Stabbing futilely at suspense, the last episode was wasted prolonging the question of whether Dan Miller, a nineteen-year-old Cleveland resident, would make the O-Town cut. The official MTV site for O-Town proclaims, "Dan is in the band! Dan is in the band! Now that it's out in the open..." which is a pathetic fallacy because anyone who cared already knew it was Miller Time. Evidently, even Bunim-Murray agrees that nothing happened last time on Making the Band -- the producers nix any "previously" clips and treat us to a montage of our forthcoming shared hell. Cruel proof that a half-hour show is pointless; if I summarize it here, it makes the recap a suicidal effort. Nice try, B/M, but no dice.
The credits now have shots of Dan cuddling with girlfriend Cindy. Unfortunately, he's also shown breakdancing in full view of the North American public, so Cindy might not be his girlfriend much longer.
In the rehearsal studio, Trevor sits down at a drum set and gingerly picks up sticks. He taps away. Dan, standing alone in front of the room's mirror, engages in a strange, jerky twirling dance. He's the Sugar Plum Fairy after she noshed on six glue sticks and huffed hairspray. "Dan is very refreshing to this group," Jacob says in voice-over. "He's someone who works very hard and wants to get better at everything." As if to illustrate the point, we see Mini-Lou calming Dan down as he sits on the "Baby, I Would" stool and desperately tries to get better at holding a microphone stand. When he thinks no one's looking, Dan gnaws on the metal stand and tries to sharpen an incisor. "He doesn't have an ego like Erik, which is something I despise," Jacob brats. He's tired of Erik complaining about illness but not doing anything to cure it. Erik coughs loudly all over the place, never lifting a hand to cover his mouth because he'd rather get germs on his bandmates than his hand. Mini-Lou asks why he's getting worse, not better. "It's been a rough morning," Erik says. "And I haven't taken any medicine, either." Mini-Lou snaps, "That helps." Erik is such an asshole. He's bound to infect the band, and he doesn't care. Maybe he's waiting for that lucrative Benadryl endorsement deal to come through, because you know, his body's a temple, and nothing goes in unless he's been paid insane dollars to ingest it.
Dan revs the Man Van. Jacob and Ashley must be the world's worst drivers, because they're the only two that never drive this thing. I guess it goes back to the old adage, "Wanton hands don't steer a Man Van." Trevor is pointing out that he wants to hang out with the entire band that night, doing something other than singing. Erik asks Jacob whether he wants to go out and paint the town lame. Jacob refuses. "I gotta finish writing these songs," Jacob explains. "I'm getting sick and I don't like clubs." Trevor replies, "It's not a club, it's a bar. There's a difference." Erik offers that it's just a casual affair, where they would simply sit and talk and rediscover the joys of not being at Trans Con. Jacob would rather rediscover the joys of being The Leader. "There is no leader," he tells us as O-Town returns to the O-Zone. "There's just a lot of individuals that make up an idea, then split apart and achieve it different ways." Erik and Trevor leave the O-Zone lair and hop back into the Man Van. Jacob stands by the fireplace, sullenly staring after them. There's a Latin phrase etched into the fireplace -- "FORSAN ET [Jacob's hair] OLIM." Without the missing word, it means little - the closest I can guess is, "Tenors touch the man who signed them." Oh, Lou, you mischievous scamp. Erik revs the engine and leaves.
Jacob and Ashley sit by the fireplace with recording equipment. Ash puts on enormous headphones and strums a guitar while Jacob snaps his fingers, as the bead bracelets on his arm quiver and clink. It appears Jacob is instructing Ashley, teaching him the song. "Nothing says that O-Town has to do what everybody else is doing," Jacob insists. "Boy band music is fun -- it sells, it makes money, that's great -- but I want our music to speak for ourselves and that can't happen unless we write it." The song they're strumming is acoustic, and -- gulp -- it's kind of pretty, although not as pretty as Ashley. The tune is called "Say, Say," and it goes more or less like this:
Your special word
So much meaning I am feeling
You're completing my world
But I've tried to say it so long
The words will come
When you love someone
It's just too hard to say
[chorus] How do I say, say, say this to you.
I liked "Say, Say" better back when it was called "More than Words" and I could salivate over the long-haired rebellious-looking guys who crooned it. Getting a little too MTV on us here, the producers make a faux-music video, putting the "Say, Say" caption at the bottom with credits to Ashley and Jacob. The scenes are dusted in a sepia-tone, but they're really just run-of-the-mill shots of Ashley and Jacob standing at the microphone and strumming the guitar and toying with expensive mixing equipment that they shouldn't be allowed to pollute with their grubby hands. It's an embarrassing sequence, with Jacob's off-key nasality clashing with Ashley's quiet, breathy, but on-target voice. And sepia's really not their best color. Jacob explains that he thinks it's a talented band, and that in general everyone has the same idea about how good they must be, but Erik's a problem. "Erik hasn't been showing how much he wants it," Jacob complains. "And I don't cut myself slack." A little incongruous there, Jacob. Still, we get it: Erik's not following the example you've set since age five. Don't remind us again.
At midnight, Jacob decides to call Jay, who rightfully complains that it's a tad late. They make pointless small talk about Ashley playing the guitar in the background. Then Jacob tattles that Erik and Trevor went out on the town. Lightning strikes the holy Underwood Compound, for doesn't The Bible claim God will smite the world's ruthless tattletales? I think it's written almost verbatim in Leviticus -- right to "Thou shalt not snivel" and "Blessed are the boy-band freaks, for they shall inherit Lou's girth." Jay is incredulous that the "two sick ones" went out, even though we've not heard Trevor complain of illness. Jacob snorts with laughter as Jay says, "Oh, perfect."
Cut to an Orlando club. There are green and red lights, hard-pulsing bass beats and hordes of ho-bags sniffing Erik's jock. Trevor's wrong -- it's neither a bar nor a club, but a meat market. Erik is sizing up the breasts and pork loin. "I'm not a big person on going out all the time," Erik says, semi-nonsensically. "But it seems like I always do it at the wrong times." Erik gyrates. A blonde nuzzles close to him. Trevor, standing in a corner and getting zero play, is relegated to giving sensual tongue to an ice-cube. The screen splits, and as Erik grinds on the same girl, Jacob is bitching to Jay. "I told Erik that the Germany song needs to be done now, like, ASAP, dude," Jacob says. He reports Erik promised to finish it before going out, but he blatantly lied. Jacob's nose turns brown. Erik now gets down low with his ho, whose face is either unattractive or bears the natural wear-and-tear of being repeatedly bonked by Erik's mouth during the dirty dancing. Afterward, Erik passes along his telephone number. It's 328-5477, or EAT-LIPS.
Ashley abruptly weighs in on the Erik situation. "He shouldn't have gone out at all," Ashley insists. If Erik doesn't take care of himself, Ashley posits, then he'll never be cured of his virus and the recording trip to Germany will be a wash. "We all recognize Erik's being very irresponsible with himself," Jacob says. We see blue-tinted shots, blurred slightly, of Erik sitting and shifting and moving close to the camera. It's the least compelling, most worthless footage since...oh, the entire episode, I guess. "Being with us day in and day out, he'll have to change eventually," guesses Jacob.
Erik lies immobile on his bed. The doorbell rings loudly and repeatedly, searing my ears. Trevor bangs hard on the door and screams Erik's name over and over. I temporarily re-christen him "Jenny." Surly and rude, Erik shuffles to the door and unlocks it, not bothering to go the extra inch and open the thing. As Erik moseys miserably back to his room, the guys pour in through the door and commence a slap-a-thon, beating the ill-chosen sentences out of him. Actually, Trevor just scampers after him into the bedroom and says, "Get up, we've gotta practice! Lou's gonna be here and we have to sing a cappella." Erik flatly refuses, claiming he's worked all day and needs some sleep. Jacob is seething. "You've worked less than us," he lectures. "Don't complain about working all day." Erik still will not budge from bed, and actually says he won't practice at all if they don't let him sleep. "Dude, grow up," Jacob spits. He mocks Erik's constant insistence that he's as much a professional as anyone else. Jacob then frets that he's yet to divine a way to fix the Erik problem. "Don't ever call yourself a professional again if you can't get out of bed to practice," Jacob fumes, storming into the kitchen. As he walks, Jacob passes two overflowing, ceiling-high bookshelves that I guarantee have never been touched. They must be a prop for later, in case O-Town decides to throw the book at Lou and wants to add a literal touch. We can only hope. Jacob concludes aloud that he can't help anyone who doesn't want assistance. Like the martyr he isn't, Erik gets up and says, "It's fine, I got up, it's cool," like he deserves credit for defying inertia. "Yeah, but you bitched and complained about it and I had to cuss you out!" Jacob yells. Yes! Welcome back, Jacob. Erik argues that he's tired; Jacob says he's more tired. To resolve the issue, Erik and Jacob whip out their genitals for a comparative measurement. But without a microscope that's an impossible task, so they abandon the idea and instead start to thumb-wrestle. Doorbell. "Lou's here," barks Marc. Erik snarks that this is just great -- how can he sing now, having just woken up? He plops on the couch, attitude oozing from every pore, as Jacob insists Erik can sing anyway and kicks him in the crotch to ensure accuracy on the high notes. Actually, on first and second review, I thought Jacob said, "I don't think you can sing, anyway," but the closed-captioners claim otherwise. I still cling to the fantasy that Jacob somehow unloaded a decent dis.
Lou is airlifted into the living room and settles into a chair, employing his usual sprawl. "I want to hear one song perfectly," he demands. Dan Miller breaks into "Mary Had a Little Lamb," but Jacob smacks him and kicks everyone into "All For Love" instead. It's loud, which only enhances its atrocity instead of masking it. Lou listens. Lou sickens. "Stop!" he sputters. At his command, Trevor plays back what's been "sung." Ouch. "That wasn't solid at all!" Lou says. "I wanted it perfect for tonight. This is serious stuff." Lou warns that the guys will not get a record contract at their current level, and adds that record executives don't care much for lame excuses. "They have no pity, they take no prisoners," Lou intones. "You can dance great, you can be on Broadway. The bottom line here is, you have to sing fantastic." The entire band looks down or away in shame. Trevor stares at the coffee table in sadness; Dan stares at the coffee table in hunger, wondering how much of its wood he could chuck. "My cat smells like cat food," blurts Dan. Jacob crosses his arms and looks around, certain none of this applies to him because his mommy told him he sings real purdy-like. Ashley is floored. "It's the first time we've ever heard Lou say anything real constructive about our work," he says. Translation: Until now, Lou's dwelled on the worthless side of useless. And on the slender side of...nothing. Suddenly, Lou singles out Erik, and not in that wannabe-erotic Jenny McCarthy sort of way. "Erik, you're not cutting it," Lou states. "If you're gonna do it, if you're gonna pull it out, man, you can't be sick." Lou demands to know when Erik came home, and the tenor lies that he was in bed at 11:30 PM -- well, he may have been, but not in the O-Zone. We all heard Jacob call Jay at midnight and complain that Erik and Trevor were still out. Jay rolls his eyes.
Commercial break. At roughly this time the night MTB aired, I was in Milwaukee at a wedding rehearsal dinner. I was nursing a white wine in one hand and a vodka-tonic in the other. It was a slower-drinking evening than I usually require to stomach the show.
A waltz plays delicately in the background. The scene is Dusseldorf, Germany, and O-Town has flown there to record two songs. Ashley remarks that it's his first time on a plane with three rows of seats. Standing on a German street corner, Ashley looks around and we see shots of people walking, streets, and vehicles. "Everything was different," Ashley says. "It was like a little bit of America from one standpoint, but from another standpoint, totally different." Delighted with this observation, Ashley whips out a journal and jots it down underneath "Erik is not the same person as Jacob" and "Hamsters and scissors don't mix." Parked outside the airport, there's a throng of off-white Mercedes Benz cabs. Ashley marvels at what a ride in such taxis might cost. "I'd love to have that car back home," Erik says, "but not in cream." Silly Germans! The boys giggle, because Erik said "cream." After three tries, Marc successfully slams shut the hatch on O-Town's German Man Van -- the Mannwagen -- and takes to the Autobahn.
The Mannwagen speeds away to the hotel. "Check this out! It's a five-speed!" crows one of the guys. Yes, a five-speed car is a rarity, as American stick-shift cars only have...five speeds. On the streets of Deutschland, O-Stadt jokes about whether der Foerster Marc can handle driving Mannwagen. Ashley demands that everyone listen to the purring Mannwagen engine, for 'tis the sound of Germany -- and true enough, the engine sounds like accordion shanties and the clink of beer mugs sloshing with thick brown ale.
At the hotel, standing at the "Rezeption" desk, Ashley Parker von Angel feigns a terrible German accent and pretends to be a bellhop informing them of free breakfasts and amenities. Those are a few of his favorite things -- to crisp apple strudels, doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles. Erik shares that the first thing anyone saw at the hotel was a cluster of fans that waited to meet them. Ashley and Trevor dispense hugs and autographs to girls whose names they struggle to understand. "We'd met some girls from Germany visiting Orlando," Erik recalls. "We said it'd be cool if they lived close enough to come by and say hi." The desperate ladies, smitten with Hot Lips, claim they live eight hours away from Dusseldorf and drove that distance to see that sexy Oberlippen. Ever gracious, one of Erik's two faces brats to the camera, "I was like, 'What are you still doing here?'" The other face grins and hugs the two wenches.
The girls -- a petite brunette and a blonde -- knock on the hotel-room door and ask to be invited inside. "I'm thinking I should ask them to come up and chill out in the room for a while," Erik said. "You know, to give them some quality American sausage." Actually, his explanation has to do with the fact that, after their long wait for O-Stadt, he figures it's no skin off his penis to give back just fifteen mere minutes of his gloried, storied, whore-y time. When der Foerster Marc complains, Erik brushes him off as the King of Blowing Everything Out of Proportion. "Erik should be the first one going to bed," Dan complains. "He's been sick for how many months?" Trevor shuts the door, sequestering himself with Erik and Dan, and Mr. Miller quietly repeats himself for Erik's benefit. "I don't want them to stay there a long time," Erik insists. Dan reminds him they'll have fans all the time, but the group always needs to come first and learn to draw a firm line. He also notes that going to the throat specialist won't help if Erik continues his moratorium on radical healing methods like "medicine" and "sleep" and "fluids." (About which he ALSO lied to Lou, pretending he'd been taking medicine a bare day after telling Mini-Lou he went without it.) "I wanna listen to Dan, he's making valid points, but there's this nice part of me that can't turn any people away," Erik says. Then he winks and makes an illustrative gesture - the international symbol for "blow job." He insists fifteen minutes more of sleep won't make a whit of difference, but Dan refutes it and shakes his head. Ashley pops on-screen and reveals that Erik promised his hussies they could have one hotel room. "Erik took it too far," Ashley notes. All five guys crash in one hotel room, with two cots and one guy - Ashley - forced onto the floor. Not only does Erik boot two people out of cozy beds, as Dan points out, but he relegates Ashley to the floor. Ashamed, the Estrada parents change their names to Jack and Peggy Brownkowski and disappear to Montana.
During breakfast, a German woman arrives to escort Erik to the doctor. Erik reminds us the band is in Germany to record a song for Tony Harrison, engineer of the 1990s dance tune "More and More." Erik tries to sing it in grunts and ends up sounding like a woman's worst-ever sexual partner. We see a shot of Tony, and he's splendid. Hexagonal metal-rimmed glasses, confusing short hair and a spindly goatee. He's MC Hammer crossed with Eric Benet and spiced up with a dash of Billy Goat Gruff. Tony points to a copy of the Billboard Chart that lists "More and More" at no. 1. His left hand covers the label, "Brought to you by Heinrich's Novelty Gifts."
Back to breakfast. Suzanne, Tony's manager, whisks Erik away. Dan pops on-screen. "The day comes around and Erik's soooo tired, he can't sing still, he was up until 7 in the morning," Dan says. He stops. Stares at the camera. Giving an I-Know-Better glare to the camera, Dan puckers and purses his lips as though he stuffed three bags of Sour Patch Kids into his mouth on a dare, and has to give Lou a foot rub if he gags even once. This lasts, in silence, for ten seconds. Then his teeth threaten to slice through his upper lip, so Dan quits the reprimand pose and nibbles a carrot. "That was dumb," he concludes proudly, referring to Erik. We cut to a scene of the troubled tenor at the throat specialist. There's a decal of a happy partying teddy-bear on the wall. Is he a pediatric throat specialist? I half expect to see alphabet wallpaper, but it's not there -- just as well, because Erik would try in bewilderment to read it, then shrug and concede, "I don't speak German." The doctor slides a probe into Erik's throat, and he breathes, "Aaah," because it reminds him a lot of last night with the two überwenches. A picture of Erik's diseased vocal cords fills an adjacent TV monitor. Are those egg-and-bacon flecks I spy? Gag.
Meanwhile, Mannwagen transports the guys to Tony's studio twenty miles outside Dusseldorf. It's a bleak day in Deutschland, with gray skies that blend depressingly with tawny-colored country fields. O-Stadt gives half-hearted ooohs and ahhhs about the landscape -- except for Ashley, who's easily wowed and is predictably effusive here. Trevor points out the window at a passing train, and Ashley gushes, "Whoa, that's so COOL!" because he's realizing that the concept of locomotion isn't just a dance craze. The guys pull up to Tony's studio, which is a strange desolate-looking building sitting on something resembling farmland. It looks like he's in career exile, which, given what we're about to hear, is not a far-fetched idea. "I wanted to get more songs on the album written by us than anything else," Jacob's voice-over says. "We had no chance to do that until Tony. Everything was handed to us before now." Including your fame, boy, so don't bite the Lou that feeds you. Trevor, all this time, has been brimming with sentiment; he's a powder-keg of pent-up profundity. Finally, sweet release comes. "Whoa!" Trevor shouts. "Tony's the man!" He goes on to spout something about how Tony pioneered the 1980s dance music style and constantly creates original tunes. Tony is mixing something as the O-Stadt enters, and everyone boogies and compliments him. "I was just feeling you!" Tony shouts, hugging them. "Now go to work." Oh dear.
"Ahhhhhhhh," Erik says. The doctor mimics him and then makes his diagnosis: murder. (Sorry for that. But in life, one just can't turn down chances to make Dick Van Dyke references. What's a humble recapper to do?) "You have an infection in this part of the throat," Doc tells Erik, pointing to a colorful chart full of diagrams. Erik nods vacantly. He pretends to listen and understand, but when Doc says "in-fec-tion" his eyes glaze on the second syllable and he resumes counting practice. "I am ill. I really hate it," Erik complains to us. "With me going to the doctor while everyone's in the studio recording, I felt totally disjointed." Sigh. Perhaps "disconnected"? At least he's getting closer. It's a start. Erik sucks on an inhaler that's medicating his lungs and throat.
The guys chat with Tony. "I have five parts done," Jacob says. "Erik's not here, so we'll do it. We can't just not put it in there." They resolve to plug Erik's voice into the song when he's feeling better. Jacob lies that he didn't plan on taking Tony's studio by storm, but when he showed Tony the lyrics he wrote, the man loved it and let Jacob produce the song. "We vibed on each other's style immediately," Jacob brags. Trevor drops by and tells us he willingly let Jacob grab command. "If anyone could do it, it'd be him," Trevor gushes proudly, and I hear him add, "He's been producing songs since age five." Because this is the music-video-themed episode, we see a caption in the bottom left corner of the screen. The song is "You Bring Me Under," and Jacob only gets credit for the arrangement, not the production. Ha! Take that, cocky tenor. The song's grim, a very synthesized sound with low beats. It's vaguely threatening, considering the lyrics are for a love song:
The scent of you
Has got me so blind
Why can't I be with you full-time...I like it when you bring me under
I love it when we get down
Down down down...I love it when you take me down under your spell.
Dan freaks out at the funky groove and tries to dance. It's against his best interests -- he uses these bizarre, jarring hand motions. Everyone's voice is heavily synthesized, a very Britney effect that eliminates little problems like off-key singing or lack of talent.
Erik skulks into the studio just as they finish. "Erik comes back from the doctor, and all the solo verses he was supposed to sing we gave to Dan," Jacob explains. Erik sits quietly in the back, watching Dan in the booth singing vigorously. Tony yells, "He's feelin' that! He's feelin' that!" Dan gives a goofy toothy grin, floored that he's hearing his own voice on a CD. Tony praises him and someone shouts, "Mikey! He likes it!" Whatever. Erik's wrapping himself in a cloak of self-pity. "I heard the song and, wow, it was so good and it was without me," Erik recalls. "I felt like crying. Right now I feel like crying." Exit arrogance, enter insecurity. Erik muses that he might not be a crucial cog in O-Stadt's wheel, and we see him leave the studio as the camera freezes on a jubilant Dan Miller hand gesture. No, not the middle-finger.
Got milk?
Morning in Dusseldorf. The babes in Tonyland stayed up all night, a happy Jacob tells us, and it was a perfect marathon of productivity. Erik is also happy, if that word can be taken to mean "discontented" and "pathetic." "Jacob is the writer/producer, Ashley's the cute one, Trevor's the good dancer and Dan's the motivator," Erik says morosely. "Where am I?" Let's see: the lippy one, the sick one, the slow one, the nonsensical one. That's four epithets to choose from right there. But this isn't Coyote Ugly, so let's move on. Erik is struggling to find his niche in the band, and has a hard time with the fact that everyone gelled without him. The day, O-Stadt gathers to write a second song in a doomed group effort. "Erik went upstairs," bitches Jacob. "He said, 'I can't write with you guys around me.'" Erik sits alone at a glass table, trying to feel the rhythm and scribbling lyrics onto a piece of paper. "The way I'm perceiving it, I'm the worst person in the group," he whines, casting out his line with a plump worm on the fishhook. No one bites. Erik bites, but that's a different topic altogether. "I love Jacob. Jacob's my boy," Erik insists. "We have the same opinion about the music we want to release, we're both inspired by rock and R&B and rap." During this moving speech, we see scary blue-tinged shots of Jacob staring at the camera, which zooms so close to his schnozz that it blurs. It reminds me of the Roadmaster from this season's Road Rules, and it's the most hideous piece of television B/M has aired on ABC. And that's up against some stiff competition from the "O-Town Auditions" pilot.
The second song sounds peppier, an even blend of boy-band pop and the grimmer sounds O-Stadt recorded the day. "The only person that can make this work is me," Erik says while other sing. "I don't wanna be the anchor that's holding us down from becoming something great." Dan and Jacob sing/shout their lines as Erik reminds us he's been decent before, and can do it once more. Holy shit. Jacob does a verse where he sings high notes, then switches registers to a low growl almost immediately, then back up...the vicious cycle continues. It sounds threatening, like he's accosting some girl in an alley and demanding that she listen to his demo of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on his Fisher-Price Lights and Stars Piano. With the synthesizer added, Jacob also sounds like his idol Michael Jackson, which should give him a resilient boner. Tony rocks out to it all. "Right," he says. "Tight. You slammin' in there." When Erik sings his ass off in the booth, Dan appreciatively notes that his bandmate's recovery was the final puzzle piece that had been missing. Wait -- Erik's voice is back in one day after a month-long plague? What did that doctor do -- give him a transplant? Everyone slaps hands. "There it is, fellas," Tony says. "Roughneck style. You gonna get busy in this world." As O-Stadt departs, Trevor praises Tony's skills and passion for producing music. "We were talking about boy-bands, and Tony started laughing," Trev recalls. "He said, 'This is no boy-band anyone's heard before.'" Uh-huh. Sure. Yikes! Too much shallow ass-kissing, not enough stern spankings. Bring me TyJuan. Dakari. Raymond. I think I'd even settle for Mini-Lou at this point. Jacob giggles to the band that no one in Orlando thought they could churn out two tunes in two days -- and he can't resist adding that he wrote one in fifteen minutes that morning. So much for a group effort that fulfills everyone's creative needs. I bet Thania always ends up forced to get herself off.
At the hotel, Jacob sits shirtless on a bed so white that it's glistening. He's chatting with Lou on the phone, and looks rather shell-shocked as he stammers something about his understanding of the plan. "Change isn't easy in this business...I knew Lou was not too excited at all," Jacob's voice-over admits. "This is new, people aren't used to hearing it from a boy-band. They want the commercial stuff that's going to make them money." The call ends. Grimly, Jacob turns to der Foerster Marc and spits that Lou doesn't want to hear any mix of the song unless it's final, polished and impeccably produced. The hell? Lou sends them to Germany and doesn't know beforehand what they'll be recording? Rather an expensive whim, that -- but then, so was this show.
Lou's attitude confuses and angers Jacob. Marc calmly patronizes Jacob, saying he's getting excited and agitated for no reason. "You're underestimating us," Jacob accuses him. "Everyone at Trans Con always does." Marc argues this point, but Jacob stands firm and repeats himself. He then unleashes a tirade. "Not one person at Trans Con knows what music is," Jacob seethes. "It's that pop sound -- it sounds the same, it's nothing original and there's no art at all. It's all marketing and business and how to make the most money possible. It's, 'Go there. We'll tell you when to sing, how to sing, what to sing.' People show you how to dance, what to dance, what to wear, what to look like." Astute observations, all -- but hardly shocking or abnormal. Sounds like Reality skated past and firmly hip-checked Jacob into the wall. Mr. Underestimated brats that Trans Con will likely take all the songs they did in Germany and hide them on the album, if they even make the cut. "You're way ahead of yourself," Marc says. "No I'm not, Marc," Jacob refutes. "They're going to be afraid of it." And why not? I was. I actually cowered behind my couch for two hours after the show ended. "You're over-thinking, but I'll let you vent," Marc says, patronizing once again -- but with decent reason. Jacob loudly pouts that he doesn't want to vent, and storms out of the room. Marc, sitting on the floor, leans back against the bed and sighs, wondering why the hell he shredded that Chippendale's application all those months ago.
week, Ashley and Shelli answer the prayers of his insane fans: They break up. "I hate you," she seethes. Get your whole family together for this very special episode, the one millions will watch and none will forget. Um...right.