Last week: Donna Summer helped pick the big three hooks and their respective hookers, and it was ridiculous and painted the club with amazing while making it easy. Blessing went home for opting out of the project altogether, which was kind of satisfying. Nick only becomes worse and worse; Jackie becomes better and better. Nevin is still missed. Brian continues to chew on the inside of his face, possibly to help Elvis eventually emerge from that face. But either way, it's weird and not attractive, and your whole job -- especially as a crazy hot person -- is to keep your shit in line.
Everybody is so sleepy in the morning! Especially lonely Johnny, who has been deserted by his two roommates over the first two weeks.
Johnny: "Maybe it is a curse. I just know I hate having a job like a normal person, and yet haven't managed to create a career for myself on my own. I sure hope this game show does that for me!"
PERSONAL PLAYTIME
Everybody is astounded to see Kara because it is the daytime, so they all clap like she's a celebrity because she's appearing in a weird context. They act like hooligans, a little, to be honest. Vegan ones.
Kara: "Turns out this will be awkward for all of us. I don't read cue-cards very comfortably."
Jewel: "This week we are writing road trip songs. This is my favorite genre, due to having been born on the side of a highway and forced to rob Alaskan passersby for my food and beauty products. Until the day I met John Denver."
They all grab cards off this mantle that contain secret instructions: A word that must be included in the Road Trip Hook Challenge. Escape, view, free, away, change, explore, direction, pack, road and wheels are the words. But you're thinking, what shit can horrible fucking Nick talk about these simple words?
On his word, Wheels: "I hate wheels."
On Jackie also having a word: "I hate Jackie."
Brian: Laughs nervously at Nick's pointless bitching, because he is lonely. Or hates ladies. Or both. Or those things are related.
Jackie: "I got road. How perfect! Let me tell you at length why this is meaningful for America."
Nick: Makes fun of her a whole lot for essentially no reason, out of nowhere.
Jackie: "Is there a single person in this room that doesn't hate Nick?"
Nobody: "Yes, he's a useful individual that is not agonizing to be around."
Kara: "Jewel, what if you had to work with Nick, what would happen?"
Jewel: "Nothing, because that would not be happening, because he is a cunt."
Nick: "Neener-neener, Kara! We're not in a songwriting session right now so your question is meaningless and you're stupid and everything is stupid!"
Kara: "Wrong answer, little lady. Life is a songwriting session."
Jackie, somehow undercutting her point by way of affectation: "The kid needs to check himself before he wrecks. For sure."
HOOKTIME
Brian: "Road trips are about masculine loving of women."
Jes: "Road trips are about strange moaning noises."
Karen: "Road trips are about screaming and childish sentiments."
Nick: "Road trips are about how everybody sucks. Except Karen, who is merely loud."
Johnny: "Road trips are about how much I love Jack Johnson. Nooo homo."
Amber: "Road trips are about my come-and-go urban accent. I hate roads, and trips, but I'm doing my best to be amazing."
Sonyae: "Road trips are about whining. Also, singing about what it's like to date men."
Scotty: "Road trips are about how special I am, so I am writing a honky-tonk song."
Melissa: "Road trips are about accordions and monkeys and Sirius also known as the Dog Star."
Jes: A pretty, boring, vague song. Johnny nods along and refuses to blink, because that's what love can be like. Kara likes the melody and the reedy weird voice she sang it with, and then Johnny tries to molest her calf, because hipsters in love are too gruesome to look at because they think everything is fifth grade still.
Melissa: Some kind of heartfelt song that sounds pretty good. Kara loves it, they all clap.
Amber: Accompaniment-free, but somehow Kara figures out where the hook is located. I just like Amber.
Karen: Is still a great performer who should stick to that; still the only person Nick seems to like even the tiniest bit. Somehow this doesn't work against her favor, because as horrible as Nick is, he's also right about, like, everything.
Scotty: Shocks them with his abrupt shift to honky-tonk, as was his intention; since this was also Jewel's third distinct musical personality, he also gets props for subtle ass-kissing. The hook is cool, and also includes a line that makes Jewel laugh, which is "I nominate me to lead this pack." I consider it an homage to Nevin.
Jackie: Nick is shitty about it of course, but the song is good and Kara likes it. Nick whines about her voice and whatever, it's just white noise. Everybody claps, causing Nick to more fully enter the hatrix.
Sonyae: Kind of boring and tuneless, and all about how she wants no scrubs or whatever, because have you met Sonyae.
Nick: To their hateful faces, judges included, he delivers a short speech about how amazing he is, and Jackie obligatorily laughs at him, and it sounds like every song he writes. Every single time. Johnny makes fun of him because it's the same shit every time, and Kara tells him he is writing songs that have nothing to do with him, which is true because it's always one song. Maybe we hit his limit faster than I thought we would. Or maybe he just isn't very interesting on the inside. A technician doesn't need to be a sculptor.
Johnny: It's actually a lovely song. There is much I like about Johnny, don't get me wrong about poor old Johnny, and my dislike for his particular style of music has little to do with the fact that he is very good at writing that kind of song. Amber watches Jes watching Johnny and everybody smirks at everybody else and that's how the sausage is made.
Brian: Cheek-sucking, boring-talking full of nothing words and a shaking head because of how amazing whatever he's saying is. The song is, as usual, about touching boobies. Kara loves that part and how lonely his hands are, but nobody points out how boring and hacky the melody was.
TOP THREE HOOKS & HOOKERS
Maybe that is just Brian's face.
Jackie is third place with her song about how the road is where the heart is, because it had a strong structure. "Vulnerable and honest" is Jes's song about how she wants to feel free and also feel like she is home, so she's in second. And the top one, a "perfect marriage of music, melody and emotion," goes to -- not so fast, Brian -- Johnny. Awesome! That's good.
Johnny: "I am a force to be reckoned with and I just proved it. [Wait for it.] Hey, guess I don't suck..."
#1 hooker Johnny gets an extra thing this week: He picks his whole team up front, instead of going round about. He's annoying and awkward about it -- but the worst part is that it means he can't have Jes or Jackie, the best people for him to work with and the best people period.
Johnny pretends that he's going to pick Nick despite his awful behavior, and then is like, "Just kidding, that would suck!" but he has such a gentle way about him that it's not the meanest joke in the world, except we're accruing Nick hate at a faster speed than really looks good on the rest of them. And of course this means Nick's compromised drama-queen ass has to be like, "Whew! All I wanted in life was to not be on Johnny's team!" But since this episode so far as been 100% about Jackie and Nick suddenly hating each other, I think we all know what's going to happen. So instead, Johnny picks Brian and Scotty, because they are male and not Nick, because Johnny is in some ways still a child-man.
Jes picks Amber, so they can finally become one person. Just kidding, everybody is now a distinct person. Jackie picks Karen, because they make sense as a team especially on a road trip song, and because Karen is easy to control because she's sort of a dolt. Jes picks crazy Melissa because she liked her hook, because they're the two most like space cadets even if the margin of spaciness between the two of them renders the comparison unrealistic. And that leads to Sonyae and Nick being the last to be picked, because they are the worst as human beings. Then #3 Jackie does something so amazing.
Jackie: "I'm not sure what to do. Because I really like Nick, but he doesn't like me."
Even Nick is like, Good one, because he recognizes class-A group manipulation when he sees it, but it gets even better because now #2 Jes has the option of keeping her team the way it is (Amber-Melissa-Jes), or taking on Nick as the odd one out, and she leaves it. So now he's been not just passed over three times, but super passed over three times, which on the one hand feels like heaven but on the other hand only feeds the monster that squats inside him. Plus, bottom line, Jackie has to take both Sonyae and Nick on her team with Karen. I wish they would win, but that's a mix of folks I'm not clear about how it will work.
ROAD TRIP
Karen brings up this whole idea about how she has wonderful things inside her that the world and road will see or whatever, and Sonyae points out that it is clichéd, and Jackie tries to stay with her idea of making a song about going for your dreams and being awesome and not pussyfooting around. They concede.
Johnny-Scotty-Brian put on their sunglasses and dude out and Scotty asks what the song is about, and Johnny is like, "This song is about how I want everything handed to me, especially art, because I'm still young enough to think that sometimes things ever work that way." Scotty wonders if maybe we can streamline this concept in the song, and Brian feels left out, just like every day of his life.
Jes-Melissa-Amber think about her high-range inability to find her place in the world that doesn't involve being a backup singer, which is her main job right now. They talk about how this is also why Melissa's sad hook was so good about how if she doesn't leave town and stop stagnating, she will die. Amber loves that too, and they have a whole meeting of the minds. Jes starts crying once she incorporates the Melissa concept of losing yourself entirely if you don't leave town, so that's probably good.
MOTEL
Jackie: "As a touring musician I often stay in the most disgusting places on earth. But this is one of the most prestigious one-star motels you've ever seen."
She's so funny. I can barely remember hating her in the past.
Over door, Johnny busts out the beers and attempts to have like authentic guy moment in his entire life or else why did he even pick them. Sadly, he is with Scotty and Brian, who are similar amounts of gay but in opposite ways.
MELISSA OUTNICKS NICK
Melissa-Jes-Amber do some songwriting, which is always nervous to watch because it's too real, like to actually hear somebody say out loud, "But 'wine-covered hills,' isn't that kind of overdramatic?" It's just too much. Those are inside thoughts, those songwriting thoughts.
Melissa: "Jes should do everything I say because I went to Stanford."
Okay, but: You are mentally ill. You have mental illness.
Melissa, breaking one cardinal reality-TV rule after another: "I can write circles around these people. [Verbatim, this bit.] I would have been better off showing up with a simple mind."
What. An. Asshole.
BROPLACE BRODOWN
Johnny's Song: "I am on the run from something lurking in my makeup. It is my firm hope that this thing does not define me, but perhaps fear is the better part of valor in this instance."
Johnny's Song: "I am the victim of gossip. I will also be leaving this behind."
Johnny's Song: "Perhaps if I keep running from my actual life, I will accidentally run into an ideal life where things are how I want them."
Scotty & Brian: "We don't really understand your anxieties which makes it harder to help with this song."
Johnny: "If I could actually verbalize my anxieties I think I might drop dead. That might actually happen. It's much better to be vague and weird."
Scotty & Brian: "As long as you know your audience, I can see that working out."
Johnny: "Can you honestly picture anybody but emotionally arrested young men exactly like me buying into my privileged white male angst?"
If Nevin were here, he would advocate some authenticity right up in there. I miss him so much. He knows exactly how a widow or an orphan would feel. On a road trip.
NICK SURPRISE, NATURALLY
Team Jackie-Karen-Sonyae-Nick, which just on the face of it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Jackie and Karen may or may not be a good match, based on their samenesses, but honestly you should just keep Nick with Melissa at any cost because he's a wonderful collaborator when it's time to do that, but otherwise a total piece, so you should keep him happy. We don't negotiate with terrorists, but neither do we argue with toddlers.
Nick: blink-182 riffs.
Karen & Jackie: "Once again, Nick is a dream to work with. It's so confusing."
Karen: That big old voice.
Jackie: Loving it. In fact sends Karen outside to brainstorm because she's so good -- and so loud.
All three of them engage in this wonderful thing, with Sonyae not really left out and certainly not being uncool, but not engaging in the process in the same way the others are engaging in it?
Sonyae, verbatim: "I'm a bit more of a thinker and gem-dropper. [Yeah, she said that.] Karen is dropping-dropping-dropping, but seldom a gem. [That too.]"
Jackie tries to get Sonyae back onboard, and it works pretty well. Jackie loves everybody, Nick looks like he's in heaven, and Jackie covers Sonyae with kisses. It is an actual pleasure to watch all of this happening. Of note: Sonyae seems to be correct regarding her gemology assessments in re: Karen. Karen, you remember, who thought that sparkling feminism might include lines like "I know you like that so I'll cook it." Of note on sleeping arrangements: All three girls in this team take the bed; the Bros, of course, sleep as far away from each other as possible or else why even go on TV.
STUDIO PRACTICE
Team Jackie claps along with themselves and seem like an actual band that has been on the road together. Jackie's like, "Never in my life has it been this great." Well but actually what she says is "easy," which makes me uneasy, because that's a jinx.
Team Bros: Johnny tells us he's a perfectionist, which while in theory is a good thing to be in practice is just another word for shirker, and then drops some perfection gems of his own.
Gem: "I'm sick of playing it safe?"
Gem: "Something-something."
Gem: "Not... Not losing isn't the same as winning."
So they all kind of realize that Johnny is losing his mind, and then he goes running out into the wild blue yonder with his Brooklyn tangled up around his ankles so he can whine in the bathroom mirror about how he's such a perfectionist, and try on different ways of saying it, and think about glasses on/glasses off, and poke at the thing he thinks is love, and be desperate in every direction like some kind of nuclear Scott Pilgrim.
Later, he goes to have a drink with Jes, and tries to get his flirt on, and it's cute and it's happening. They talk about how they don't want to write together because it's so hard to concentrate around each other, and it's gawky and it's hipsters in love and I refuse to indulge it, because it's the opposite of love. Yucky hugs and pretending they're infants and oh my God it's so weird because I want it but I don't want it and I want to blah-blah-blah and I'm so silly with my dumb crush but not embarrassed enough to stop talking endlessly about it.
Exactly what people who have been raised by television think dating is like.
Like -- like I even have to tell you what happens -- when she leaves, he closes the door and slides down it with his eyes rolling back in his head, and it's so fucking stupid. Because you knew he was going to do that, and he knew that he was going to do that, and halfway through their flesh-crawling hipster date he was thinking about how he was going to do that, and she left knowing he was going to do that because she's just as bad, and then when she left he did it. And the cameras were filming the whole time. Not just the cameras that are constantly running in his head, watching his every move and grading it and wishing he could document it, but actual Bravo cameras as well.
Love tears you apart like a million lions and then puts you back together slightly better than you were before. It is not cute and it is not sweet, it is life-changing. And you don't ask for it, and you don't rehearse it, and you don't pray for it, because it's the end of the world that you used to know and the beginning of another one, and nobody in their right mind goes looking for the apocalypse. Or goes sliding down the door, blissed-out, when it comes, because when it comes to that door it looks a lot more like Jack Nicholson than Shelly Duvall. Which is how you can tell the real from the fake: The latter feels like a story happening around you, the former feels like something happening to you.
But like a girl who grew up thinking she knew what orgasms were until she had one much later in life, you get these boys who are so excited about the possibility and the idea of love, the idea of being engaged in a process and procedure they've seen happen all around them -- or at least has been marketed to them -- that actual life and actual love might never actually engage them, because it doesn't look like what's advertised. Not the storm or the flood, but a shiny butterfly narrative where you never lose control.
And people have always done this, but these hipster boys I am telling you, they are the worst. They're happier like that, because they have just enough self-knowledge to know that they're scared of the real thing, because when you're that surface-oriented anything else is amour fou and looks like drooling madness to them. And I'm not coming from bitterness or anything but observation on this, but it fucking kills me, because it's so inefficient and inauthentic, which are the two grossest things in the world to me, and the two things you can't ever in good conscience accuse a person of, because it's mean and it wouldn't make sense to them anyway.
But for real, why put all that time and energy into a meaningless rehearsal of something that you could actually be doing? And knowing that if you looked them in the eye and explained this, they wouldn't even argue. They would just think that you hate love and you hate romance -- not that you're just demonstrating proper respect for a very large and dangerous animal that gives life its meaning -- and go on waiting for the bluebirds and high-fives and tickertape parades due a young man who has accomplished love, and requiring everyone in a five-mile radius to validate it, because without an audience it isn't real. So it stands to reason that with a Bravo audience, even for a mid-list show like this, it's even realer. Right?
SONG TIME
We're painting the studio with amazing again this week, not on the road like you might think given last week's club outing, and we're in the company of Keith Naftaly, A&R for Jive. He seems like a sweet dad of a guy, but you don't ever trust A&R. We're also joined by Natasha Bedingfield, which is exciting for Amber because she is their kind of a singer. I hope she does something adorable!
Jackie-Sonyae-Jackie-Karen head up first to sing their song, "The Road Is Where My Heart Is." Nick points out that his group wins every time and hopefully will win this week. I do too, although I'm more excited to hear Johnny's one. It's got pretty good lyrics, this song, and pretty harmonies, and though the chorus is maybe walking the line between catchy and hacky, the judges seem to be into it. The Etheridge-y bridge takes full advantage of the ladies' great voices, and puts Jackie in the middle like it should, then finishes off with a sweet little Nick arpeggio thing.
Melissa-Amber-Jes do their little hat-wearing ditty "Home For Me," piano-centered with a very Tedder bass drum in the back that might mean points off because of adding production to the songwriting. The melody is prettier and the song overall has a lot more personality, but the judges look bored and Amber seems to be terrified the entire time. Jewel loves Jes's beautiful voice, and Natasha seems to be indulging them with a smile in the boring end of the song. Nick makes mean faces; Jackie thinks it's wrong for a road trip because it's so girly/singer-songwritery. Which maybe that's true, although there are lots of different kinds of road trips, but either way is a weak criticism because it was a good song. Jackie's talking-heads are weird this week. I think she/her team might be in trouble.
Bros bring a whole lot of intensity to it, particularly Johnny and his great voice backed up with some really gorgeous harmonies from the other two. Brian does weird hand gestures the entire time that are embarrassing in the way he always is embarrassing, but the judges are plainly in love with it. The other guys don't clap too much, and Nick talks a bunch of bitchy shit surprisingly enough, and they all go away so Jewel can discuss them behind their back.
Outside, Nick lectures everybody about how important lyrics are, and Johnny starts shit with him and the whole conversation is pretty boring, and they say some mad crap to each other about how lyrics + melody + whatever can make a song "sound like a poem" and honestly maybe somebody was making an interesting point but I sort of just blocked the whole thing out. There's a reason writers don't talk to each other unless forced. I'm pretty sure Johnny is right, except nobody wins when you have that conversation, especially when it's Nick. Choices you made put you in that situation.
JUDGING
Jewel describes the winning song as a "perfect blend of melody, structure and lyrics," which means Team Johnny, and then of course they win. Nick and Jackie are both bummed out, but Girlysounds over there on the couch are pretty happy for them. Nick yawns, and then even harder once the A&R guy asks them to sing the first lyric again -- embarrassing -- and Natasha spins them a little poem herself about how it's not only about a road trip, but like, about life.
So it's Team Jackie and Team Jes that are left. Girlysounds goes up first and we remember the haunting harmonies of their song. Jewel congrajewelates them on improvement over last week, but notes that Team Jackie wasn't quite as great as the other one. So that means Sonyae, Jackie, Karen and Nick are the ones in trouble. Which bites, because I don't particularly want any of them to go. I don't know who should go. My heart says Nick but I know that would suck, and it's not even worth hating Brian because ass is toast soon enough. He's basically the male Karen.
Kara loved Jes's song, because it's something she would write; Natasha says she would honestly sing that song. A&R guy is amazed by that "gush," but didn't really love the hook -- more the arrangements. Nobody mentions the drum, which was the second-best part. They run out and everybody hugs everybody and the cameras linger on guess who.
So who's left? Jackie's not going anywhere, and we still haven't seen where Karen is actually at except for her dumbass lyrics, and then there's Nick who provides the villain structure of the show. Versus Sonyae, who did nothing this week that we know of, but always seems to do important things the camera doesn't catch.
Kara: "Who wrote the lyric I was put here for a reason and I want the world to see it?"
Karen: Obviously.
Kara: "That's easily the most beautiful part of the melody and the dumbest part of the lyric."
Karen: "You told me to write the truth and I guess what I heard was 'The clichés that make up most of my mind,' so, sorry about that."
Kara: "Well, but truth can be interesting and new and things we never said before."
Jackie: "Well, yeah. Karen wrote fifty pages of lyrics and we couldn't use any of it. She's kind of childish. Not to say stupid. But well, that too."
Nick plays the riff from the beginning of the song again, and Kara nods because it's beautiful, filigreed like a "Maggie Mae" kind of thing, but the problem is that the song doesn't continue that motif. Jewel agrees that they should have kept that part of the song going, but nobody really takes responsibility for that.
problem: "I don't believe in losing sleep/ Kinda wish I woulda."
Kara: "The first line: Atrocious."
Jewel: This gum-smacking nasty hilarious face about it.
Jackie: "Oh, that was all me."
Jewel: "Fuck does it even mean?"
Jackie: "Like, that I don't believe in losing sleep? Over spilt milk, like wishing I would have done anything else. You know what I mean?"
Judges: "We are puzzled. Your opening line shouldn't be confusing."
A&R loved the bridge, including Sonyae's clichéd line about how the only compass that she's got is the beating of her heart. What they think is cliché versus what they don't, it's sometimes bewildering. Jackie loses it backstage while they deliberate, once again, and at least feels silly about it. Pulling for ya, girl. Stop crying.
They bring them back out, having pretty much ruled each of them safe throughout, but apparently not all to the same degree. Nick is safe, of course. Sonyae, for writing the best lyric, is safe. So now it's Jackie and Karen, two of the best ones. I hate reality TV. There's nothing wrong with it, this process, but it's a killer to watch this happen.
Jewel blames them both, but I'd imagine Karen's refusal to use her brain after three weeks of polite requests might do it. But before we get there, let's have another breakdown from Jackie, who cries about how they liked so many parts of the song but yet they were in third place. Jackie sometimes I think she forgets how this shit works. On the other hand, Jewel totally gets to drop the word "onus" in casual conversation, which is a nice feeling.
Kara: "Jackie, you wrote a good hook that had potential but you didn't drive it home. Get it? 'Drive'?"
Kara, essentially: "Karen, for a girl from Nashville you are not a great lyrical songwriter. I think that you may be illiterate, but mostly I think it's just because you're incredibly boring and seem to have a stake in staying that way."
Karen: "But I can make biscuits!"
Jackie's safe, of course.
It'll be sad to see Karen go because she's cute and has a voice, but yeah. Being a cliché machine is something you can do after you're successful. I guess she didn't make it easy enough to love her. I guess the onus was on her this time, and the biscuits weren't enough.
And Nick? Crying his guts out and whispering helpful words in her ear before she goes. What a mixed bag he is, our Nick. You think he's gonna zig, he zags. I wish there was a challenge where they were like, "Nick, just for like one minute act how you actually are. This bizarre sine wave chaos of personalities is really bewildering. The onus is on you to be one human person for a contiguous period of time."
week: Reality show fighting, more gross hipster-smushing, and most skin-crawlingly of all, the one I've been fearing since this show was announced, yes, they're all going to be rapping. So yeah.