Someone at ABC finally figured out that "previously" segments aren't necessary when you've just spent the last half-hour airing that episode. Instead, we're treated to a sampling of what's to come: Southwest Middle School. The group's first performance will be to a bunch of screaming, wailing pubescent girls who think any guy with hair on his legs is an erotic fantasy. "Being part of a group is something we've all dreamed about," Jacob lies. "But at the same time, I'm putting my dreams and everything I've ever wanted in life in the hands of four other people." Well, more fool you, then.
The credits are really tiresome without the other three guys. I wish they'd put TyJuan and Raymond in there -- but just the parts where they whoop a little boy-band booty.
In forty-seven hours, O-Town performs live for the first time. The air is thick with anticipation as the whole world wonders, "How bad can one band really be?" TyJuan seems to be feeling that strain. The prospect of performances scares him, he tells the guys, because they're nowhere near as ready as they ought to be. Jacob looks around the room and pays TyJuan no heed. "I wonder how long before I can go solo," he thinks. Raymond looks disapprovingly at the five guys. Again. Perhaps the wind changed a couple episodes ago and his face is frozen that way. "The pressure is definitely more now," Trevor says. "Everyone is gonna expect so much, it's gonna be so tough." By now, I think Trans Con's learned to lower its expectations. All anyone can hope for at this point is basic competence, but that's a three-syllable word, so it's out of O-Town's reach on several levels.
Mini-Lou makes a triumphant return to the studio. Ashley's crooning the opening lines to "Baby, I Would," and he's not projecting terribly far, so Jabba Jr. opts for massage therapy. "Stop being careful," Mini-Lou advises, rubbing Ashley's shoulder. Aw. "I can see it in your eyes -- what are you scared of?" Mini-Lou asks. "You," Ashley fires back, faster than I could say it. "I doubt that," Mini-Lou giggles as his hand creeps over to Ashley's neck. Just keep stroking the boys, M-L, and you'll see what "scared" looks like. You'll also see what "lawsuit" looks like. Li'l Jabba asks Ashley to contemplate the sentiment he's expressing in song, and then to imbue it with emotion. The line is, "Would I give up all I have to see you smile?" and we see a quaint black-and-white shot of Ashley and Shelli sitting on a porch swing. Mini-Lou points out what a big idea the lyric presents. "That is kinda big," Ashley whispers. He's also staring at Mini-Lou's tummy. Coincidence? Jacob doesn't care. He'd rather talk about what Ashley does wrong. "When he sings he closes his eyes and sounds too soft, and when he's dancing, he forgets the dance," Jacob says as we're treated to visuals of poor Ash looking puzzled.
TyJuan watches the guys perform and shakes his head, ashamed. At one point, TyJuan cradles his head in his hands and mourns the end of his career. For revenge, he waves his hand and orders the band into a set of push-ups. It's amazing that there's no learning curve here. What with the amount of punishment push-ups they're forced to do, you'd think the guys would have developed some skill, or at least endurance. But as it is, Jack Palance could probably shame them. As they huff and puff and blow Trans Con down, the screen splits and TyJuan points out that this takes more hard work because they're skipping so many steps. Apparently, the biggest in the pile of problems is synchronicity. TyJuan tells them he should be able to take pictures at any stage of the dance, and have those images show five guys in exactly the same position. "None of us have been in a group before," Jacob reminds us. "We can't be a centimeter off." As he talks about how they're too much a fledgling group to be in sync (hee!), we're treated to photographic proof. The camera shows several stills from rehearsal, and each shot is a jumble of bodies, flailing arms and mistimed turns. It's like if the Rockettes performed after chugging a six-pack and smoking the magic herb.
Clutching the long, hard microphone stand and feeling a sudden surge of manliness, Jacob rails on the other four guys for not snapping and clapping on the appointed beats. For this reason, Mini-Lou puckers up and pecks Jacob's smug behind. "Jacob has a better perspective on the energy level and focus that's required," Li'l Jabba says in a confessional. A cameraman spits this back to TyJuan in the form of a question, and so TyJuan gamely repeats, "I think Jacob does have a better perspective on what they need to do, and that they're not doing it properly at the present time." You know, I wish someone would tell me which guy, of the five, has the best perspective. Holy blow job, Batman. I really feel confident that nothing inside Jacob's pants is worth all that effort to get down them. And he doesn't need any ego-boosting anyway: "If I had to do the show, no more rehearsals and it was just myself, I think I'd be ready," Jacob boasts uselessly. That's impressive, since it takes so much skill to synchronize a party of one. O-Town gathers around TyJuan, who's sitting on an amp and trying to think of a tactful way to tell the guys they're going to make asses of themselves. "The brutal truth is, you're not going to be at the level you should be when you're on that stage," TyJuan says. Yeah, that covers it. He reminds them there are no edits or do-overs in a live show, so Ikaika stares at the floor and Trevor looks sad and scared. Erik pouts. Jacob looks elsewhere, since TyJuan's obviously not lecturing anyone as skilled as he. Ashley confides to the camera that the constant haranguing from TyJuan, Jay, Ray and Mini-Lou turns on some very productive pressure. But at times, Ash admits, it's overwhelming because the group never feels good enough -- quite possibly because it's nowhere near good enough, but of course, I'm not one to editorialize.
Suddenly, it's one full day before the show. Ikaika decides it's time for some wacky back-seat a cappella action, and the Man Van swears a blue streak because it'd like to see some real goddamn action like in that Titanic movie. The band counts off and breaks into song. This informal survey proves that four out of five guys choose "All For Love" when they're singing in the car. The fifth guy is a bitchy little priss. "Jacob's too cool to practice with us," Trevor teases. The editors gloss over Jacob's crabby, tight-lipped glares, and instead show him telling the others about his pitch pipe. Somewhere, Thania shudders. "Pitch pipes are weak, dude, you just have to walk in and do it," Ikaika chides. Jacob spits back that if they do that and hit flat notes, "the whole army's thrown off" -- what, has he been swapping military metaphors with Haku? -- "and we'll suck on national television." Too late, nai¨ve fools. Too late.
In the studio, everyone's practicing again. Jacob points out that he'll dissect his own performance as brutally as he will everyone else's, but that the other four guys approach things differently and he has to remember that. "He's not interested in getting it close, he's interested in getting it done and getting it right," Mini-Lou says of Jacob. Oh, Mini-Lou, stop singing praises and start teaching the singers, you pathetic little chunk of cel-Lou-lite. Jacob says, "We all agree we're lucky to be here, but talk is cheap. We haven't been acting like we're that lucky in rehearsals." It seems Bryan Chan's parting shot about humility was a bullseye.
Back at home with the O-Tang Clan, Ranger Marc is stretched out on the couch watching Jacob heave himself onto his pedestal. It looks like a late-night snark-fest, as the room's dim -- and, in Jacob's eyes, so are his bandmates. "We've been working on this dance for like five weeks," he complains. "Give me a break." The Ranger reminds Jacob that by signing the contract, he's chosen to spend the rest of his life with the other four band members. "You see them screwing up. I see five people flung together with all this handed to them," Marc says. "They're just petrified." Amid shots of a pouting Jacob, we hear more counseling from Marc, who's actually making some sense. He tells Jacob to try to understand each guy's personality a bit better instead of being so hard on the group all the time. Marc then encourages Jacob to step up and be the leader, as if Jacob needed any prompting. In the kitchen, probably earlier that night, Trevor and Erik are chatting about their progress. "Not to put us down, but we won't be at 100%," Trevor speculates. He seems content with that, oddly. The two agree that the band will sing adequately and dance more or less accurately, but won't have a particularly polished image. "We won't be as well [sic] as we're gonna get," Erik says. In confessional, his lips and his freshly waxed eyebrows tell us that he knows the group has enough heart to take things to the level. "I solely believe in these guys and myself," Erik concludes. I'd like to take this time to pay final respects to Erik's grade-school English teachers, who committed group suicide after this segment ended.
Trevor is freaking out in bed. Joke amongst yourselves. I'll give you a choice of topics: sexual inadequacy, that not-so-fresh feeling, Lou, or all-of-the-above. "Tomorrow is our big day, our first performance," Ashley says, setting his alarm clock. "We're finally going to be onstage."
Since Deep Impact and Armageddon didn't slam us over our heads with the whole fiery-death-from-the-heavens prospect, ABC decided to make "The Sky is on Fire." Starring Josie Bissett as Chicken Little.
Oh boy! Six hours to go! Is that excitement I'm feeling? No, false alarm, it's just the hives I get when this show airs. The clock reads 9:01 AM, and Jacob's infuriated. He and Ashley duck into Ikaika's room to hurry him along because they're trying to grab breakfast before hitting the studio. "I woke everyone up at...8:20, and said to be ready by nine," Jacob seethes. "Ikaika says, 'Yeah, no problem,' and he's in the shower at 9:03." A bunch of people start yelling for Ashley, who's standing in front of the mirror gelling his hair into impossible spikes. He waltzes out into the kitchen wearing a boater's hat over his cranial toothpicks. Erik and Marc both call him out on it. "You just did your hair, why are you wearing a hat?" they ask in unison. Okay, so Ashley's not the fastest thoroughbred in the stable, but...well, there is no "but." Jacob brats that he demanded everyone be out and ready at nine o'clock so they could warm up, to which Ashley replies that he went over "Baby, I Would" in the shower once. I assume it was terrible, or the cameraman would've treated us to some Ashley Angel eye-candy. As though he's talking to children, Jacob points out they have to warm up "to-geth-errrr." Frustrated, he throws up his hands. "Is this not important today?" he snaps. "Yeah, it's not an important day, maybe I should go back to sleep." Erik kind of chuckles at this, but with less mockery than I'd like. Of course, he has no room to poke fun, since he's clad in a puffy, shiny lime-green jacket that is, from Orlando, stopping traffic on the West Coast. Ranger Marc suggests that they pull it together and stop harassing each other, because there's two choreographers and a vocal coach who'd like to take care of the verbal assaults.
Southwest Middle School. Trevor's eyes are gleaming, for once not with tears. "This is our first performance, like, ever, as the five," he grins. "To be in front of a bunch of kids you know are your eventual fans...it's awesome." Trev shares that Southwest M.S. isn't just an innocent victim -- it's the school where Lou debuted Backstreet Boys years ago. Has Lou no mercy? I think that poor gymnasium has suffered enough. "This whole performance means the world to me," Erik enthuses, by which I mean he leans forward a bit in the confessional and raises his eyebrows a fraction. "This is the first public performance with my group." Um, I think Jacob would contest your possessive-noun selection there, Erik.
In the gymnasium, TyJuan sets up the microphones and gives the boys last-minute tips about how to compensate if they miss a step. "Any time you have an audience, there's a natural excitement in the air," Ashley says in voice-over. "When you do it in front of a mirror four-hundred times, you lose that." Kids file in, a hustle-and-bustle of twelve-year-old feet that sounds to me like a stampede, but which Lou hears as a symphony of cash-registers ringing up merchandise sales. Trevor repeats that they're supposed to run right in and avoid immediate eye contact. "Coming from TyJuan's opinion, there's no room for mistakes," Ashley says. But coming from the band's opinion, there's an entire guest bedroom being prepped just for Mr. Error, his wife and their four kids. Outside, blissfully unaware of the brainwashing that's about to occur, a gaggle of young girls squeal and bounce in anticipation. Mini-Lou coaches the guys one last time and insists they focus on the breathing. "If you can't get hold of the breathing, all the work you've done up to this point is for no reason," Mini-Lou states dramatically. Erik talks about his emotions overflowing because this, the performing part, is why they're all here. Nicky, a deejay from a local radio station, heads out to warm up the gymnasium crowd. I think she has them doing laps. "Don't let the emotional part of this override the fact that you have a job to do," Li'l Jabba warns his students. "Do a good job and make sure you get to keep it." Everyone gathers in a circle to join hands. Erik and his lips feel that this is the time to shine and get the crowd jumping. Someone spews the hackneyed phrase, "keepin' it real," and Ikaika invokes a higher power by doing the sign of the cross. I suppose he didn't hear the news today that the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost caught the last train for the coast. Ashley catalogs all the people they'll be representing out there on stage -- Mike, Bryan, Paul and the final twenty-five. We see black and white clips of those people as they're mentioned. It's got that warm-and-fuzzy eulogy feel to it. "We're the final five, this is the group, these are our songs," Ash says. "We have to make it happen." In the green room -- here, the storage locker where gym teachers stash basketballs and hockey sticks and teenage heartthrobs -- Ranger Marc tries to pump up the guys one last time. He shouts as though it's halftime at a football game. "What, are you gonna give me shoulder pads now? Am I gonna go tackle somebody?" Ikaika jokes in confessional. His look of disdain amuses me. You know he wants to ask Ranger Marc what the fuck drugs he's taking, but R.M could snap Ikaika like a twig so the tenor refrains. Nicky the Deejay asks for a few loud cheers, and O-Town runs out onto the floor. "Right away I was just like, 'I love this,'" Ashley shares. "It's a rush...it's a like a healthy drug."
The crowd of hormonal girls claps, points and screams way too much for it to be genuine. A few hold up very creative orange signs reading, "O-Town boys." That sums it all up rather neatly. Shrill screaming continues, and the neighborhood dogs come running when the din gets a decibel too high. "Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that" people would cheer without knowing a thing about him, Ikaika says. A familiar intro plays, and the band swings into "All For Love." Ashley's got the first solo, and it's a little weak and soft. Trevor goes solo , and he's as unremarkable as you'd expect, flat but not egregiously off-key. Girls scream. The camera zooms up to a girl whose face is scrunched because her mouth's so wide open. Yup, she's had her tonsils out. Erik botches his part a bit, as the others all do, but they get back on track and acquit themselves a tiny bit better than usual. One kid looks like she's crying from the thrill of it all, but it's also possible she's been enduring painful electrical shocks to get her bored behind off the bleachers. "The bands change, but the girlies stay the same age," Lou thinks. A brunette in a skin-tight "Boys' Life" t-shirt mouths, "You're so FINE!" at O-Town. But she's near the back row, so I'll forgive her. Lou offers her ten bucks for the shirt. Jacob tries to work the crowd by pointing at them, eliciting another yell from Boys' Life. The dancing is very contained and cautious, as though they're afraid of flamboyantly committing to each move in case one of the others is a step out of sync. On the whole, it's an improvement, but it's still pathetic compared to C-Note -- and it's at the bottom of the boy-band barrel, or it was until now. At the end, the guys all freestyle. Ashley grabs his crotch and wiggles backward, forgetting that the crowd of infant girls is too young to understand the goodies contained therein. "What's up, Southwest Middle School?" Jacob shouts. "Make some noise!" A ruckus ensues, and Lou heaves a sigh of relief that little girls -- and they look like fifth-graders, folks -- are so damn easy. To us, Jacob recalls that the crowd screamed so loud, the singers couldn't even hear themselves so the harmonies were off. Sure, that's it. Blame it on the delirious audience.
Via some true-story miniseries, Crystal Bernard is making her triumphant return to television. Did anyone even notice Crystal Bernard had disappeared? I didn't think so.
Ikaika is an idiot. "This is our very first performance," he confesses to the crowd. "We're happy you're giving us the opportunity to perform for your school today." Trevor decides the best strategy is to flirt with the audience, which consists entirely of jailbait. Just the way Lou likes it. "For those of you girls who don't have guys, there's five eligible bachelors up here," Trevor coos. Ikaika glares at him and vows to spend another hundred dollars telling Malia the rumors of his availability aren't true. Trevor introduces "Baby, I Would." Young girls swoon again. A toddler looks up from her puréed carrots long enough to gurgle and wave an arm. I've yet to see a guy in the audience. Sitting in a row, O-Town's singers snap their fingers, then smack their palms on their thighs. They shake their heads and move the mic stands so as to look dramatic, and the crowd goes wild. I wish I were joking. Jacob sings first, and he not only looks like Justin Timberlake, but his voice has that same very nasal quality to it. Erik chips in to harmonize, horribly misses his first notes and then recovers to salvage the moment and hold an accurate chord with Jacob. Girls pretend to love them. One blonde girl is turning purple. She's been screaming since before they ran out from backstage, and so have I, but for different reasons. Watching in the crowd, Lou looks skeptical and stone-faced. He nods sometimes, unless his cellurific neck makes his head bob against his will. As they sing, the guys walk around and focus on particular girls in the crowd. Ashley kneels in front of a few, who feign interest and fan themselves off with their hands. One girl shouts so loud, the rubber bands in her braces pop out and thwack Ashley's hair, landing perfectly around one of his spikes. Trevor seems to have great stage presence. His face lights up and for once, his tear ducts aren't clogged. The song finishes with Ashley's solo and -- you guessed it -- people cheer, and Lou is likely the poorer for it.
It's time for some completely honest reviews that aren't in any way influenced by kids' desire to get on national television. One tubby guy offers, "It was cool, but I think the girls liked it better." Liar. As a male, he probably wasn't even allowed into the gym. Groups of girls chime in , debating the age-old question, "Number One, or Number Two?" And even though they're talking about which O-Town song they preferred, the scatological double-meanings still apply. "The dancing was cool," snorts one intense-looking girl with a vaguely insane friend bouncing behind her. Meanwhile, Ashley hugs Jay, who congratulates the guys on a decent show. "They LOVED you!" Jay exclaims, pointing at an elated Trevor. "I liked Ikaika the best," one girl tells the camera. "He touched my hand." O-Town's members joke about wanting to do it all over again because it's so much fun to play a gymnasium. The adrenalin has addled the brain they share. "They were great," a little boy says, overacting. I hope his parents get a good look at him, because he's about to get beaten to a bloody pulp by his classmates. "They were hot hot hot," another girl reads from a TelePrompTer with all the enthusiasm of, say, Erik-Michael. Inside, Lou hugs his guinea pigs. "I didn't know if anyone would boo," confesses Ashley, his arm around Ikaika. "We ran out there and everyone was screaming and standing up, I was like, 'I am Superman.' It was a rush." Hyper Girl and her sidekick, Insanity's Child, wiggle in front of the camera and mainline Jolt Cola. "It's hanotathiabtthbys," blurts I.C. I think she means that it's hard not to fantasize about the boys, but she's too hopped up on caffeine gum and hairspray to worry about enunciation. Hyper Girl adds, "Thguywhhadnoslvson, yah yah," which, roughly translated, means she's panting over the sleeveless Trevor's muscular physique. They make Beavis and Butthead giggling noises and breathe heavily, then run to a local gas station for a Sweet Tarts fix and the latest issue of CosmoGIRL!
In the faux green room, Jacob smiles and sighs, "We'll never do that again, ever. We'll never have another first performance." Ashley and Trevor pull the other three into a hug, and they all agree it was a good job. Ikaika notes that everyone's too fixated on having done the impossible. "It wasn't impossible," he says in the confessional. "Anything's possible if you focus and put your mind to it." Swept away by rosy-cheeked exhilaration, Ashley gushes, "I'm so proud to be in this group with you guys." As they break away, Trevor pinches Erik's cheek and makes a crack about his youthful baby face. Erik looks pissed. Ashley's shirt says "QUIET" on the front. Too bad no one paid it heed. Marc pops in looking for the Man Van keys, smiles, and tells them the show was well done. "There are parts that you need to work on, but it's always going to be like that," he says. Nice. Erik savors the feeling of fan adulation, saying that's the reason they're here -- not for Lou, TyJuan or Raymond, but to make something of themselves. Erik's got king-of-the-world syndrome. I think Jacob infected him. Standing outside signing autographs, the boys look amused at the teenage fan club that's forming around them. "I come from Hawaii, where people are pretty much laid back," Ikaika shares. "Something like that would never happen in Hawaii." So Hawaiians don't love music, cheer for bands or ask for autographs? Are they laid-back, or comatose? Trevor signs an autograph for a young boy, probably scrawling his name on the twenty-dollar bill Lou gave the kid in exchange for acting interested. "It's probably the greatest stage fun we've had," Trevor says in the confessional. Ikaika signs paper for a bunch of girls, and grins at them. Ashley makes conversation with his rabid fans, confessing that, backstage, they were nervous and wondering if anyone would boo. So far, though, he's the only one to own up to that fear. "This is my full-time job, to be onstage and bringing people joy with music," Ashley says. "That made it all totally worth it."
Jay decides it's time to go, so he herds the guys into Lou's stretch limousine. A mad, mad throng of six people scream and shout their goodbyes. "You rule! You're better than Backstreet Boys!" shouts the same doomed young boy from earlier in the show. He's fucking toast, the poor little tyke. Lou actually looks at the kid and shakes his head. He knows. Erik giggles in the limo and calls attention to Lou, who's sitting there looking hip and saying, "Word." I don't really get it, and I'm glad it's brief. "It was a good first show," Jacob says in the confessional. "I know we'll have many laughs about it when we look back at the tape.
Hark! The tape. The guys are watching themselves and having a good hard guffaw. They congratulate each other on hitting notes, and clench fists in pride. "I thought the dancing was good!" Jacob cheers. "But those harmonies...I blew that my first time singing." Everyone laughs, and I actually appreciate his modesty. Ikaika chips in that he didn't feel connected to the real reason for being in O-Town until he got onstage in front of the fans. "People are screaming and they don't even know me!" Ikaika marvels. Maybe they're screaming because they don't know him. Jay enjoys their celebration; then, like the bitter and weedy little snipe he is, ruins the fun by telling them it'll be wildly different when they see the video through the staff's eyes. "I saw some minor detail mistakes," Ikaika says mildly, and Jay acts surprised that he didn't notice anything more lethal. Jacob defends them by pointing out that it's their first time, after just two weeks as five. "Visually, the dancing was tight compared to what we've been putting out in that rehearsal room," Erik says. Bryan Chan calls the studio. "I thought I warned you not to put out in the rehearsal room!" he scolds Erik. TyJuan, standing outside the studio door, tells the camera he's pretty certain the guys will confuse a cheering crowd with a good, technically polished show. "That high will be killed once the professionals come in and tell them what's wrong with the show," TyJuan grins. He pretends it's a hassle, but I think he digs taking overconfident, under-talented nitwits down a few pegs.
Back at their O-bode, Jacob's lying shirtless in bed. Trevor's under the covers, with an actual flesh-and-blood female -- so, not the inflatable variety -- sitting to him. It's Trev's friend Amy, who's appeared out of nowhere. Hi, nice to meet you, you're not scandalous, get out. "That was the worst singing I've heard in my life from myself," Jacob laughs. "But as a whole I was pleased, and that's a hard thing to say." Trevor comments that the performance was the first time he felt 100% part of a band. "From twenty-five to eight living in the house, to the first performance as the five in costume with an audience," Jacob says, tracing their progress. "But the performance that really matters is Friday." We see five stools on a dim stage, looking out in to a pitch-black crowd with just a few stage lights reflecting eerily. This performance, Jacob says, is in front of a bunch of record executives who'll be tougher judges than middle-school girls. In theory.