Fourth of July Reunion

Previously on Making the Band: Erik's birth father got in touch with him for the first time since Erik was one. He learned that he has a brother and a sister. Erik explained that there are bonds between people that are like spider webs, and that the bonds have to be "evenly strengthened between [them] all." Yeah, I don't know what that means, either.

Credits. I just let them wash right over me like when you know someone's peed in the pool but you don't want to ruin everyone's good time. You just keep your mouth shut.

The boys are in New York for an album-release party. I wonder whether it's for their album. The camera runs up to girls who act like they're excited to see the camera. Other girls are just standing around because they work there.

Some girl jams her finger into Trevor's ear and gets her picture taken.

They're at another Planet Hollywood as Ashley explains to us that they're very excited. The album debuted at #5. Ashley says that it hasn't hit them yet how "monumental" that is.

Some girl tells Dan that she's from Philly. Some other girl tells Jacob that his photos from Miami are hot. "It's ridiculous!" she fawns, almost spilling her glass of white wine on his head. She doesn't even bother inhaling before she's moved on to Ashley, telling him how hot he is. Jacob says that they're the "hot commodity," and that everyone wants to talk to them. We see two guys talking about how "natural" Jacob's sound is. I love all of the adjectives people are using to describe "sounds like me when I've smoked a pack of cloves." Jacob's sentence to us isn't really a sentence, so I'll just write down the string of words he's put together to explain what happens when your album hits #5: "If you fall off then it's all the bad press you have to deal with and the stress of once you're there holding that position for as long as possible." ["Whoa, I see what you mean. I was going to try to punctuate that, but it's obviously impossible." -- Wing Chun]

Cut to a drunk woman addressing a crowd that isn't listening to a word she's saying. That's okay, because she's lying. She's saying that this party will be a moment that the boys in O-Town will remember for the rest of their lives, because it's the one moment that launched their career. How could she possibly know that now, anyway? I don't know. Is that what she's saying? Listen, someone needs to hire a writer for these people, because nobody's making any sense. They're just stringing words together that sound important. She says this: "Every band has that one special time that they remember and kind of what launched their career? If you are ready, J Records recording artist: O-Town!" What the hell does that mean? For real. And why is that first statement a question? And "if you are ready?" It's like someone took the opening lines, translated them into Swedish and then translated them back into English and then gave her the lines to say. It probably started as "These guys are hot on the charts debuting at #5. Are you ready for O-Town? Here they are!" Idiots.

Some guy (or I think maybe a girl?) we've never seen before is standing to Silent Cleve, who is looking like he's suspicious of the stranger. I don't know why we have to see this moment at all. The boys take the stage (and, for some reason, they're dressed up more than they normally are, and they're not dancing). They sing a ballad. Badly. They are very much Badly Sung Boys. I don't know what crowd noise they're playing in the background, but it's not the show we're watching. It sounds like they've looped a Radiohead bootleg behind the performance.

Jacob continues stringing words together, trying to make synapses fire: "There are so many records, like, you want them to play your record, you need to prove that we deserve to be here in a tenth of time a group usually would have. It's just the game gets a lot quicker and the competition gets a lot harder." I am watching the English to Japanese to English dub of Making the Band. That's the only thing that makes sense.

Competition Piano Music plays as we see a distant shot from what looks like Staten Island. We hear Erik's cell-phone voicemail inform him that he has no new messages, but that he has two saved messages. See? The competition is heating up. Erik has to decide whether he's ready to zoom up the charts of his father's heart. Erik listens to his father's voice message again, even though there's no microphone on his cell phone and we're clearly not hearing what Erik's actually listening to on his phone. And why is he all by himself in a parking lot in the passenger seat of his huge car, anyway? Both the passenger and driver doors are open as Erik hunches down with a towel around his neck listening to Ruben, his birth father, leave his message. I don't get it, really. The cell phone is attached to the car's battery charger. Erik looks at his O-Town CD and explains to us yet again that Ruben called him. He tells us that he's never had a brother and a sister before. Actually, he says, "I've not known of anything like that." Hire seven tutors for this group, please. Somebody. It's cruel to do what you're doing to these children. They've got weaker grammar skills than Elmo. Erik says he wants to meet his brother and sister.

Atlanta. The boys are about to sing the national anthem before a Hawks game. We see the boys singing (Trevor's holding an invisible microphone) the song as a practice, but Erik's bent over. He's not singing -- he's trying not to throw up, I guess. It might be a physical reaction to the sound of O-Town singing the national anthem, because when they add the word "brave" three times to the end of the song the room starts spinning just a bit for me, as well. Erik stands up and everyone asks whether he's okay. He says he is, and starts walking off. It looks like he might have been crying. The boys all look at Silent Cleve. Cleve looks back. Man, that Silent Cleve is creepy.

We watch Erik put cold water on his face as we hear him say, "My biological father? It just takes a lot out of me." One sentence. I just want one sentence where there's a subject-verb agreement and there might even be a word in the nominative case and the word "like" is only used if there's going to be a simile in the sentence. Is that too much to ask? Really? Erik concludes, "Sometimes you just can't help thinking about what else is going on especially when something like this..." Yeah, I guess it's way too much to ask. The boys are still warming up, trying to be chummy with Erik, but he's incredibly pouty.

The boys try practicing again before showtime. Jacob starts bitching Erik out for changing the beat. Erik says that he's not changing the beat. Ashley and Erik start bickering, and Dan tries to stop it. Dan tells us that it's not easy to go onstage when you know that one person is freaking out in his head. He says that everyone can see it, and that it affects the entire group. The bitching continues, and it seems like, at the end, Dan says he'll sing Erik's part; they all walk off, leaving pouty Erik to pout around thinking about how his new pout really matches his great black turtleneck and pouty deep spiked hair they've given him.

The boys ruin the national anthem for the Hawks, Georgia, the integrity of basketball, America, and the world. I love that there's nobody taking pictures in the audience; they're eerily silent and nobody claps when O-Town hits the high parts. Erik's making wild gestures with his hands to make the boys stop singing at a certain part, but they keep doing what they rehearsed, not catering to Erik's lung capacity. Good for them. Someone's screechy in the group, and clearly Erik didn't let Dan just sing his part like he was supposed to. I don't know why Erik's wearing giant conductor arms to sing this song, but everyone else doesn't bother looking at him. The game quietly starts without a single person thanking O-Town for proving Roseanne Barr had her good points. By the way, this game must be on a Tuesday or something because there's nobody there. Actually, it might not even be a Hawks game. I bet they're just using the stadium.

Tour bus. Evening. No Fun Andrew is barking orders. The boys are going to be performing four songs in a convention center. Dan's pissy because this is the first time they heard they're going to be performing at a convention center. Silent Mike lies that it's always been in the schedule, but that they don't have a copy of the schedule; it's somehow Cleve's fault. Sure. Blame the creepy old guy. It's always his fault. Trevor says that they don't have a problem doing the gig -- it's just that they'd like more warning than the same day the gig takes place. Boston Mike looks clueless as Ashley complains that this whole thing is kind of chaotic right now. You can see the sound guy in the reflection behind Boston Mike's head. There are a lot of people on that bus. It must suck so hard. Trevor's complaining about something. I think Jacob's in a different van. For real, is he in this group at all? Ashley's wearing a bucket hat, saying that he'd just like to be informed of the schedule a bit further in advance. Oh, there's Jacob. He's leaning back and pouting. Instead of explaining anything about the schedules, someone decides to use their chart position as an explanation. "Just so you know? Your chart position? You dropped. To twenty." It's Boston Mike. I can tell because it's their "chaht positions." Boston Mike is all pissed off, like the boys had a campaign to get people not to buy their albums. Wait a minute. I guess they did. They just called it a "tour." Boston Mike says that one of the major reasons their album dropped is because they've been "out of sight." Erik's like, "Outtasite! That's good. Thanks, Man. You're a Total Blast, yourself!" I don't know what Boston Mike's sentence means, so I'll just write to down for you: "So what's that say? I just got another jet for you." One sentence. I really don't know why it's such a hard thing for these people to do. Just talk in complete sentences.

A jet takes off. Cut to an "In-Store Performance" in New York City. An exhausted Trevor tells us that they shouldn't be touring right now, but that they have to go out there and perform so that the album doesn't keep dropping.

Dallas. Autograph signing. They tell us that they're doing long days, and that they have to keep doing it every day. We hear someone ushering the teen girls around, telling them to keep moving because there are lots of girls waiting. Girls fawn.

A very tired Ashley is moaning at the airport. Dan tells us that they're tired. The boys all sit in a circle moaning about the schedule again. Someone points out that there are only twenty-four hours in a day. "Nothing is ever gonna be the same," Boston Mike says, for no reason. We watch the boys sleep on a plane as someone tells us that they're working and travelling about twenty of those hours each day. The boys sleep.