?
Back at the house, Carrah walks into the kitchen. "Look at all the cereal!" she exclaims. Meanwhile, outside, Malia comments on how weird it is that they all wear shoes in the house. Ikaika makes fun of their beach, which is an embarrassingly tiny strip of dirty-looking sand. Hawaii it isn't. Paul is sensitive and very clever, so he shows Carrah the black-and-white glossy for Herizon and points out his good friend Heather. "She's pretty," fibs Carrah. "Uh, they're all pretty." Paul tells her they all come over and hang out, and Carrah acts like that's very nice and cool and special. Paul pretends he's not getting jollies from playing two women like violins. Ikaika and Malia lie down on a random trampoline and he says she's looking skinny. His remedy? Cooking garden burgers and rice to fatten her up. That's fattening? What is her normal diet -- greens of the forest? Trevor arrives at the house and hugs Carrah, and then Bryan Chan appears to say that Carrah is incredibly nice and terrific, and "not at all what I expected." Wait, he hasn't met Malia yet and he's wearing a necklace of flowers? "How did HE get lei-ed??" shouts Dan.
And since Bryan went to the trouble of leaving the house to free up the bedroom, Ikaika and Malia thoughtfully proceed to camp out on a trampoline. Now, no one really establishes the whereabouts of this trampoline, but you can see it's behind a dirty white house -- not quite like the Orlando oasis they occupy, so either they happened upon a neighbor's trampoline and made it their own, or Lou equipped the house with a ghetto shed.
At the studios the morning, Carrah and Malia sit on a couch to watch rehearsal, ostensibly after wiping it down with Lysol to kill any of Lou's bacteria left there from last week. Erik-Michael is feeling jaunty, turning up only the left half of the brim on his boater's hat and wearing bright yellow sneakers that match his t-shirt. Factor his lips and blue swishy pants to the mix and it's a nifty Tropical-Fish effect. They sing "All For Love," with Mike doing his best Barry-White bass and Bryan Chan sounding pretty... well, wretched. Jacob's voice almost exactly matches every other boy-band tenor's tone. They're better, but the dancing is still an enormous debacle. Mini-Lou asks Paul to sing his part, and he squeals "baaaaa-byyyy" in a falsetto that wins him one fist bump from Mike. By now, that's gotta be the O-Town secret handshake. Mini-Lou says, "Don't sacrifice quality of sound for pitch." Maybe that explains why Janet Jackson's singing voice is practically a whisper. Afterward, everyone sits at the round table except for Ikaika and Malia -- he sits staring at the floor. Trevor is offended that Ikaika thinks they're not good enough to meet his girlfriend, and shouts out "Hey Joe! Johnny Joe Cool!" so that must be the American translation of Ikaika Kahoano. Someone puts on a slow R&B groove, and Ashley smiles and nods to the rhythm as Ikaika and Malia half-dance, half-canoodle in front of everyone. Ikaika explains they're in their own little world. Trying not to look bad in comparison, Carrah hugs Paul from behind and they just stand there, awkwardly, as Paul looks down at the floor. "Me and Carrah... I dunno," he says through his nose. "I know she's worried, and I'm worried about a different thing: Me." You should be. She may be stupid or blind or both, but she's still more than you deserve.
Raymond del Barrio (Raymond "of the Neighborhood") is running the show in the dance studio today. "Try not to cheese it up so much," he shouts cheerfully. He's the Special Sauce to TyJuan's G-Love, an entire bottle of it wrapped up in a "Fear No Art" t-shirt. Thanks for the advice, but we're safe -- there's no art of any kind at Trans Con studios. He stops Paul and does a flamboyant imitation of him. "You're getting a little too '80s for me. You're getting a little 'Wham!' " says Ray of da Hood, wiggling and jiggling and winning applause from me and Dan. So the guys break into a cappella song, at which point Raymond rolls his eyes and cuts them off. "Hel-looo?" he says, waving an arm. "SOMEone has to say, 'THAT sucks!' " He's as outstanding as TyJuan, who's got major sauce but doesn't really drench people in it like Ray does. They're a complementary duo. Ikaika sings a couple lines with his group, and Mini-Lou stops it to tell Ikaika he's acting too showy. "Don't let the showmanship get in the way," Mini-Lou says into a microphone. Never mind that Ikaika's three feet away and there's no music playing. "He doesn't move once in this episode," observes Dan. "He just sits there and... sprawls." And it's true. He must've learned it from Lou. Ikaika's voice-over reaffirms his nerves about dancing and his feeling that he's a singer, but not a born performer. As the guys try to dance, the crew films facing the mirror so that Raymond's shirt now reads "TRA ON RAEF." Smart. I'm watching you, Bunim-Murray. Don't mess with me. They don't call me Heathen for nothing. TyJuan stops them and gently says, "You make step-touch look like... the tap combination from Hell, OK?" I cheer.
Malia and Ikaika sit on his bed, talking about his frustrations. We learn she's a dance major at University of Hawaii, so she's gifted, but it doesn't come as easily to him. "You don't have to be gifted to be a good dancer," she says, further proving that boy bands are more a manufactured product than a confluence of innate talent. She points out that he didn't smile once during the dance routine. Ikaika dreads "Raymond again, with his stupid syncopated moves." Malia jokes that she'll try subliminal speech -- "I'll talk to you in your sleep, while you're sleeping" -- as a way of convincing Ikaika he's a good dancer. He just laughs and laughs, and she laughs, and then there's so much more laughter -- it's a tsunami of merriment.
Later, Herizon arrives and we meet all four -- Jen (Erik's got her), Clare (Jacob), Heather (Paul) and Brandi (up for grabs, in more ways than three). Mike tells us Paul needs to "be careful, be real careful, be cautious." Jen storms into Paul's room to meet Carrah and generally acts strange and annoying and pseudo-sassy. Even the bandanna on her head can't make her a female TyJuan, so she should stop trying. She points to Paul and goes, "That's Paul!" to no one in particular, since everyone present knows exactly who it is. Jen then leaves, and Carrah looks at Paul and starts snickering, partly at Jen and probably partly at Paul's horrible hat-head. Trevor follows suit. Heather is the only one who doesn't make an effort to go meet Carrah, which should set off alarm bells in Carrah's brain and leads me to believe she really doesn't have one. "I'm not sure what the relationship is between Heather and Paul, but I know Paul is not gonna be too keen on Carrah meeting Heather," Erik-Michael's lips tell us. Later, as the Ominous Bongo plays, naked Mike is on the red Bat Phone talking to Heather. The producers slip him a $20 for providing plot exposition. He gets Heather to admit she's avoiding meeting Carrah because it's too awkward. "I was scared to go over... but didn't want anyone to think that." Well your cover was great. Really. That part where you looked sick to your stomach and had your head in your hands was particularly effective.
Another Flintstones movie will assault theaters. Oh goody, because the first one was such high-quality viewing.
Herizon is rehearsing. It looks like they're at Trans Con studios but the Bunim-Murray people don't want us to know that this whole thing was probably a set-up, so we get no information. The guys go inside and we see some really strange looking girls dancing to techno, but it's more like stretching than dancing and there's no singing involved at all. Great rehearsal. Heather is oddly uncute, and is Carrah's polar opposite on almost every physical front. That wouldn't merit attention if it was anyone but Paul -- with vanity like his, you'd expect him to cheat on a blond, blue-eyed babe like Carrah only with someone that has a supermodel pedigree. Paul says he's noticed he's toned down the flirting in front of Carrah, and says, "I don't think I'm trying to hide it... it's out of respect." So he limits contact with Heather to a fake swipe at her nose and a shoulder-touch. Carrah and Heather shake hands, and Carrah says she heard Herizon is really talented. No word on who told her that. In the confessional, Paul says, "I don't see myself as too dishonest, or... a big cheat. I don't see that." Well that's because you're cross-eyed, Paul. In the studio, Paul's bumbling his way through some kind of explanation to Carrah -- it sounds like he's implying Heather has a crush on him that he's ignoring.
On a nifty triple-split-screen, we see Ikaika dancing, and the group dancing (they're squished, so they look like a Pee-Wee league), and Carrah and Malia watching in wonder -- probably, wondering why on earth grown guys would want to do this in public. Ikaika's tons better, though, and Mike takes a confessional trip to tell us that Ikaika's dancing did a complete one-eighty. "It's because he got his mojo back," my friend Dan says, and Ikaika proves it by kissing Malia. The cast wiggle their asses in some cross between The Twist and The Swim, and we are frightened.
It's time for Leftover Footage from Last Episode, saved for this one so that Lou could make his token appearance on television. Jabba is squished into his office chair, chatting one-on-one with Paul about his progress and making strange "geeeeeech," breathing noises. He says Paul's a great singer, but not pushing himself hard enough to be really excellent. Paul grins. Lou wants to know how long Paul and Carrah have been dating, to which Paul says, "Um, we're on-and-off. Ish." From the "No shit, Sherlock!" department, Paul says he isn't remotely close to a marriage or fiancee relationship and that he and Carrah will have a serious talk if he makes the final five. Lou asks if career is his top priority, and Paul says yes, which would be true if he wanted to be a career gigolo.
In footage shot at Mississippi College, Carrah talks about realizing she's the girl being left back home and understands what that could mean. She's sad, she's unsure what will happen. After what seemed like the lamest visit ever, Carrah is leaving. She and Paul hug goodbye and she boards the plane. Morose, Paul stares at the plane as it sits at the gate, his voice-over telling us he loves her. "I want to pursue a dream, and I don't want her to have to hurt just because I'm focusing on Me." Well, you don't have to hurt her, you ghoulish prick. It's not like there's a higher power guiding you by the crotch to bigger and better things.
At the Rundown Ghetto Shed, which I hope is separate from the O-Town house, Ikaika and Malia sit and cuddle on a railing. Comfy. "I don't care who the camera guy is," he says. Um, OK. He tells Malia that he'd leave O-Town in a second if she asked him to, and she just smiles and says nothing, too embarrassed to ask him to leave O-Town in front of this camera guy, who is obviously not her preferred person for filming emotional outpourings. "I don't wanna lose you, and I know you don't wanna lose me. Yeah? Yeah," Ikaika says. Hey, relax with the obsession a little bit, please. At the Bat Phone at 3:12 AM, Ikaika's chatting with his mother about the whole scenario. He's frustrated because Malia won't get deep and meaningful in front of the cameras, and he didn't think it would come down to choosing between her and the band. "You have to do what's right for Ikaika," says his mother. In the confessional, he admits he's too deeply involved now and he actually wants to make the final cut. "You're a man, right?" asks his mother. I can't believe she had to double-check. "You gotta do what you gotta do." He groans. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean crap if I have to lose my girlfriend," he whines. But if anyone handed him an ultimatum, Ikaika says he'd pick Malia, the love of his life. The camera shows her sleeping, and I hope snoring like a buzzsaw.
week, there is yet another reference to career vs. ladies. And Jen uses a "racial term," prompting a spat with Erik-Michael. His lips will be on overdrive.