Previously: Nick's such a douche that it's getting boring. Sonyae made the boys cry, Jackie and Brian became likeable, Amber went home or something, and hipsters made sure we saw them fall in love.
Eight freaks left. Wait, so who went home last week? Amber, dude. You just typed that, like, one second ago. Mystery solved on why, though.
Johnny's gotta be showering in his lonely one-person apartment when the camera crew arrives. At the time they told him they would be arriving. So he would have the option of either wandering around on-camera in a towel, or not.
Melissa, who has become Midwestern: "Oo gash, Jeckie, we gat a letter from Juuuuul!"Jackie: Awkwardly hugs Melissa for some reason.
Jes: "I hope we get to write a love song! Because I am in love! Did you catch me saying that? Do you need another angle?"Johnny: "This is perfect for me, because writing a song about love proves how in love I am. I will call it 'Your Body Is Like Disneyland.' There will be strumming."
Nick: "I am in love too, I'm in love with hate. No, you know what, I don't even love hate. Hate is stupid. I am a hate hater."
Heading out, Nick thanks Brian for holding the door open even though he is a white person? Or something. Some stupid Nick thing. Brian laughs awkwardly and wonders if having a friend is worth it.
RYAN TEDDER
Oh man, I love him so much. Everybody's dying that he's there. Jes is so excited to meet him that she shoots a personality out of her left nostril. Sonyae is unamused by everything, at all times, that Jes does. As expected, the LA Arboretum will be inspiring them to write Love Hooks.
Jewel: "Go forth... And love."
For thirty minutes. Everybody runs off with acoustics and synths and shit gets embarrassing.
Scotty: "My hook is about how stupid you feel when you say 'I love you' and they don't say it back or they take a second to say it back."
Johnny & Jes: "We stared at each other instead of writing our hooks, because we are idiots."Johnny: "It's just so inspiring because it's so very real."Jes: "I just broke up with my boyfriend, so I shouldn't be dating a random. And then also this is a reality game show and not real life, so I'm going to look foolish no matter what I do at this point."Johnny: "I already do, so I'm good. Did you catch me playing the guitar for her, but mostly for you, at that gazebo? Did you get a good angle on that?"
Sonyae: "[Incomprehensible babble as usual.]"Nick: "I am just going to sing the same song I always sing, okay? But this time is about how a woman literally tore out my heart. Literally tore it out of my body. Probably because I am one hundred percent awful."Melissa: "[Some deluded cock-and-bull story involving her reproductive system.]"
HOOKOFF
Nick: Boring and dumb. Tedder loves it, of course.Melissa: "Dizzy." Hopefully not too dizzy to reproduce with her one ovum.Jackie: Beautiful, soaring and sad. What a voice she's got.My Ridiculous: Tedder likes the lyrics, but I must say I was distracted by the leather jacket and scarf. Everybody's wearing cool-weather clothes so it's not fully bizarre, but he's just such a funny little man about things. The song is, surprise, about stalking and boobies. Brian hoes the row he's been given.Scotty: Shoots for Jackie's whole tender-aching thing and ends up once again selling the performance, to the detriment of the song. They like the melody anyway.
Sonyae: "People love you to death all the time but I don't want to die from love so we are going to sing a song about 'Love Me To Life.' It will be boring and go on and on."
Jes, awkwardly and giggling and obnoxious: "It's You."Jewel: "The gross hipster way you're widening your eyes and sucking your teeth as though you are blowing your own mind -- plus this note from the producers -- leads me to wonder if your song is about Johnny or something."Jes: [More of this. It's skin-crawling. It's like watching an infinite number of drunk girls get pulled onstage by infinite friends to perform infinite karaoke that they're pretending they don't want to do.]
Nick, who is a Twat: "He has literally picked the ugliest girl in the competition. It's just annoying."
Never let it be said that Nick doesn't come through. If you really want to just hate somebody so much it takes on Orwellian, social overtones, just cut to fucking Nick. He makes me feel like nuclear war might be okay, as long as he died.
It's not the lookism -- which is just a myth perpetrated by ugly people to make everybody feel guilty for having eyeballs -- it's just the nasty, unclever, base-level shittiness. Like, instead of saying something funny, he's just not even trying anymore: I want to say something really mean, and that's the meanest thing I can think of right now, so just draw a line under it because I'm not using any more brain than it takes to go for the nuclear option. It's the same area of a person's brain that I think the n-word comes from.
Then her song is totally stupid and annoying and they are stalkers. Stalking each other. Watching themselves watch each other stalk each other and thereby stalk themselves. Lost in the funhouse.
Jewel, hatefully: "Very sweet."
Oh, that reminds me, I totally said that for my dance song I would write a dance song about not wanting to dance or not wanting to write a dance song, and then that's precisely what Jackie did for the rap challenge. What I'm saying is that I 100% love Jackie Tohn and I hope she takes this mother all the way to the end because there's nothing in my heart but hope for her. It's over. Love won.
Johnny's song is called "Wake Up To You," it's about Jes, and also losing his virginity. It goes like this:
"I really truly cannot wait to have sex with an area of your body/ And hold your breast in one of my hands/ Nothing excites me more than the female form/ Besides video games/ Because I am a man-machine of virile blue-blooded American desire/ Or secretly a furry."
Tedder: "Are you John Mayer?"Johnny: "No sir."Tedder: "Then why are you selling me a John Mayer song?"
Everybody: "Oh shit. That's like the one thing you can't say to Johnny and he totally said it. That's like mentioning somebody's obvious disfigurement. What happens now? I don't know where to look. If Johnny cries I'm leaving this arboretum."
Johnny: "It's what I do, Ryan. Asexual John Mayer covers. John Mayer/Jack Johnson/Jason Mraz slash-fic with a G rating. Were you not briefed?"
Just Scott Pilgrim amounts of not letting the world get him down, that's our Johnny. Oblivious little, entitled little, sweet little, Asian girlfriend-having Johnny.
TOP HOOKERS
Jes gets third place, which is thrilling because leadership is obviously going to be her strong suit. Tedder asks her to get to the point early, instead of wandering there with Zooey Deschanel as your spirit animal.
Nick's shitty song gets second place and he's so mixed up at this point that he gets angry at himself for getting second place because he should be getting second place goddammit.
First place is not Brian nor is it Melissa, nor it is Scotty. You already know who got first place, it is Sonyae. Whatever the point of this show is -- which we will never actually know what that is -- Sonyae understands it.
Top Hooker gets Sonyae two things: The team-picking ability from weeks , and but also she gets to pick everybody else's team for them. This is so dumb, like, Natasha Leggero's complaint about the rules making no sense on a game show is totally correct. "The Bottom Six choose the Top Two to enter the Final Five!"
Nick wants to be on Scott's team, but hates Sonyae, because she is a person.
Sonyae draws it out, but not that long. Her first choice is Scott, of course, and then Brian, "because he's totally talented," and then she explains that in fact the real reason she picked them is to fuck with Nick, because he only speaks to them, because he wants them to explain to him how being a man works.
For Nick's team, she chooses Johnny and Jackie, which pisses everybody off.
Sonyae: "I needed to split up Jes and Johnny, and then also they hate him too. We all hate him. He's the worst. But he's been going after us specifically. So fuck Nick."Jewel: "Um, Jackie and Johnny are your only competition on this game show. You just handed him the two best people. Maybe being a bitch is something you should leave to him."
Nick immediately insults both of them, which is also funny. Like, I think he hurts their feelings a little bit just in casual conversation.
That means that Jes's dumb song gets only dumb Melissa to help. Which is the funniest part of all.
SONGWRITING
Nick: "I hate writing clichéd songs about my clichéd feelings with Jackie, because Jackie is the worst person in the world."
Johnny & Jackie: "We will rewrite the song right in front of you. It's like got three acts and multiple girls and points of view in it. It's going to be like the Inception of poser surf-rock. Then you will sing it in your whiny voice."
Which, you know I love me some Johnny and Jackie, but what a fucking egregious nightmare to have both of those nerds nerding it up on your hooky punk-lite Plain White T's song of the summer. With like time travel in it, and various voices and time frames and like, Rachel MacAdams is in there, and Ashton Kutcher ends up with no arms and legs over the course of the song, and like half of the song is just footnotes to passages and to other footnotes and there's a minotaur, and they go to a circus or something and it turns out that the twins from the first part, their dad is also a twin, and his kids are also twins, and then they all have twins.
Something amazing happens in the editing where they come up with two names for the two girls in the story that happen to be the names of the girls in the real-life version of events that inspired this song for Nick. How boring. How absolutely boring. Just as boring as him bitching about Jackie feeling empowered to share her thoughts, or watching Johnny find himself hilarious when really he's just being kind of half-heartedly weird.
Also the names are Stephanie and Monique, which tells you even more about Nick than you already knew, which is basically all there is to know about Nick.
Jes & Melissa: "[Not even a conversation, just like this fluttering tweeting sound of them talking to each other.]"Jes: "Melissa doesn't really contribute anything. Ever. Beer farts and Native American lore. That's it really."Melissa: "I refused to help in any way, because why should I write a song about Johnny?"
Whatever, what a lie. I want to write songs about Johnny as my actual job. Also, Ryan Tedder is a known recycler of things so I wouldn't worry about it. I love him, but the man wrote a song with a straight face that goes "Why does love always feel like a battlefield?" as though he invented that concept. I would honestly just let the hacky person -- Melissa, Nick -- drive. Go for it. Sonyae's going to win anyway.
Brian, Scotty & Sonyae: It's amazing. It's so beautiful. The kind of song that just might love you to life. If that meant anything whatsoever.
Melissa & Jes: More honking and buzzing sounds. Jes has the plague I think.
Jes, verbatim: "I'm having a hard time thinking."
AM
Nick: "Jackie's voice is abusive to me, is how I consider it. I am a trooper for living in the same universe as her voice, and deserve unearned praise in recompense. Or at least a gift certificate to Hot Topic. This is actually how my brain works."
I can't believe one girl ever dated him. He's got the face of a bloody-eyed bassett hound, and the black and twisted heart of the bitchiest Capitol Hill assistant, and when he sings it sounds like he's taking it up the ass. What girl could pass that up. That whole package.
Sonyae: "Have you noticed yet that I only write songs about myself and my love life?"Brian: "Yes, I have noticed that."Everybody: "Yes, you are not telling us anything we didn't know."
Jes: Falls over dead.
Melissa: "Well, if you're dead and I don't give a shit, then who's going to write our song?"Jes, from beyond the grave: "I knew that bitch wouldn't help a sister out."
Commercial, then Jes recovers. Their song gets worse and worse.
For one second I felt this insane certainty that Jes was having a hysterical pregnancy from kissing Johnny after one beer, and that their fake love was so fake that it created a fake child, and that it would hypergestate and be "born" at the finale and Sonyae would be like, "Stop stealing my thunder having your imaginary hipster baby, I'm trying to win a game show here!" And Jes would be like, "I knitted you an AC/DC onesie, Imaginary Hipster Baby, but I still gotta put a bird on it," and Johnny would be like, "I am going to teach it awesome stuff and be a great dad, I always wanted to be a dad, Imaginary Hipster Fathers be good to your Imaginary Hipster Daughters," but then secretly start a blog about how much being an Imaginary Hipster Dad sucks.
Jackie reads lyrics that sound like word salad. Johnny points out that their song makes no sense and is full of infinite pronouns and causal regressions and the person is his own grandmother. Jackie says some crazy talk about I don't know what, and Nick checks out completely. There's a montage of Jackie talking, talking, talking forever and ever. Nick finds this unacceptable. They are shitty to each other. Nick thinks about killing himself. Johnny doesn't urge him on, because Johnny is a disappointment in many ways. I don't think it would be that hard. He's got like French amounts of turmoil in there.
TWIST
After the performances, the winning team will have one person win immunity for week. I think Jewel is just making things up at this point. week it's going to be the Top Hooker gets to pick who goes home and then they go home. And then everybody else has to write a song about it. In a genre the person picks. And they all have to use the Top Hooker's hook. And then the judges would somehow find a way to complain about it. All I know is, I wish the old A&R person would come back because I'm ashamed and confused by my feelings toward the new guy. (Kevin? Keith? Naftaly.) You're not allowed even to like an A&R guy, but I sort of want to marry this one. He is very special in some way. Maybe... Well, he was in radio. Maybe I'm responding to some imperceptible Ryan Seacrest thing, and that's all it is. It hasn't gotten to the point yet with Seacrest where I see him turning a street corner and go running off and calling his name and then it's nobody, or a short lesbian, but I can see it getting there. I miss him more and more, rather than less and less. Maybe Keith Naftaly is just that lesbian. The lesbian I need right now.
Nick: "Clearly that will be me that wins the thing you were talking about before a random radio reference caused Ryan Seacrest to obliterate your mind."
The one week he's not the king of the collabo, they throw in this twist. He's going to be so bitter! (How will we tell?)
Brian-Sonyae-Scott: Continue to be amazing.Jackie-Johnny-Nick: Can't even explain what their song is about at this point.
Jes: "I came back to life, and I'm wasting the shit out of it by worrying if Johnny will like the song I wrote about him."Johnny: "I guarantee that a song about me will be liked by me."Jes & Johnny: "We guarantee that schmoople shmozzle schnicklefrits. Put your face on my face. We were not popular in high school and missed out on some basic experiences."
Brian: "Sonyae, I continue to focus on your visual impact like every week when I've brought this up. Could you wear something red because Scott and I are wearing black?"Sonyae: "Nope."Brian: "Not even like a scarf?"Sonyae: "Nope."Brian: "Good having this talk with you."
PERFORMANCES
Ryan Tedder has aged like twenty years from what he looks like in my head. He's added twenty years -- and a porkpie -- to the image in my head. The boy's a time bomb!
Scotty-Sonyae-Brian: "Love Me To Life." Scott and Sonyae do this little skit with their song about feelings and things and Kara sways back and forth and Brian has lots of passion about his instrument. It takes a while to get to the very Tedder chorus, which is not as great as it sounded in the studio but might be awesome in some other performance. I don't know. Not as much of a fan as I thought.
Johnny-Nick-Jackie: "Stuck In My Head." It sounds exactly like a Nick song, which is to say if Yellowcard thought they were Elvis Costello. I don't know the surf-douche world enough to know if that's a burn, but I hope it's the meanest thing you can say. Once Jackie gets involved, vocally, it's gorgeous. She even does some of his blink-182 pronunciations. Then Johnny does a guitar solo and it's the dumbest thing, but he's so cute though.
Jes-Melissa: "It's You." Basically an entire song about what it would be like to be born without genitalia.
"I want to play kickball with you/ And go see Milo & Otis with you/ And we can pretend to cry or be scared during the sad or scary parts/ To impress each other with our total authenticity/ And hand-holding stamina/ And I want to have a slumber party in my parents' basement with you/ And swim out to the tire swing with you/ In a one-piece bathing suit/ That I knitted myself."
BACKSTAGE
Melissa's still doing that fucked up affected unreal Hogwarts-Michigan-Toddler-Mouse Overalls accent, like her natural meanness and space-caseness aren't unpleasant enough now she's squeaking her way through the stupid shit she says in this unbearably cutesy way, and it's just so much hustle to get nowhere but Weirdsville, which is like her entire bag.
Melissa: "Usually I'm the crazy one!"Everybody: "Bitch, you are still the crazy one. If it's between you and absolutely anyone on this planet, you will automatically be the crazy one."Melissa: "I'm normal because I am weird. I choose to be weird."Everybody: "First of all, that's not true. Second of all, we just kind of realized this is giving you an excuse to talk about yourself, so we hate ourselves a little. Third of all, stop saying you choose things that happen to you. You do it all the time. And then you pretend that your retarded baby voice is not a choice."Jackie: "Jes is the most normal person here!"
Not untrue. Not really a compliment, but not untrue. Makes it all the easier to fall in love you. Now that I love Jackie it feels weirder to make fun of Jes, but the showmance thing, the Johnny of it all, is just too much. Too much to take.
JUDGEMENTATIONS
Jes-Melissa are the bottom song, of course, because one of them was dead and unfocused and the other one is a howling, awful lunatic who has not yet done Thing One on this show and only stays because of creepers like Karen.
Kara: "I loved the title of Sonyae's song, of course, because it's silly boring wordplay like this which has made me a household name that nobody can spell. Sonyae, perhaps you should get to the chorus sooner. Perhaps eliminate the verses altogether, and just sing those four words over and over for one million years until a person could literally die from agony. Works for Alicia Keys."
Jewel: "Nick, thank you for writing a better song than usual. I'm not naming any names, but I think it might have something to do with the people on your team who are way more talented and intelligent than you are, and who actually wrote the song."Johnny: "Well, I just want to make fun of Sonyae's song's classic structure and try to explain our song one more time."Kara: "I fucking hated this entire concept, the Inception thing about the girls talking to each other about the boy or whatever happened. Part of this is that I don't like women, an established fact is that I am uncomfortable with women, so I found the idea of a conversation between two women that didn't erupt into a sing-off or violence, I found that unbelievable. The other judges do not hate women as much as I do, so they didn't find it laughable."Everybody: Talks about this forever like it's not totally stupid.
The best song, it turns out, is Sonyae's song. Probably because of how Brian always plays in such a weirdly sensual fashion, probably that has a subliminal effect because it's hard to look at. Of course Nick shits himself about this, because other people winning equals him losing. But wait, who is going to get immunity? Brian made the melody for the verses, Scott did the Tedderesque track (which he loved, by the way, because duh) and then they decide that Sonyae of course contributed the most.
Sonyae is going to win this show, I think. That's honestly what I think. She's the right mix of things this show is about.
ELIMINATI
Jes: "I was sick when we wrote the song."Jewel: "That's not an excuse. You always fucking do this."Jes: "I'm not using it as an excuse, I'm just explaining that I was sick."
Jewel: "Yeah, like as an excuse. How is that relevant? I have written songs while stranded in the mountains, skinning catamounts and panthers for their hides and meat. I have written songs while cutting off my own arm to escape a rockslide that pinned me for 127 hours. I have written songs while trapped in a car by a possessed Saint Bernard that symbolizes adultery. I have written songs while pretending to be mentally ill in order to document the inhumane conditions in our mental health care system. I have written songs while engaging in satyagraha, the nonviolent civil resistance that brought freedom to India. I once wrote a song in the middle of a very awkward conversation with Renee Zellweger. Don't you tell me... Don't you even dare..."
Kara: "Jewel, honey. Chill. Basically Jes, that was everything we've come to hate about you. Those barfy dumb lyrics cannot be blamed on your illness. Not unless that illness is Huntingtons."Jes: "It was me at my worst. I guess I was just so caught up in trying to convince myself and the entire world that I was in love with Johnny that I forgot what the fuck I am here for."
Kara: "There is no way to understand why you're crushed out. You never explained it. You gave no specific qualities."Jes: "That's what vague, fake love is all about! I literally cannot produce any qualities or features for you. It's all my own junk, spread on a Johnny-shaped piece of bread like solipsistic mayonnaise. He told me we were in love and I was like, 'That sounds fine to me.' How do you write a song about that?"Judges: "That's how you end up with fake, insincere bullshit that sells itself as though it were momentous. Teen poetry. That's who you're being right now."
Jes: "But Joanna Newsom sings about fruit and whatever, and my voice is actually listenable and not like being slowly crushed by a thousand squeaking chalkboards..."Jewel: "JES. There is a difference between being simple and being simplistic. You were the latter. The fact that you think you can fool us about that -- or really that you are yourself fooled about that -- tells us everything we fucking need to know."
Judges: "Melissa, you awful old bat. Why don't you tell us what you contributed."Melissa: "Nothing! But also everything!"Judges: "Well, for one example, did you write any of the words? What we call lyrics?"Melissa: "Nope."Judges: "Really?"Melissa: "Yeah, because of Johnny, and because I didn't like the words."Judges: "Well like, did you tell Jes that? Because your weird ass is going home, obviously, but it's still an interesting conversation because you're a maniac."Melissa: "I didn't tell her I didn't like the words exactly, but I quizzed her about why she liked Johnny. That was a dead end, because they don't actually like each other, they're just using each other as mirrors to adore themselves in."
Jes: "It's really hard to collaborate on a song when you're dead, or when the other person won't write the song for you. The fact that Melissa wouldn't write my song by herself so that I didn't have to do it -- that made coming up with an end product difficult."Jewel: "Are you kidding me? Think very hard about what you're going to say . We don't rely on others to do our work. We bring it, and we bring it hard. How do you not know this? How old are you?"Melissa: "If I could just interject a bunch of bullshit and make you all laugh at me..."Judges: "By all means, Melissa."
Melissa, still talking like a baby Harley Quinn: "I hate that this is getting personal."Everybody: "It's... Not?"Melissa: "No, I mean I'm about to make it personal, and I hate that. I hate that I'm about to do that. But honestly, Jes needs to go home instead of me."Jes: "How come, Crazy?"Melissa: "Essentially because you wouldn't read my mind. I sat there not saying a word, contributing nothing, staring at the wall, and you went with it."Jes: "I didn't take over. I am way too passive for that. I prefer to resent after the fact."
Jewel, amazing: "Jes. Do you have any respect for Melissa at all?"Jes: "Not really. I mean, have you met her? She's a windowlicker, Jewel. She licks windows."Melissa: "I do. I hate that I made it personal before. I will continue to speak at length."Jewel: "Melissa, did you contribute anything? Because this whole self-respect issue applies to you too. Blaming the other person for your failure doesn't mean you didn't fail. It means you planned to fail. Both of you assholes planned for this. This conversation right now."
Kara: "You didn't supply a single lyric. It's called songwriting, not songavoiding."Melissa: "I DID!"Jes & Kara: "Like what. What was one word in the song that came out of your brain."Melissa: "Well, when I say I wrote the lyrics I don't mean it in that way, I mean like, I sat there thinking that I didn't like Jes's lyrics. And then she didn't ask if I liked them."Jes: "And now we're in the bottom. Because neither of us wrote a song. For this songwriting competition."Melissa: "I DID!"Jewel: "Fuckin'... Melissa. What-words-did-you-write-in-this-song?"
Melissa: "She kept saying about there are first of all there are eyes wake up in the eyes."
Jewel: "What line did you write?"Melissa: "There was a smile and then I thought I really like window."Jewel: "But what line did you write?"Melissa: "But you gotta because this overdrive window smile morning wake up."Jewel: "What line did you write?"Melissa: "I just told her the fine apple lime haircut believable. You know like morning time. Like window morning."Jewel: "I am going to stab you in the motherfucking neck."
Kara: "Maybe if you'd told her you hated all the lyrics, you could sell us that you helped in some fashion. Instead, you are telling us straight up that you refused to do even that."Melissa: "Yeah, because she was sick and I didn't want to make her feel bad."Kara: "But you're still contributing to the process, if you do that. By talking and having an opinion."Melissa, the sudden Jekyll of her: "Don't you fucking dare condescend to me, LaGuardia. I got possums older'n you."Kara: (Turns to the other judges grinning wildly because that was amazing.)
Jewel: "Sprout, why should we keep you?"Jes: (An ugly, desperate, half-sincere display. Cannot squeeze out a single tear or even sell her desire to be on the show. I think maybe she's just a ventriloquist dummy from Jackie's shelf that came to life one day. Hocus Pocus Alamagocus.)Melissa: (Rolls her eyes because she is herself terrible, but also because Jes is super hard to deal with today. Or even look at.)
Judges: "Wuornos over there, how about you?"Melissa: "There are so many reasons."
Ryan Tedder: (Finally realizes this bitch is for real! His eyes get so wide!)
Judges: "Okay but like what are they?"Melissa: "I feel like it would be mean to tell you."
Kara: "You have an amazing opportunity to show your talent. Just handed to you, this show. Despite the mental health background check. You could really be using this opportunity to show what you're brilliant at."Jekyll again: "I don't need to show you a damn thing."Kara: (Checks the fuck out, finally.)
Jewel: "Melissa and Jes, it could not be clearer what's going to happen here, but let's go through the empty exercise of sending you both backstage."Jackie: "Jes, are you okay? You look like you're dying."Johnny: "Is it our baby? Is the baby okay?"Jes: "I think I have Epstein-Barr Disease or something with gluten. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome maybe."Johnny: "Chronic, whaaaaaat!"
What follows is an Easter Egg hunt of sorts, as Jes tosses herself around the room demanding attention and sucking the air out from all over the place, followed by Johnny who keeps trying to curl up inside her shirt and suck his thumb, like he imagines a boyfriend would do, but because this is the first opinion she's ever had she's actually working herself up to quite a lather, so she keeps shrugging his grody touch-attacks and flailing around the room, and it goes on forever and it's so awesome.
Scotty: "Well, I'm bored of that. Melissa, we've all worked with you so we know you're the worst. None of us has missed out on your charms. Therefore, why do you think any of us would side with you? What do you bring to the table, ever?"Melissa, verbatim: "Scotty, I'm not going to respond to your ridiculous questions."Scotty: "How is that ridiculous? Everybody else here is working their asses off and talking about themselves constantly, and yet you get to have this mysterious reason for being here that nobody's allowed to know about, and you are accomplishing this agenda in these mysterious ways that nobody's allowed to know about, and it's bullshit."
Melissa: "Essentially I am not smart enough for the inside of my own head. The chaos therein. So at some point I decided that I wasn't going to leverage my self-worth or allow myself to be judged, by offering up my art to these people."Scotty: "So your ass came on a game show -- a competition, with your peers -- but you don't want to feel judged? How the fuck did you think that was going to work?"Melissa: "No, no. I made this decision about five minutes ago. Retroactively."
Melissa: "I think the judges will pull some of that bullshit, like 'Who did the majority of the work' or 'Who contributed the least' or some bullshit like that."Jackie: "Or maybe it'll be some bullshit like, 'One of you wrote the song and the other one did nothing'?"Melissa: "Yeah, some shit like that maybe. I don't really understand sarcasm."
THE BEST PART OF THE ENTIRE EPISODE
Johnny, ver-fuckin'-batim: "I really feel for Jes. To have written about something so real for us, and then have it not do so well, I know it's awful for her."
Do we even need to parse it? Are we all clear on the Johnny concept at this point? God, that's golden. Just pure molten gold running through God's earth and out Johnny's mouth. I love it to life. "Something so real, something we both feel so strongly and then they didn't act like it was the most beautiful orchid ever smuggled. How hard for her." Nothing about the song, because the song was shitty and she might be dying, but just to know that he is sympathetic for her, in their ongoing teamwork to pretend that their relationship is real, makes me want to sing.
ELIMINEE
Kara: "You both are killin' us. Jes, the lyrics were stupid and meaningless, just like your love. Jandek over here, all you ever do is be crazy and bitchy. That's not writing a song, it's just bad behavior."Jewel: "Jes, you're obviously safe."Jandek Over Here: "You judges are fucking idiots. I don't mean that personally, it's just a fact."Kara: "Yeah, we're gonna miss you like crazy."
Melissa forces everybody to beg her for hugs, validate her misbegotten pride, and pretend that her stupid-ass Chicago-Infant-Farmer-Quacking-Deaf-Dolphin accent is real. One more turn 'round the old dancefloor of begging for attention. At some point her accent has gone into like Betty Boop-Prohibition Era-"He's So Unusual"-Harley Quinn territory: Ya talk of sweeties, bashful sweeties/ I got one of those! What a beast she is. There is something very True Blood about Melissa. (There is something very Johnny about "He's So Unusual," now that I've got it in my head.)
Melissa: "[I honestly could not understand this part because of her stupid made-up affected babytalking.]"
Something about starting a band with Blessing, I think. God, what an awful fucking idea. That's sort of ingenious. They could do covers of "Somewhere Only We Know" and "Mother Mother (Everything's Fine)" and she'd play the spoons or the didge and crack weird jokes between songs that nobody understands and the punchline's always "What Paxil subscription?," like, that's the catchphrase that doesn't even mean anything but she's so proud of it.
Melissa: "How many lightbulbs does it take to undo the weird zapping feeling under my scalp?"
Crowd: "How! Many!"
Melissa: "What Paxil subscription?"
Crowd: "...What?"
Melissa: "But seriously folks, have you ever really licked a window?"
Melissa: "My old man Mistah J got tossed back in Arkham last week and I'm writing a song to deal with my feelings about it. It's called 'Love Me In A Minute' and it's about how I wish a man would touch me."
Crowd: "Wait, you're dating the Joker?"
Melissa: "What Paxil subscription?"
And she drops the mic and walks offstage, convinced she can't do anything more awesome than that joke that only she understood. They loved me, she thinks. They loved me to life.
week: Busking, which will probably be a bloodbath; presumably we'll see yet more of Jewel regulating; Imaginary Hipster Baby turns out to be Imaginary Hipster Twins and Johnny is secretly a twin with John Mayer and Jes is a triplet with Amber and this other random girl with Feist bangs, and it turns out their parents are also twins and then they all have a bunch of twins and they start a circus and they don't even live in Brooklyn anymore, they live in Washington Heights, and then Melissa shows up dressed as an old crone selling apples and she steals the babies. All of them. And then Nevin sings for them. All in one hour this happens.