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Tuesday
We open with a bit of drama over the fact that Tommy is going to be playing drums behind whomever ends up with "Higher Ground" this week. Josh has it to begin with, but then cedes it to Patrice, who immediately starts freaking out over it. To the point where she's pinned up her hair in a crazy faux-hawk for the performance. She's completely overpowered by Tommy, of course. As for Josh, he's a adopted a take-me-or-leave-me attitude, so of course the guys love his version of Sublime's "Santeria," beatboxing and all. Dilana sings "Can't Get Enough" by Bad Company from atop the judges' dais. Ignore that, suckers. The show keeps digging deeper into Nirvana's catalog, and Toby pays the price with a bland cover of "Pennyroyal Tea" that's notable only in that it ends with him draping himself over some chick in the audience. Zayra belts out a thrash punk version of "867-5309/Jenny" while wearing another castoff outfit from Who Wants To Be A Superhero, and the judges finally admit that they're more or less keeping her around as a sideshow. Great. Just what I signed up for. Magni sings "Clocks" by Coldplay, but doesn't really get into an emotional place until he learns that the show is flying his family in from Iceland (and in a rare display of taste, we're spared the spectacle of a surprise reunion onstage). Jill takes the mid-'80s classic "Don't You Forget About Me" and updates it for the late '80s. Bleah. I'm officially over Jill. Ryan -- get this -- Ryan knocks it out of the fucking park with a dramatic performance of "Losing My Religion" from behind the piano. I had no idea he had that in him. Lukas screws the pooch on Hole's "Celebrity Skin;" having forgotten the words, he's reduced to more indistinct mumbling than usual while pacing the runway and singing with his back to the audience. He gets busted for it, too. A power-suited Storm tones down the dramatics for a straight reading of "Changes" by David Bowie, and the judges love it, ignoring a few range and key issues that are apparent to us at home. And Dana wraps it up with the theme from CSI:NY, otherwise known as "Teenage Wasteland," otherwise known as "Baba O'Riley," otherwise known as the song that Dana sang a lot better than I thought she would. The initial bottom three? Toby, Zayra, and Jill. Not to worry; Toby's fans will see that and rush to the polls. Unless of course they're pissed at him about that audience member.
Wednesday
Ryan deservedly gets the encore, making Lukas the only remaining Supernovice who's never sung on an elimination night. Even his hair is droopy after his humiliation of last night. Dana, true to her word, went ahead and got a tattoo. It's a big, black swastika that covers her entire face. No, actually it's a delicate little treble clef over her right hip that Miss Alli correctly describes as "less rebellious than no tattoo at all." Dana then finds herself in the bottom five, along with last night's initial victims -- Toby, Zayra, and Jill -- and the return of Patrice. Jill is the first to be called out for her bottom three performance. She sucks up to Gilby with a Heart tune, which she executes solidly, if occasionally annoyingly. Dana is second, and she sings "House of the Rising Sun" exactly the way the Animals wrote it (I'm kidding; don't email me). Toby's fans saved him, and Zayra's goth supervillain costume goes to waste. So Patrice, in her second bottom-three performance in a row, sings a Jeff Buckley tune, except largely without the tune. Even so, it's Dana who goes home. No doubt a tongue-lashing from her parents over that tattoo awaits. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Tuesday
Brooke's showing a little more skin than usual this week. Nice...forehead. Her introduction alludes to the heat wave, like nothing's going to cool you down faster than packing yourself into a small auditorium with several hundred other walking radiators and then screaming and jumping up and down for an hour. She introduces the Supernovices, Supernova, and Dave, who for some reason his holding up a little idol of some sort. If there's an explanation for that, I missed it, because it's tornado season here in the Midwest so the guy who's been doing the weather on my CBS affiliate since I was half of Dana's age has to show his face and some weather radar of places the station doesn't even reach. By the time he's done yapping, the show has already moved on to some Mansion footage. Fortunately, I caught this week's webisode, so I think I'm pretty up to speed with what I missed, aside from whatever vapid handoff Brooke had to pronounce.
So when the songs for this week went up on the bulletin board, Lukas (rebellious iconoclast that he is) took them all down, carried them out to the courtyard, and dropped them in a stack on the picnic table. One of the songs was "Higher Ground," which caught Josh's attention because it's originally a Stevie Wonder song. But Tommy Lee's going to be playing on it, which likely means another double cover, Red Hot Chili Peppers style. So Josh smoothly withdraws his foot from that particular bear trap and resets it for to the other Supernovice who expressed interest: Patrice. At first she can't believe her good luck, and snaps it up. But almost immediately, she starts stressing about what she's gotten herself into. Especially after being in the bottom three last week. Later, we see her in the house, and Ryan wanders past, ominously intoning, "Tommy Lee." Patrice jumps on him -- politely, and in a civilized tone, but jumpy none the less -- asking him to knock it off. Someone's nervous already. She's like an actor you can't say "Macbeth" around. Ryan insists that's the first time he's said it, although he's heard others say it. Patrice apologizes. Ryan heads off down the hall, mouthing "Bitch" at the camera behind her back. Classy.
Back at the auditorium, Ryan and Patrice share a laugh in the Nut Gallery over this footage which they've probably just seen for the first time. Ryan's yammering some excuse to Patrice, although we can't hear what it is. And Patrice can't be thinking about that now anyway, because Brooke tells her that she's up first, which means: Tommy Lee. Oops, sorry, Patrice. Patrice's hair is all crazily pinned up in a way that makes her look like a rooster with a Women's Studies degree from UT-Austin. Amid screams, Tommy strips off his ratty little shirt and gets behind the drum kit. Brooke introduces "The Red Hot Chili Peppers' version of 'Higher Ground'" and they're off. Tommy plays in the style we all remember, all twirling drumsticks and flailing elbows and that expression that looks like he expects (quite reasonably) to put his own eye out at any second. As for Patrice, she's rather out of her depth here, although she gives it her all. There's lots of strutting and preening and even a little rolling around on the floor. She even steals a few of Storm's facial expressions. But then she mis-times her final pose at the end of the thrash coda. And then Tommy wraps it up with the longest drum solo I've seen on network TV in about twenty years before grabbing his shirt and scampering back to the judges' dais. "Tommy Lee!" Patrice announces to the audience. Oh, so only she's allowed to say it?
After the cheering dies down, Dave gives Patrice credit for her vocals, power, and energy onstage tonight. But as far as sharing the stage with Tommy, Dave says it confirmed his worst fear: "I think there are about eight of you who will literally disappear standing in front of this guy." The Supernovices look deeply bummed, even the other three. "This guy," meanwhile, is at this moment trying to get himself untangled from the shirt he started to put back on wrong. But Dave appreciates Patrice's new variety thing, and still thinks Patrice did a great job. Encouraging. Tommy says, "Damn, that was fun!" But he admits that he gets into his "own little world" behind the drum set, so he has to ask the audience how Patrice did. They roar their approval. Or perhaps they're roaring "A FEW PITCH PROBLEMS ON THE SECOND PRECHORUS" or "QUESTIONABLE PHRASING ON THAT THIRD LINE." It's hard to tell. "I was pretty awesome, too," Tommy giggles. Gilby tells Patrice that it took guts to step up after last week. "You're right," Patrice says, quite seriously. Gilby laughs and tells her she did an "awesome, awesome job." It's heartening that even after all their years in the biz, these crusty geezers still love to get up onstage and blow it out. Well, except for that prudish old sourpuss Gilby.
Lest we forget, Brooke reminds us that that could have been Josh just now, although she leaves out the fact that they probably wouldn't have been as nice to him. Instead, he's doing the "reggae hip-hop tune 'Santeria'" by Sublime. Josh seems to have adopted a "this is who I am; take me or leave me" attitude that is probably much healthier, although it probably doesn't work in his favor as far as the contest goes. I really wish he'd left the dopey hat he's sporting tonight, is the only thing. He takes the stage, and either he or the House Band starts the song on the wrong beat, but he quickly recovers and the band follows. Like my old boss at the radio show used to say, that's how you know you're dealing with pros; even when you screw up they can still make you sound good. It's a pretty faithful version, of the song, at least until Josh starts beatboxing. I hate beatboxing. But he's clearly having fun, now that he's given himself permission to be himself. Now let's watch the judges eviscerate him for it, shall we?
But to their credit, they don't. Dave tells him he sounded great. Josh interrupts to apologize for missing the beginning. "Nobody cares about that," Dave assures him. "You played it off, it was fine, dude." You can always count on Dave to not give a crap about the technical stuff. Tommy said that the song made him wish he was on a beach in Jamaica with a girl-drink. Jason says that he enjoys Josh's musicality, and that he should "Continue to bring your thing to this." Josh must be glad to hear that; it must have been tough for him to get any stage-door action on the weeks he left his thing back at the Mansion.
Whoa, just when you think you have Dilana's sartorial thing figured out, she throws you another curveball. Tonight her costume is reminiscent of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome; she's Mel Gibson and Tina Turner. She's wearing a leather jacket with leather pants, but large swatches of the pants are, like, black nylons instead of trousers. It's quite striking. Not remotely attractive, but striking. She takes the stage to sing a bar-band standard, probably just to prove that she can. It's "Can't Get Enough" by Bad Company, and she comes out growling. By the end of the first verse, she's descending the steps from the stage to the main floor and cutting across to the back. Thank God for the crane shot following her from directly overhead, or the wee little woman would vanish entirely from view. She goes all the way to the judges' dais and hops right up, singing and bopping around in front of Gilby, Tommy, and Jason to the audience that's turned fully around to keep watching her. Like they have a choice. After a bit of that, some CBS grip presents himself at her feet, so she hops onto his shoulders for a ride back to the stage. I can't tell if he was one of the guys who caught Storm last week or not. Either way, I'd like to see his job description. "Equipment moving, light hanging, Supernovice schlepping." Back onstage, Dilana does a chorus with drums only, finally going into her higher register, which sends Jason rocking back in his chair, arms held out before him as if to ward off an assault. But in a good way. Long story short, Dilana blows everyone away again.
After Dave sits back down from the standing ovation he gave her, he has one thing to say to Dilana: "Are those my pants?" Tommy tells her it was "tight" and that he loved it. Not clear if he's talking about the pants as well. Gilby's got her figured out; he says that their challenge as judges is to imagine each Supernovice in front of Supernova. So Dilana came back and put herself right there. "Sneaky, but good," he says. That's because he hasn't yet seen the footage demonstrating that Dilana standing up is about as tall as the band sitting down. Brooke gives her voting spiel for Patrice, Josh, and Dilana, and then there are commercials.
Coming back, Brooke gives a little intro for Toby, saying that he's got the looks and the voice, but has yet to deliver a killer performance. Maybe that's because Toby is currently busy worrying about the proper positioning of his dog tags before he goes on. Toby's singing "Pennyroyal Tea" by Nirvana, which, dude. Is there like a contractual thing with Nirvana where they have to be on every week? And is relatively obscure crap like "Pennyroyal Tea" really worth it? Anyway, it starts out all slow and intense with the blue lighting, and Toby's doing his best to sell it. Tommy entertains himself by air-drumming. Toby eventually hops down off the runway into the audience. Dilana smiles indulgently at him, like, Knock yourself out, lightweight. I'm actually surprised that Toby is given space to sing rather than being mobbed and stripped naked. Instead, almost the reverse happens: he gets to the last line and wraps his arms around the nearest audience member. Who happens to be a buxom blonde chick, but you knew that already.
Dave calls Toby's performance "pretty good," but says that following Dilana into the audience was "anticlimactic." Well, not for that one audience member, probably. Her climax will merely arrive a bit later. Toby says that he really wanted to bring across the last line, and Dave credits him for becoming "man of the people. Good on ya." Tommy greets Toby with the usual "'Ello, mate," but Toby merely smiles and bows, "Hello." Glad to see him starting to reject that Crocodile Hunter mantle they keep trying to throw over him. Good on ya, Toby! Keep it up and I'll buy you a Foster's. Tommy thanks Toby for changing it up like they asked, and tells him to keep doing it. Jason likes the idea of "letting the audience in...Was that someone you just met?" Toby confirms it. She looks pretty happy about it, too, even though the crowd-cam is currently shooting her from boob-level.
"Love Zayra or not," Brooke begins...wait a minute, is that not clear? Have I not made it apparent that I do not love Zayra? Well, in any case, tonight she's doing another up-tempo song, which means more patented Zayra madness. Goody. This week, it's everyone's favorite Tommy Tutone song, "867-5309/Jenny." Now, as Paul the Keyboard player explained in an interview during the webisode, Zayra "took everything that was cool about the song and got rid of it." Which is kind of unfair of him, because when the band kicks in, it sounds good to me. It's a drum-and-bass thrash beat, almost double-time from the original. But then she starts singing in half-time, in half-pitch, and it's not good. I do dig how between the lines of the verse, the guitars come up, build slowly for a couple measures, and abruptly drop out again before the line. It's just too bad about, you know, Zayra. Further compounding the tragedy is her outfit, which makes last week's spacesuit seem suitable for a state dinner. Tonight she's wearing thigh-high boots, fishnets, a leopard-skin leotard with a wide leather belt, a black cape, and elbow-length gold lamé gloves. As she "performs," Dave leans forward in his chair in amazement. Lukas is just embarrassed for her. The judges seem torn between fascination and horror. In her favor, she manages to refrain from dancing until the end, but then she gets it in there with a vengeance. She ends up on the floor, and Supernova is at a loss as to what to make of this. "She's so much fun!" we see Dana telling another Supernovice over the racket of the crowd.
Dave, still leaning forward in his chair, starts to say something to Zayra, but literally dissolves into giggles instead. "I'm gonna need a minute to process what I just saw," he tells Brooke, who asks if the other judges are in the same boat. Tommy asks for six minutes. Even though this is taped and that could have been edited out, Brooke takes us to commercial anyway. Or maybe she's trying make us sit through all the ads so as not to miss one juicy word.
So when we come back from commercial, I'm wondering if Dave didn't call a sidebar with Mark Burnett to ask if they could just eliminate her on the spot. If so, Burnett talked him down. Dave opens by saying there has been "controversy" since last week's elimination. By which he means that a lot of people think Zayra should have gone home instead of Phil. But he says, "The reality is that you change it up every week...my money's on that." Gilby tells Zayra that her vocals were "off," which is both a spectacular understatement and beside the point: "We're gonna keep you around because we want to see what you're gonna do." Ah, now I get it. Zayra's staying on to provide the freak show. Good to know. I just can't decide if that makes it more or less embarrassing for the people she's already outlasted. Gilby remembers to throw in a little lie that they want to find out if Zayra should be in front of the band, not because it's the point of the show, but so he can say, "But I'm not wearing leopard pants to match that." Tommy just invites Zayra to mud-wrestle with him. At least someone's treating her with the respect and dignity she deserves.
Brooke tells us that Magni left behind his friends and family in Iceland. "I feel for you, Magni," she adds sounding like what she actually feels is a slight draft. Magni's singing "Clocks" by Coldplay. It takes him a line or two to find the key, but when he does, it turns out to not be a good match for his voice. He's taken to heart the advice about engaging the audience, and sings to the front rows a lot. He does okay on the high notes, and ends up strong, although it's nothing spectacular.
It apparently sounds great in the auditorium, though, because the crowd is cheering wildly and even Lukas is up off his ass. Jason gushes, "Pure talent, through and through." Gilby calls it "awesome." But on another subject, Tommy asks Magni how it feels, "Missing your baby's first steps." What he's talking about there is in the webisode, Magni got an email video of his baby (who has more hair than Magni does) being quite cute and taking a halting and aided walk across the floor. Thousands of miles away in Iceland, which means the kid's got a long walk ahead of him. Answering the question, Magni holds it together better than I would, and says that it demonstrates his commitment: "If I didn't really want to be here, I'd be gone in a flash." Tommy says that he understands; his kids are there today. And he and the other guys in the band have decided to fly Magni's family in from Iceland to see him. The crowd erupts, the other Supernovices stand up and applaud, and Magni just smiles shyly. And my allergies start acting up. Stupid allergies. "I'm gonna go cry now," Magni says. No doubt. I've never been away from M. Small for more than a few days in a row, and I can't imagine what a month would be like. A whole lot happens in a month when they're that age.
Brooke introduces Jill by reminding us that last week, Gilby called her "cheap." Which in turn is not cheap at all. So tonight, she's keeping her hands to herself and singing "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds. The "Hey hey hey hey...whoo-oo-oo-oh" at the beginning is way too high, even for her, and she strains to reach it. Beyond the intro she's bar-banding it up again, with a slower tempo and loud, churning guitars in place of the original's throbbing bass on the verse. The keyboards are also really loud, like Night Ranger loud. She dances all over the stage, mostly managing to avoid slipping in her own flop sweat. After the merciful conclusion, the other Supernovices clap politely. Now that they know Zayra's in it for the long haul, it's not looking too good for Jill.
And in case we didn't get it, Dave says that there's a point in every rock show where people want to get a drink or go to the bathroom. "It would have been that moment," he says. "That was really not that good." So now we know that Rock Star tapings don't have bathrooms or a drink counter. One more reason for me not to crash one. Jill tries to smile through the pain, but doesn't sass back for once. Also for once, Tommy has some actual musical criticism: "One of the things that I love about that song [and who would have ever imagined Tommy Lee admitting to loving that song?] is the low register. That makes it sexy." He gives a vocal little demonstration of what he means, and it is in fact sexy, even though he can't sing. He tells Jill that singing it that high was "a little much." And damn, when Tommy Fucking Lee is telling you you're "a little much," you know you've gone too far. Gilby understates that she oversang it. "You're better than that," he says again. That makes three out of five performance shows that he's said that to her, raising for me the question that perhaps, despite her potential and raw talent, she isn't. To paraphrase Bull Durham, maybe she just has a million-dollar voice and a ten-cent head. The good news is that after her "Violet" debacle, someone clearly advised her not to scowl angrily at the camera during Brooke's voting spiel, even when she's just been given tough criticism. Instead, she's staring at us transfixed, her face frozen into a Chris Kattan rictus. That's our Jill all over: a step forward and a step back.
Coming back, Brooke tells us that Ryan has taken Supernova's advice to "change things up" to heart, so he's got his ass parked behind a baby grand piano. Ryan plays piano? Brooke leaves out the name of the song he's singing, but as soon as he massages out a few sad chords and croons "Life gets bigger," we know it's "Losing My Religion." I'd think this song would have been radioactive during song selection. Not that it's hard; the biggest problem my old band had with it was micing our acoustic mandolin to a sufficient volume without getting a bunch of feedback. It's just that there's no way to rock it out Supernova style. So Ryan, wisely, is taking it in the other direction. This is a sad song to begin with, but Ryan's making it downright mournful. In fact, his voice at first sounds like Michael Andrews on that "Mad World" song from Donnie Darko. And then he slaps the top of the piano before going into the chorus, which he sings and plays passionately and quite well, indeed. Paul the Keyboard Player is adding some faux strings from the synth as Ryan builds more and more, sitting alone in his isolated spotlight. He does the big vocal finish, and then tinkles out the mandolin coda as the lights go even more dramatic. The Supernovices are impressed. The crowd's impressed. Supernova's impressed. Even I'm impressed, and I'm not a Ryan fan at all. He and Storm share a pointy moment as he gets up from the piano and assumes the position at the end of the runway.
Dave is, if not at a loss for words, less articulate than usual: "Phenomenal...phenomenal... amazing...great musicianship on the piano. Beautiful." Jason again plays his increasingly worn "your best performance ever" card, which I think is actually an understatement. Tommy pays the ultimate compliment, from him: he says he's written a Supernova song on the piano and he can totally imagine Ryan's voice on it. But that's not Tommy Lee's ultimate compliment. This is: "By the way, that performance is so gonna get you laid, dude." Perhaps Ryan and Storm will be having an even pointier moment back at the Mansion later tonight.
Lukas's jacket tonight is made of red wallpaper that he tore off the wall of a bordello somewhere. He really shouldn't wear red; it makes him look like Elmo. Tonight, he's singing "Celebrity Skin" by Hole. But in this case, the hole is where Lukas's knowledge of the lyrics should be. The first sign that all is not well is when he pronounces the line "A walking study in demonology" as "A living cigarette, a nifta taugh." Further symptoms are the fact that his usual swagger and sneer are absent, and he's spending a lot of time singing to Nate the Drummer. Dude, we're out here. Dave and Gilby are clearly noticing. He wanders side to side as he mumble-shouts some more, then settles into an uncomfortable groove sauntering back and forth along the runway. And I mean a literal groove -- he's totally wearing a path. Jason's like, What? Even the show's director has given up on helping Lukas out, and the usual full-face close-ups are conspicuously replaced by the back of his skunk-striped head. Worst of all, he sings the last big note with his back to the audience. I would have thought he could fake this better, considering we generally can't understand him even when he does know the words.
Dave tells Lukas that that was his least-favorite Lukas performance so far. He acknowledges that Lukas has lots of goodwill built up for past performances, but this wasn't one of them. Gilby agrees, and busts on Lukas for showing us his back so much. Lukas makes the confession that he didn't have much "comfortability with the lyrics," and spins that he learned from it. "Remember those words, man," Gilby warns. Lukas gathers up the shreds of his dignity to stand to Brooke as she gives her voting spiel and warns us that more Who and Bowie are on the way.
Back from commercial, Brooke tells us that Storm is pretty nervous about showing her "softer side" with David Bowie's "Changes." She does look nervous, but it seems on purpose. When she takes the stage in a pantsuit and heels, she's singing the first verse softly (for her) over a single piano, and it does sound pretty. She picked a questionable key for her range, though, and has to go down an octave for the prechorus. Still pretty. Then on the "Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes," the whole band comes in, backing vocals and all. Surprisingly, Storm continues to keep at least one foot in contact with the stage at all times throughout, even as she works her way down the runway. She stays low on the bridge and through the rest of the song, and it's nice. Yeah, I'm going with nice. She can't play to the parking lot every week, and it was smart of her to figure that out without having to be told.
The crowd loves it, and Jason's up out of his chair. Dave says that it's his favorite performance of Storm's so far: "You stood there, you delivered the song, you showed vulnerability, you weren't doing the whole 'crazy, possessed-by-the-music' eyes thing." Storm laughs at this, because she can afford to. Gilby also tells her that she did great. Jason says that he would trade "that overdramatic thing for this classy thing...any day." Okay, but not every day. There's still something to be said for Storm's kooky side, I would argue. I'm not willing to permanently trade Storm Large for Sprinkle Medium. But then, if anyone listened to me, we wouldn't still be hearing Zayra sing 1.5 times a week.
Dana's doing "Baba O'Riley" tonight, which is so damn brave. Or stupid. The keyboards always sound completely wrong unless you get them exactly right, which nobody not in the Who ever does; there's no time to build the way you should in two minutes; everybody, but everybody suffers vocally in comparison to Daltrey; and even I can't hear it these days without imagining Gary Sinise's squinty face. As for Dana's face, she's going for angry, but having too much fun to pull it off. Which is not a bad thing. The driving, crashing chords over the fiddly synth is hard to resist, and I maintain that this is one of the few rock songs that actually resonates in human DNA. Rafael pulls off the guitar solo note-for-note, and then Dana sings a few more lines before lurching awkwardly into the coda, which is cut mercifully short. She winds up on one knee, microphone high over her head.
Dave tells Dana that he thought this would be too much for her, but now he has to admit that "I thought you sang it really well." There's not much force behind the words, though. Tommy asks why she picked it, having been in her own teenage wasteland just three short years ago. Dana says, "That song is a classic," and she forcefully hums the big chords in a way that gives the guys hope. Gilby says, somewhat mockingly, "That song's all about rebellion. Are you ready to be a rebel?" If Dana even understood the question, she'd scream, "Fuck you, Poor Man's Izzy Stradlin!" and then throw her microphone at him and storm off the stage. But instead, she eagerly announces that she's getting a tattoo tomorrow. Still. Not. Getting it.
Brooke gives the voting spiel one last time and opens up the voting. When we come back, she tells us, "The response so far is amazing," even though this was taped days ago. Only took me three weeks to figure that out, by the way. The initial bottom three? Toby, Zayra, and Jill. Toby's fans rush to their computers. You know, if that other show did this, maybe Jennifer Hudson would still be on it. And before we forget, Brooke lets the House Band take a little bow, and we even get their first names this time: Paul, Jim, Nate, Sasha, and Rafael. Sure I've been using them all along, but I had to look them up. Perhaps when we're down to only five Supernovices, we'll have time to learn the House Band's last names as well.
Wednesday
Brooke does her little introduction, saying that we're going to be down to a mere ten Supernovices by the end of the night. And then we go into that title sequence, in which Supernova looks like they're on some kind of awkward three-way date.
After that's over with, Brooke waves the envelope in her hand, which is going to be pretty grimy by the time she actually gets around to opening it. She thanks the "millions" of us ("us" in the general sense, which does not include "me")who voted. Really? Millions? Perhaps she's thanking individual cells. Summary of show premise, introduction of Supernova and Dave, blah blah blah, and then it's clip time.
There's some Mansion footage, where Magni is on the laptop watching that video footage of his baby walking. Well, sort of -- Mommy is holding the tot's hands, so he's at least a good month away from crossing the living room on his own. Magni might be home by then. Even so, it's an emotional moment for him, and he can only shake his head when Dilana asks, "Did he walk before you left?" Magni interviews that if he weren't 100% sure of what he's doing, he'd go home. More of Patrice's drama with Ryan over "Tommy Lee," which then segues into a recap of last night's performance show. A different recap from the one you just read, I mean. I've moved on from that. Now I'm recapping tonight. Do try to keep up.
Then we're in the post-show celebration at the Rock Star Mansion, where Magni is raising a toast to the best show so far. "I have no idea how we'll top that week," he says expansively. "Except that Lukas might actually remember his words." Heh. Lukas just rolls his eyes and gives a pained smirk. In an interview, he confesses, "I forgot basically all the lyrics to the verses." Lukas worries about it to Ryan, who tells the interview camera that he knows what Lukas is feeling. "The only difference is I experienced it weeks one through three and Lukas experienced it in week five." Subtle dig there; Lukas has less time to recover. Back in the pool room, Ryan assures Lukas that all of his other performances have been great, then tells the interviewer that Lukas lost some of his swagger. How much? Well, now Lukas is telling Ryan and Toby, "I deserve to be in the bottom three." I'd suggest checking him for fever, but with that forehead of his I'm sure they'd be able to tell from across the room. And then he's drawing himself a beer, berating himself, "The one song that sounds like Supernova, I have to screw up. Stupid." You guys, I'm serious, maybe it's a Hole thing.
And then we're back in the auditorium, where Dave piles on and asks what happened to Lukas. Lukas mumbles something about being only human, and that it was his turn to blow it. He adds that if he ends up in the bottom three, which he should, he's good enough to get out of it. That's quite a feat there, owning up to a mistake and still sounding like a cocky bastard all at once. Dave also compliments Lukas's hair, which looks like he walked under a door with a bucket of water balanced on top of it. Dave turns to Dana to ask if she went ahead with the tattoo she threatened to get. "Welcome to the ink party," Dana says as she rises, and then lifts up her top to show a fresh treble clef that looks like it was drawn on with a Bic Ultrafine. Some party. Looks like it's healing quite nicely. Too nicely, in fact. Shouldn't it be all crusty and red and bandaged? I suspect henna. But then Miss Alli and Trash remind me that the performance show was taped more than a day before. S-M-R-T, that's me. Tommy pretends to confuse "treble" with "trouble." Dana says that she's thinking about getting the bass clef on the other side. Dave says something about getting the bass clef on the back, and he and Dana chortle about "bottom end" and "low notes" and I really want to bust on them for being childish and gross, but the truth is that if Dave hadn't made that joke I'd be making it myself right now. So, go, Dave, I guess.
Gilby asks Ryan why all of the Supernovices didn't fight for the chance to share the stage with Tommy and show that they're capable of fronting the band. Ryan stalls by saying they should all have to answer that, which is a fair point. In fact, I'm wondering if Gilby didn't mean to ask Josh instead, the guy who chickened out in the first place. But instead of passing the mic to Josh, Ryan job-interviews that they didn't want to "lose focus" and pick a song for that reason only. He makes sure to add that Patrice did a great job and had them all envious, and that he's hoping for chances to play with them again in the future. What happened to "honest and direct" Ryan?
Speaking of Patrice, Dave asks her how it felt to be onstage with Tommy. Patrice says that her only regret was not having eyes in the back of her head so she could watch Tommy at the same time. Miss Alli says, "Tommy's solution to that problem is to tape himself. If he wants to see himself doing something from a different angle, he just films himself. And others." I have no idea what she's talking about there, do you? Anyway, Dave says it was risky of her to take that chance, but Patrice points out, "If you can't pull it off, you shouldn't be here." Can't argue with that. Or as Dave says, "Right on."
Tommy addresses Magni and says that it's hard to be away from their families, "especially the little monkeys." He wants to know how Magni thinks it will work if he's in Supernova. Magni deadpans, "We are moving to Iceland, right?" He stretches out the joke a bit too far, then finally non-answers, "It'll work, it'll work, it always works." Glad to see he's given this some serious thought.
Jason asks all of the Supernovices, "Raise your hand if you think you deserve the encore tonight." Because she was in school most recently Dana's hand reflexively pops up. Storm's is quick to follow. Jill tries to raise Ryan's hand, but he puts it down again. Unimpressed with this rather pathetic showing, Gilby demands, "Come on, guys, who wants the encore tonight?" A few more hands go up, including Toby's, Patrice's, and Zayra's. Jason basically reveals that this was a little test, saying that everyone's hands should be up. They're not looking for shy, modest people to front their little supergroup, after all. But since it's their show, they can decide who gets the encore, and it's Ryan. I am unsurprised and in full agreement.
Ryan gets up to join Brooke onstage, where she congratulates him and asks, "You have everything you need?" I hope she's kidding, because there's a big void where the baby grand should be. Of course, that would have been kind of a giveaway if it had been onstage before they awarded the encore. Ryan asks her to make a phone call and take care of it, and she says they'll arrange it during the commercial. I almost hope it's rented out somewhere across town and Ryan has to do his big encore on a Casio Cheesemaster 3XL.
Coming back, Brooke touts another "double-digit increase in voting" (which could mean 0.1 percent, for all we know) and flogs some online MSN thing nobody cares about. Meanwhile, Ryan's patiently waiting behind the piano they've organized for him. He does the encore, pretty much exactly the same way as last night but with a little grunt in place of the piano-slap. End of encore. Thanks, Ryan.
Brooke gets down to business, and she doesn't even fool around with the initial bottom three tonight; all of the bottom five find out more or less together. Well, five seconds apart, but still. Lukas, Zayra, and Josh look especially nervous before the names are heard. Brooke reads Toby's name, and the crowd groans. "Awesome," says Toby himself. Jill's , and she's prepared, with her new Oscar-loser smile and everything. Dana's , and she shrugs off the crowd's sympathetic reaction, like, that don't bother me none. Lukas is still waiting. Kind of weird to see him not totally tuned out during this part of the show. Brooke says Zayra's name, and a Tim Burton character but with more makeup stands and yells to the crowd in a Puerto Rican accent, "I knew it!" And the last name is Patrice. "What?" Storm yelps. You just know they've always got a camera in tight on her, because she's always good for a reaction shot. Brooke says that they were all in the bottom three at some point, and that the other six are safe. She asks Dave if he's surprised at any of the standees. Dave says that he's surprised to see Toby on his feet, saying he did a great job. He's also surprised not to see Lukas standing. As Lukas fiddles nervously with his beard, Dave elaborates, "I think he could have done with some standing today." I agree that standing would do Lukas good, and, surprisingly, Lukas seems to as well. Brooke is already about to read the name of the first bottom three member. And it's Jill.
As Jill crosses over to Brooke, I notice that she's put some pretty dramatic black stripes in her hair for some reason. We get a clip from last night of Jill and her feedback from the judges. After that's over and the cats venture out from under the couch, Brooke turns it over to Gilby. He says Jill's name, and then we cut over to see that not only is Brooke leaving, Jill is also walking away, toward the microphone stand upstage. "Where's Jill going?" Gilby asks, and tells her to come back. She's got to talk about what she's singing tonight, remember? Jill sucks up by saying she's singing a song by one of her favorite bands, Heart. Which Gilby played with, in case you'd forgotten. That explains the black streaks, too. But it's really so she can show the "richer tones" of her voice, she says. Gilby tells her to go to it.
On the low, quiet beginning over the piano, Jill sounds good, even though the audience is already clapping along. You can tell she really wants to belt out the chorus when she gets to it, but she's reining it in, even showing restraint by singing the low harmony instead of the high on the line "I never really cared until I met you." Overall, like her last bottom three performance, it's fairly safe. Which, sadly, is when Jill's at her best. That's no way to be a rock & roll singer, though. It's not like Supernova can tell her every night of their tour that she's in the bottom three again. She kicks over the mic stand for the last chorus, and keeps her voice mostly in check the rest of the way through. It almost looks like she's going to get through the whole thing without getting on my nerves, but then at the very end she frames her face with her hands and does this "ooo-oo-ooh" thing. Let's hope for her sake that Supernova's forgotten about that by the end of the show when it's time to actually give their comments on the performance. For now, at least, they're giving a standing ovation. Generous of them.
When we come back from commercial, Patrice, Zayra, Dana, and Toby are still standing in suspense behind the Nut Gallery. Brooke says that they're going to have to beat Jill's standing O. But before she reads the name of the second bottom-three Supernovice, she has a question: who skipped out on the House Band rehearsal? Uh-oh. I assume this is the weekly rehearsal where everyone practices their bottom-three songs with the House Band, just in case. In answer to Brooke's question, Toby and Dana raise their hands. We hear Dave going, "Whoa." Brooke says Dana's name like she's going to ask her to explain, but instead she says that Dana's in the bottom three again. Dana crosses over to stand to Brooke, who throws it to Dana's clip from last night. After that's finished, Jason gets to grill Dana. His first question is why she missed rehearsal. "That doesn't seem like you," he observes. Dana tries to keep a straight face at being called out on the carpet by the assistant principal, but eventually she cracks up and confesses that she went to a spa. Jason says that is totally a rock singer thing to do: "'I'm going to a spa instead of going to rehearsal,'" he mock-boasts. Dave comments that Dana should win by default just for that. Dana further explains that she didn't want to make the guys wait for her while she came back. My question: was Toby also at the spa? Anyway, Jason calls Dana "considerate," which is so not a rock singer thing to be, and says he hopes it doesn't come back to haunt her. Finally we get to the subject of Dana's song: it's "House Of The Rising Sun," which she calls a classic that they've moderned up a little bit.
So the song starts. It's still in 12/8, and the "modern" appears to consist of some flanging on the guitars. Okay. Dana talks too much during the intro, which is probably wise because there's not much going on with her singing. It's more or less the Animals' version that she's doing, which means a lot of long notes and slow singing, and not much for her to do with it. The lighting guys have taken the "Rising Sun" concept literally, saturating the stage in red and orange. Not much else to say about it, except you can't really tell that she skipped rehearsal.
Back from commercial, Zayra's showing off her outfit for the evening, which consists of huge black satin pants, full-length black gloves, and a black Ace bandage around her boobs. And Winona-Ryder-in-Beetlejuice makeup. Too late, Zayra, we already voted. Along with Patrice and Toby, she's waiting to hear which of them is in the bottom three. Brooke finally says, "Toby." Several audience members scream like somebody opened fire on them as Toby takes a step towards the stage. "It's not you, my friend," Brooke says. "Have a seat." Dammit, Brooke, get the Seacrest -- out! Toby collapses into the Nut Gallery, where the other survivors hogpile onto him. Patrice puts an arm around Zayra, who is told that she's off the hook this week as well. I can explain that; now that the voters know Supernova has no intention of kicking her off, they're just going to keep voting for her every week so they don't have to hear her sing more than once. This is only a theory, mind you. Not that I have even any anecdotal evidence of somebody actually voting for Zayra for this reason, say, in my house. In any case, this means Patrice is back in the bottom three, for the second week in a row. The last person who did that was Chris.
Clip of Patrice last night singing with Tommy on drums, and then the judges feedback. Coming back from that, Tommy has a question for Patrice: "What the hell happened? I thought we were awesome." That's helpful. Patrice assures all of us that she really does want to be here. And her song is "Eternal Life" by Jeff Buckley.
And it's...not good. Patrice has gotten it in her head that the only way to stand out is to rock as hard as she can. So she's got the band all loud and driving, and singing at the top of her voice, which just seems wrong for this song. Worse yet, there's practically no melody at all the way she's singing it. Don't get me wrong; I dig Patrice, and I have no doubt that she has a long and successful career ahead of her in Austin. I just become more and more convinced that this isn't her gig. Anyway, after she's done, Dana and Jill join her at the end of the runway to wait for Supernova's decision. They're in a tight huddle going into commercial, and for once this isn't a no-brainer.
Commercials. Apparently baking soda is used both to clean the Statue of Liberty and to make cookies. One assumes that you don't use the same amount for each task.
When we come back, Brooke turns things over to Gilby. I gotta say, I'm impressed with how well Gilby has been doing on this show. Before this, he was pretty much the least famous member of Guns n' Roses, with the possible exception of some of those other guys, but he turns out to be a rather competent TV host. Anyway, Gilby's got an assignment for the surviving Supernovices: they're getting a Supernova track this week, and they each have to write a melody and lyrics to it. The Supernovices look excited. I'm sure I look the opposite of that, at the thought that I might have to recap ten performances of essentially the same song week. Well, we'll cross that middle eight bridge when we come to it. Gilby now turns to the bottom three. He tells Jill that she's made some "horrible creative choices. But tonight, you saved yourself." Jill's still in. To Dana, Gilby says she's coming along very well, but they don't think there's enough time. Dana nods, accepting. Gilby tells Patrice that she's a good singer and a good performer, but ending up in the bottom three even after sharing the stage with Tommy is "hard to ignore." Uh-oh, he used that phrase on Chris a few weeks ago, too. But now it's hatchet man time.
Tommy pulls up his hood, which this week is black with red horns. He raises one hand, axe-like, and says, "Everybody say hello to the Tommyhawk." "Nice," Dana nods, like she wants to punch his face so very badly. I'll hold her coat. Tommy tells Dana that she's come a long way, but has a lot further to go. And tonight she's going out of the competition. Nobody looks too surprised. She and Patrice hug, and Dana's left alone on the spot of shame. Dave reiterates that Dana's grown a lot and that he's sure she'll do well. She claims that she doesn't regret getting the tattoo. For her farewell to Supernova, there are no surprises. Dana just says that it's been a great adventure. She's had a lot of firsts, made a lot of friends (here she gestures to the remaining Supernovices), and agrees that she still has a lot to learn. She assures them that she still wants it, "Like I want to breathe. Thank you for having me here." Jason wants the last word again, so he compliments her "positive, fun energy." As for the way everyone keeps telling her how far she has to go, Jason points out that she's going to go there. "I'll see you at the top," Dana promises, like Jason won't be on his way back down by then. Jason tells the other Supernovices now that they know they have good performers and singers (and Zayra, he doesn't add), they're watching how they all handle what comes at them during this competition. And Dana "is the youngest of us. But she is the most mature about how to handle it. Look at that!" The unintentional message is to for God's sake don't do that, because it'll get your ass booted. Tommy gives his rambling "no losers" speech, and Dave sends her over to the Nut Gallery to say goodbye.
From the stage, Brooke says, "We're gonna miss you, Dana." And then she quickly forgets about Dana so she can concentrate on her end-of-show spiel telling us to vote and watch the webisodes every week.
I've seen so many promos for Jericho and Smith by this point that I feel like I could recap the actual shows right now. But I'm not going to.
Post-eviction interviews: Jill says that she's been under a lot of pressure, and is having difficulty with all the comments, but wants Supernova to know that she can handle it. Patrice says that it's tough to be in the bottom three two weeks in a row. Yeah, tell it to Chris. She says that she's been in this business since her teens (and indeed, Miss Alli's Music Stylist even remembers seeing her play back in the day) and she's never going to stop. Then Jill comes back to say that Dana is sweet and talented, and will do well at whatever she does. I'd have to agree that of those who've already left, Dana is the least washed up, if only by virtue of her age. If nothing else, she could probably kick ass on Nashville Star.