Well, it's been a short time together this time around, but I feel we've all grown quite a bit since these boys busted back into our lives ten or eleven short weeks ago. We know what we will and won't put up with. We know that even when all we think we want is singing and dancing, we can't even really put up with the singing and dancing. We all miss old Erik, who busted out with some stupid-ass lines. We miss Ashley's compulsive need to shower constantly. We don't want to watch girls shove bananas in their mouths or have Trevor dork out in a hot tub. We don't care if Janie's happy with Jacob. In fact, the only thing that didn't change the entire season was our undying hatred of Jacob's self-righteous attitude. And now, season three, we bid you adieu. Then at the end of this recap, I'll bid you adon't.
Previously: Dan and Jacob wrote a song called "American Game." It's been in my head for thirty-seven hours now, and I'm thinking of suing someone. Clive's the one that decides whether any of the songs the O-Boys have been writing are good enough for their second album. He's not one to like amateur efforts, so the boys have their work cut out for them. A writer took great delight telling O-Town that Variety hated their live show and their album and their music and them. She asked the question, "Who is O-Town?" And in this episode, once again we watch the boys stare at her like, "Uh, why do I let these cameras follow me around, again? Seriously."
We open with strains of Basement Jaxx's "Where's Your Head At?" which is the scariest video ever, ever, ever. Shots of double-decker buses and the sound of British-y bells inform us that we aren't in Orlando anymore. Suddenly, there's a string of ambulances rushing. They must have heard how the Basement Jaxx video makes me totally cry and fetal up in fear. Boston Mike (in uniform) sits between Trevor and Ashley and announces that he's holding a fax from Shirley, the music critic from last week who had the burning desire to meet O-Town. Trevor rubs his hands in glee. He can't wait to see what she had to say about them. "Show Dave your first good article," Boston Mike beams to Jacob. Hee. Jacob can't believe that Shirley wasn't horrible to them. She said things like "More than a boy band," and "They show a passion for songwriting." The boys are pretty pleased with themselves. I guess it's a review for the show, though, because the article ends with, "Will O-Town's second effort make the cut? We'll have to tune in to find out." She must have just found out about this television show that follows around a boy band named O-Town. Maybe someone can tell her about this website that does recaps of television shows so she can "catch up" here on the last episode of season three. "Hoo-ya!" someone says. Can't even do that right. Not "Boo-ya" or "Hoo-wah." Hoo-ya. Makes me sad. Ashley's happy because the girl didn't gush about how great O-Town is, but still didn't say that the flat-out suck. "Jacob was actually nice to her, that's why," Boston Mike jokes. Jacob confesses that he wasn't that nice. They tell him that he was nicer than he usually is. I hate that they're making Jacob seem more like a real person to me, now. I hate it when I almost like him. Dammit! I know these are all nice guys but it's harder to do my job if I can't rage against them constantly.
Last dance with the opening credits. Do you think they'll make new ones for Season Four? Go ahead, make your bets.
The boys perform "American Game" in London. Here's what's happening. Jacob's new "vision" for the band is to turn them into Bon Jovi. So "American Game" is a mix of Bon Jovi, Black Crowes, Extreme, and Maggie's Dream. And on that last little musical nugget I just tossed off like some rock geek, I've not only shown my age, but the incredibly horrible taste in music I had when I was a pre-teen. Anyway, the crowd seems to like it, because the boys are singing live, they're not dancing poorly, and they appear to be having a good time. Tesla. It's like Tesla. Are you getting what I'm saying? Bad guitar rock that's supposed to be some kind of hippie thing but just ends up being bad pop renditions of rock. It's been in my head since last night and I want to cry. Suddenly the song shatters into this instrumental break where Gunther from Friends jams out between Dan and Jacob. It's hysterical. Little white goatee. Expression on his face clearly reads, "I hate myself. I can't even tell my parents what it is I do because they'll laugh at me. I'm so lonely. I wish Ashley would come visit my hotel room more often." I can't stop giggling because Dan's shirt says "Wood" and I'm seven. You want to know how shitty this song is? This lyric: "If you don't give a damn, y'all raise your hand!" Jacob pronounces this "Yuh-all."
Jacob tells us that he wrote "American Game" with Dan, and that they were "leery" of how the song was going to "come across." Backstage, Jacob and the boys are very proud of themselves over how well "American Game" went that night. Jacob says he couldn't hear anybody, but what he could see was positive. What? Who can he see from that stage? Silent Mike says these three words: "Came on awesome." Who knows what that's supposed to mean? Dan brags that he was a rock star. Boston Mike corrects that Dan was almost like a rock star. Dan brags that he was almost like a rock star. Boston Mike makes fun of Dan's bendy-neck affliction and how it makes him play the guitar like a dork. You know, through it all, Dan's my favorite. He's not the eye candy, but he just seems like a really funny, nice person. WOOOOO!!! Jacob moans that he wishes Clive could have seen the show that night so that he could know that audiences in London love this new song. Jacob complains to us that the entire first album was love songs, and once they got past the first verse of "American Game," the London crowd was totally into the song, singing along. You can't help it, since "I played the American Game" is sung a million times. Jacob says that Clive won't really be able to feel the song if he listens to it from behind his desk. He adds that he can't understand how this song might not be on the record.
Back to Florida, reality, et al. The screen splits into four as Erik explains that they're all still working on "the writing process." In each of the four screens, there's an O-Town member trying to "write" and "sing."
Jacob tells us that bands are either "Performers" or "Artists," and he wants to prove that O-Town can be artists. Dan's singing "American Game." His voice isn't very even. They'll work that out later, though. Moving on...
Erik is working with a recording artist on a song he's thinking about. Tamara Savage is her name, and she wrote such songs you've never listened to as TLC's "Fan Mail" and Whitney Houston's "Heartbreak Hotel." She's sitting in a room with Erik and some other people, and they're trying out lyrics for this song, "Get Away." Erik says he's hoping that he and Tamara "can take it to another level together." Get Away, indeed. So, we're learning how to write a song, here. Someone hits "play" on a track that someone else has already written. It's music in that normal time signature, nothing new, and nothing that hasn't already been heard on seven other R&B songs. Then five people sit around bobbing their heads, humming and occasionally throwing out words that might rhyme. It sounds exactly like when my mom's trying to get me not to change the radio station because she hates all of my music, but she doesn't remember any of the lyrics for her oldies' station song, so she just mumbles, hums, and busts out the chorus as loud as she can. Erik figures out that the word "monogamy" can fit in the song and everyone cheers because "I give you some mahogany" wasn't really working out so well.
Dan's feeling a little humble about the song "Yes or No": "The song would never have existed if it wasn't for me." He says that knowing that he wrote the song is giving him a "glow." It sure is. That Dan. Once he shaves off that gross stuff that grows only under his chin and around his neck, he might be something worth saving. That comes from my heart.
Ashley is trapped in a very bad high-school musical, and he's calling it "By Your Side." It's a horrible Diane Warren-wannabe song that makes my eyebrows hurt. Ashley has to hold on to his own head while he sings it, because the body's natural instinct when it hears the song is to expel the ears from the head. Ashley tells us that most writers "dream" about presenting songs to Clive Davis, and now they get an entire afternoon with him pitching songs for his approval. He says he has to take advantage of this huge opportunity. The sound mixer guy asks Ashley how old he is. Ashley says he's twenty. Tommy the Gay Sound Mixer flirts, "How'd you get so deep at twenty?" Ashley incorrectly answers: "I listen to Dr. Laura." The gay man then tells Ashley that he no longer likes him and promptly ignores Ashley for the rest of the session, no matter how many times Ashley tries to tell him that he was joking.
Erik's pretending to be Craig David in that annoying way that Craig David is physically unable to sing unless he's pointing at something. Then we get a torturous medley of all the boys practicing all of their songs at once in a messy edit where all I want to do is cry and stop recapping forever. The madness! Escalating! The music! Awful! Awful! The horror! The pain! No! No! Make it stop! Mother? Mother? Mother, I'm having a terrible nightmare and I'd like to wake up! O-Town! Imprisoning me! All that I see! Absolute horror! I cannot live! I cannot die! Trapped in my room! Recaps my holding cell! O-Town! Has taken my sight! Taken my speech! Taken my hearing! Taken my arms! Taken my legs! Taken my soul! Left me with life in hell! The segment ends with shots of palm trees followed by shots of cop cars, so I'm assuming that O-Town's neighbors have called the cops. And I thought the Osbournes would have made shitty neighbors...Ha. Then they have shots of ambulances and fire engines. I assume those have been called to assist me. Thank you, MTV, for thinking of my safety.
Silent Mike asks how the songs are going for Clive. The boys say that the songs are going well, but that they need a couple more days. They complain that they have more songs than they have time to record. Mike reminds them that this is their first "sit-down" with Clive, and that if the shit doesn't rock, it's going to be their last "sit-down" with Clive. He reminds the boys that they're up against real songwriters, so they shouldn't be too disappointed when nothing they've written ends up on the album. Why does everybody keep mentioning Nelly when they talk about top songwriters? If O-Town ends up with a Nelly song, I'm taking my ball and going home. No more kickball with those rules. Silent Mike tells the boys that right now they're in danger of being One-Hit Wonders, since nobody really listened to "Liquid Dreams" or "We Fit Together," but "All or Nothing" was a smash. You know, I didn't even know it was a smash hit. I heard it whenever I was out shopping, but I didn't know that meant it was a hit. I just thought it was so inoffensive that they could play it in malls. Silent Mike explains that the second album is very important, and that the "sophomore slump" is a very real curse. He tells the boys that they have to put everything into this second album, and can't have anything else going on in their lives. Like, maybe, a camera crew following them around interviewing them for a television show? Just wondering.
Boston Mike's brought his Boston Brother who makes shitty, shitty songs. Shitty. That Popstars 2 song I had to hear five kajillion times at every interactive poll? This fucker wrote it. I hate him. I hate Rich Cronin. He's apparently worked with Clive for four years, and that makes him a veteran. He tells the boys that he wrote sixty songs for his last album and fifteen of them ended up on the actual album. You guys know what LFO stands for? "Lyte Funkie Ones." We must hate this band with every fiber of our beings. This album he "co-wrote" every track for is called Life is Good. I can't believe they're getting advice from a One-Hit Wonder on how not to be a One-Hit Wonder. Rich tells them that the music always has to be about "the song," and that they're never going to write a song for Erik just because girls think he's cute. The song comes first, and then they put the boys around it. Once again, the boys are reminded that most of the songs they write won't be hits. They just have to hope that one of them might stand out.
Then there's a jam session with a song called "Hey, Hey, Hey." A bunch of guys stand around sounding like Fat Albert rapping as they try to come up with lyrics that describe girls wearing clothes, hair, and shoes. Again, the lyrics are, "Buh-duh-duh-nuh care! Bee-nuh-no, fah-fo-fuh-buh-nuh- dirty blonde hair." Awesome. I shit you not, the closed captioning just summed it all up with "[scatting]." Closed Captioning is lying to the deaf, the luckiest O-Town fans in the world. Ashley says that he had an idea for a song, but he really only had a title of a song but he's calling that an "idea" and that song title idea was "A Girl Like That." Now these older, balding, no-rhythm-having fools are jumping around in a room like an improv troupe warming up rapping about "a girl like that." Trevor explains to us that what they're doing is called "vibing." I had no idea. Ashley and Trevor sit and watch as Rich and his old man friends all write this song for them. We get a montage of the "A Girl Like That" "writing" "session." Fortunately, we don't have to hear any of it, and we're treated to an instrumental break as we watch the boys watch the men write their song for them.
I love recording sessions, because there's nothing to recap. Dan's laying down the bad notes for "A Girl Like That." Even the closed captioning just has pictures of musical notes. No point in learning these words. After this episode airs, we'll never have to hear this song again. I think one of the lines is "smell your breath that has, you know, the onion rings!"
Ashley is still singing the song in another room on another day. Singing it to Rich, I think. Ashley brags that the song sounds like Santana. He uses an air guitar so we know who Santana is. Rich tries not to openly laugh at Ashley. Ashley says he'll be "seriously disappointed" in himself if he doesn't get a song on the record. Jesus, Ashley, haven't you been listening to what everyone's been saying to you since you guys started writing your own songs? It's not going to happen. They are placating you while they try to figure out what to do with O-Town. Rich is unable to speak a line of English that makes any sense. He says a sentence with the word "like" in it four times. I don't know why they keep telling us over and over again that people are writing songs for O-Town, O-Town's writing songs for O-Town and probably Clive isn't going to like any of O-Town's songs. I get it. We get it. Everybody gets it but Ashley, who gets it from Erik every night. Lame joke, I know. It's late. Sue me. Ashley says he really wants to get a song on the album and he wants to write sixty songs like Rich did. Rich quickly says that Ashley doesn't have to do that and that it's not normal to write sixty songs (because there's no way in hell he really did that, I'm sure, and he doesn't want Ashley getting him busted for lying later).
New York. Mike on the Mike want to know what songs the boys are going to pitch. Ashley's pitching "By Your Side." Jacob's submitting "American Game." Erik's submitting "Get Away." Dan: "Yes or No." Trevor, Ashley, and Dan all say "A Girl Like That," as if each of them is taking credit for writing the song. Once again, Rich reminds the boys that just seeing Clive in person is something that most artists don't get to do and they should feel lucky and blah, blah, blah okay I GET IT. You know who's not getting it? O-fucking-Town. They just want a song on the album. They want a song on the album. A song? Just put it over there. On the album. I can't tell Boston Mike and his brother apart. Ashley gets a giggle fit and admits that now he's nervous about presenting the songs to Clive, as if it's just now dawning on him that his song might not make it on the album. Once again, Boston Mike reminds them that they've just got to feel honored for even having a meeting, for getting to breathe near molecules that Clive's breathing. That they get to live on this same Earth that Clive lives on. Ashley's all, "So, you mean even though my song will get on the album, there's a chance that one of the other guys might not get his song on the album?" Ashley's so confident. Blowjobs only go so far, Ash. You'll learn eventually.
Dan's up first. Jacob reminds us in a voice-over, "The odds are that not all of us will get a song on the record." We. Fucking. Get. It. Dan and Clive hug as Clive gives Dan a little dig about being late. As Jacob explains that Clive doesn't need O-Town's hand-written songs, we see a montage of still photos of the boys attempting to sing. Got it. Get on with it. Go! Dan's a pretty good salesman, all proud of his shit, bendy neck flipping out. He plays "Yes or No." He tells Clive that he might want to turn his stereo up in case he needs to headbang. Clive is amused by Dan's jokes. Dan grooves to his own song as Clive listens. He does move his head a bit, but that may just be how one reads a sheet of paper at his age. Dan tells us he's getting a good feeling about it. Clive tells Dan that there are two categories for songs. One: a hit. Two: a pool of non-hits that basically aren't going to be used. Dan's song? Pile two. The pile shaped like a trash can.
Jacob's up , but everybody's wearing the same outfits as when Jacob introduced "Meant For You" last week, so you know it's the same day. Jacob explains that "American Game" is a different sound and a smart move since 'N Sync and Backstreet Boys are going R&B. I had no idea that's what they were doing. But what a smart move not to do what everyone else does in your conformist musical genre. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: teen girls love some fucking classic rock. Jacob plays the song as a group of men pretend to like it. They nod their heads like they're listening to the latest forecasts. Jacob tells us that he's nervous, but he believes that he's good enough. Clive, however, doesn't think that he's good enough. "This is more individualistic, this song. I don't think that any of us wants that," he says. Thank you, Clive. He tells Jacob that the song's going into the circular pile known as "Poo Wipers." We get Jacob's same line from last week where he knows Clive is a genius but he disagrees with everything he says. What does that make you, exactly, Jacob?
Ashley's playing his horrible song. Seriously, the line "Not a mountain too high/ Not a doubt in my mind" is in this song. Ashley tells us that he wished the song would hurry up and end. That's how I felt too, Ash. Clive: "In writing in the romantic ballad area you either hit it or you don't hit it. It doesn't mean -- and I'm not saying this to be polite -- it doesn't mean that 'By Your Side' is not a decent song showing songwriting potential..." Clive's gotta crush on Ash-ley! "For this kind of tempo, ballad, emotion, too many songs of this nature will wimp the group out." I don't know what he just said, but I agree with every word.
Erik's crap song is up . Clive mocks it. "I'm not reacting to this one, I think, melodically and it's an okay song." I speak fluent Clive. They tell him to dig deeper.
Trevor reminds us again that this is an opportunity and that they should be thankful and blah blah blah blah blah blah we get it oh man do we get it.
Ashley acts like "A Girl Like That" was just sitting in his back pocket like that last Christmas present when your parents pretend that there are no more presents and then your big present is in the other room. Ashley name-drops Rich Cronin here so that Clive will listen to the song. Clive listens to the song and bops his head. Trevor gets the best line: "This is probably the most incredible thing ever because Clive's listening to a song I wrote...uh along with Dan and Ashley, but I wrote it and he's loving it." I can already see the problems. Dan tells us that he's seen Clive bop his head around before and still not take the song. Ashley and Dan start making out they love the sound of their own voices so much. Clive says that this is the strongest piece he's heard out of all the crap they fed him today. Ashley and Dan high-five. Clive compliments the lyrics. He loves him some Rich Cronin, I guess. He says it's a "real good song." Dan dances around and sings to us that Clive liked their song.
scene? Clive's pretty much telling them that none of their songs are going on the album, but they can keep filling their down time with songwriting because at least it keeps them off drugs. Clive compliments the boys on their stage "magic," their chemistry together, and how great they are as O-Town. Dan tells us that he thinks Clive respects them more now that he knows they're writing good songs.
Erik says they're not just five lucky guys picked off the street to perform in a band. They're five lucky guys picked off the street to perform in a band and some of them know how to play beginner's guitar and write songs with other people.
The season wraps up with still shots of the boys and a montage of this episode as if we've all grown and come so far over the past twenty minutes. They can't even close the season with an O-Town song. I love it. Then it's just over with a still shot of O-Town staring at us, daring us to come back for season four. Will you be there? Let's find out.
Hey, O-Town. Keep in touch.