O-Revoir

Previously on Making the Band: Silent Mike punched Trevor in the arm and told him that he's going to have to work sixteen-hour days. Trevor thinks he's kidding. He's not. No Fun Andrew was a scheduling fiend. Jacob loved to tour. Get out your Kleenex, kids -- we're gonna say goodbye to O-Town tonight.

Last time with the credits. Hallelujah.

There's not even a warning before all of our senses are slammed. "Every Six Seconds" starts playing while we hear girls screaming. Shots of the boys looking down at their feet while they move are spliced between shots of girls screaming towards the stage. Can't any of these boys dance without watching his feet? I think the same signs in the audience are getting used for every show. I don't know who's dressing Erik these days, but he or she needs to stop. He's wearing sunglasses and a blazer, like he's auditioning for Miami Vice. Nobody in his audience is old enough to have seen Miami Vice. We watch Jacob enjoying himself as Ashley tells us they've worked really hard for this "first U.S. tour" (I love how sure he is that there will be more to come), but once they're on stage and they see the audience, it's "so worth it." It must be like this feeling of recapping a terrible boy band and you're finally on the last recap of the show and then your paycheck arrives and the bank says that it clears and then you go and pay the electric bill. That's when it's all worth it for me. Jacob says this is the best job in the world. As he brags about his good luck, we watch Trevor hold his hands out like he's holding a girl's head down by his crotch and he jiggles up and down while bouncing backwards. A moving, invisible blowjob. That's a new move.

Backstage the boys are all telling each other, "Good show." Trevor might be mocking Boston Mike here when he says it was, "Wicked retahhded." The boys are very proud of themselves, beaming and smacking each other, telling one another that they "represented." Sweaty Erik smiles at Ashley. Ashley says, "We're becoming so tight." He says that they used to come backstage after a show and critique each other. "And we would upset each other because we weren't communicating, right?" What, Ashley? Huh? "We're definitely communicating right now." What does that mean? "Like, we're learning how to talk to each other." Oh. Thanks for the lesson.

Trevor tells us that being on tour is great, but also "stressful" and "tiring." Oh, my God. Suddenly I write for Bop! magazine. "Trevor leans forward and runs his strong hands through his brownish frizzy hair that he sometimes keeps in braids close to his head. He looks at me and smiles. He's definitely a man who knows what it's like to work!" Trevor explains exactly how a tour works, but I'm assuming that all of you know that you meet fans, rehearse, do press stuff and then perform, right? Yeah, well, Trevor apparently just learned all of this. He says it's "all crammed into the little bit of hours [they] get before [they] go onstage." I'm gonna miss these gems of bastardized English. I really...wait. I totally won't. I'm doing Popstars 2. There's gonna be all kinds of verbal slaughters.

Montage of touring. The boys lip-synch, and the names of cities scroll across the screen. I remember when this was called "the video for 'The Heart of Rock 'n Roll.'" In Cleveland. Detroit!

A blonde applies Jacob's makeup. I don't know what's going on with everything on Jacob's head. His eye makeup is heavy, and his skin looks like it's thick with base. And what the...? Son, you've got a Jiffy Pop on your head. Does he know he's wearing a Jiffy Pop? Stick a knife in him and eat up.

In Omaha, the boys dance poorly in bad lighting. "Omaha! You're the coolest city in Idaho!" thinks Jacob.

Dan fixes his hair in a men's room. Can you handle it?

Atlanta! The city where Ashley moves his head and grunts! Whee! Keep up, y'all!

Pittsburgh! The crowd shrieks, "Yinz are jags! Yinz suck!"

A blonde makes Trevor's hair even poufier, proving my suspicion that Everyone Hates Trevor.

Philadelphia! "Brotherly Love? Hell, yeah! We're O-Town!"

The tour bus! Whee! No Fun Andrew brings out the Black Folder of Doom. It's got an O-Town sticker on it. I have fifty of these O-Town stickers because some guy in a calendar store begged me to take them last Christmas. I've been sending them out to friends to confuse them. The Black Folder of Doom contains print-outs of reviews, critics' blurbs, and probably about seven recaps. Sadly, we don't get to see them laugh at the recaps, but hello, boys. When you're reading this later, when everyone's sitting around thinking, "That Pamie girl just met us. How could she know anything about us at all?" I just want to say some special words from the bottom of my heart to the top of your little heads:

Erik-Michael, I'm sorry I thought you were related to the real Erik Estrada. It's sad that, for your entire life, you've heard that you're not "the real Erik Estrada," and that you're like some fake Erik Estrada. The sad thing is that it's true. We all want to hear about the "real" Erik Estrada, and you're not the Erik Estrada anybody's looking for. Except Ashley. Hang onto him. I think y'all got something special that nobody can take away from you. Not even Jacob. You understand? Keep your Mr. Bill-lookin' ass away from my music, okay? Thanks.

Trevor, I honestly have to say I don't know a damn thing about you after all the time we spent together. I hope you figure out how to make your hair look like hair and not post-fire hair. Thanks for trying to teach me about all kinds of things I already know, like how music is made and what people do on a tour. I hope Lou doesn't make you have sex with him. Stay in school.

Dan, I may act like I hate you sometimes, but it's only because I'm completely indifferent. Thanks for not sucking as hard as the others, and thanks for having a normal name. By the way, I know that it must be hard acting in this group without your porn name. I mean the rest of them have total porn names and it's not fair they gave you the boring name. For fuck's sake, Jacob Underwood? Ashley Angel? Those are porn names. I feel for you, Dan. I really do.

Jacob, in ten years when you finally become a man and you're feeling kind of embarrassed for what you did when you were young and you think about hiding in a log cabin somewhere away from all the teasing and you wonder if you'll ever find love -- don't forget to lock the door behind you. Ah, whatever. I'm sure you're a cool kid. Go back to school and get a degree and only pull that guitar out in the future once you're absolutely positive you've found someone that loves you no matter what. For real, Jacob, that's a fucking dealbreaker right there, you with that guitar. And stop putting Sharpie on your fingernails. Nobody wants a man without fingernails.

The boys start listing cities where they're hated. Touring, touring, touring, blah, blah, blah. Back to the touring montage.

Dan says, "Myrtle Beach" like he's about to shout, "Sucks ass!"

In Boston the boys dance passionlessly in the near dark.

Jacob tells us that some days they don't have time to eat.

In St. Louis the boys are all trapped in a mime's box while singing "Liquid Dreams." Oh, that's the choreography? Well, someone needs to be fired. Now.

We see thousands of O-Town CDs sitting on racks, all not being bought, as Dan tells us that the album is slipping quickly. He says that they're trying to keep the album in the charts to keep the label happy. "But it's killing us," he concludes.

In Milwaukee, I finally learn how to spell the word "Milwaukee." There's no excuse that it took twenty-six years. I'm sorry, Milwaukee. On the other hand, it's more fun to learn how to spell Milwaukee than watch another snippet of an O-Town concert. Man, this episode is boring. How can I spice this up?

One time on a school bus this boy named David put his hand up my skirt. He kept touching my thigh, trying to make his hand go higher and higher. I do believe that I was wearing Ugly Underwear that day and possibly a panty liner, so I didn't want his fingers to go any higher. Plus, he hadn't even kissed me; he just wanted to put his hand up my skirt. I pushed his hand away, got home, and wrote a long love poem about how a boy touched my soul while it rained outside. I wrote my own ending and changed the situation from some horny boy jamming his fingers into my panties on a school bus to a forbidden love affair in the middle of a torrential rainstorm where both of us knew it was wrong but couldn't stop our bodies from uniting. It's just like what O-Town's doing here. They think they're in a forbidden love affair that they just can't stop even though everyone knows it's wrong and it's storming all around them, but the truth is some horny man's just jamming his fingers into their panties. Yeah, I know. I write the songs that make the whole world sing.

The boys are sick. Trevor looks like shit. Ashley asks everyone whether they took their Vitamin C. I love that Ashley's become the group's mother. Erik's tired. Jacob's sick. Rapid montage of every shot they ever got of any of these boys sitting down and looking either tired or bored.