American Idol: Semi-finals round one (2/20)

Boys will be boys--who suck.

by Frank Pittarese

Last week on American Idol, a bunch of people we'd never seen before got picked to compete in the semi-finals, alongside a few people we had seen before who the producers want us to actually support. Tonight, those Top 24 semi-finalists will sing like good little monkeys. The boys go first, then the girls perform tomorrow, with results on Thursday. This goes on for three weeks until we're down to the Final 12. If you're a fan of this show, you might as well cancel that life you were hoping to have.

"It's been our biggest season ever...and tonight you take over for the judges," says Seacrest, trying to dress like a grown-up by wearing his grandpa's vest. "This is American Idol. "

Post-opening credits, he thanks us for sticking through the "weirdest audition tour ever," as if we had a choice, and introduces the live band, followed by the guys. They're all lined up on a staircase behind the stage, like the Brady Bunch. As Seacrest calls out their names, they walk past, and mug for, the camera. They generally get no reaction from me, except for Sundance Head (ugh!) and A.J. Tabaldo (who?). That feeling of indifference is very temporary, I assure you.

The girls sit in the audience and are introduced in one breath as "the ladies." Gina Glocksen is also there. Seacrest then intros the judges. Randy is called out for being tough this year. "I'm just tryin' to really be honest," he says. Paula, who should not lighten her hair in such an unsightly manner, wants the kids to do well. "I'm on your side," she tells them. Simon advises the contestants to sing well. Normally, I'd respond to that with a mature "no duh, Cowell," but these idiots really need to listen to his advice. (Spoiler alert: they do not listen.)

Rudy Cardenas is first. We flashback to his audition, where he sang Journey's Open Arms adequately, before vanishing into the mists of obscurity. "Simon...did not like me at all, at first," Rudy says. "He's been wrong before, and everyone has an opinion." Rudy doesn't care if Simon likes him or not, but hopes he'll warm up to him in the next couple of rounds.

Tonight, he's singing Edgar Winter Group's Free Ride. It's like Anson Williams has gone gay. Lots of energy, lots of hip shaking, lots of gesturing. What is with this song choice? It showcases none of Rudy's strong suits, if he has any, and shines a spotlight on his bad traits, like the nasal quality of his voice and the unsexy ass-wiggling.

Judges. Randy: "You definitely got the party started, but for me, dawg, it was really corny, man...really corny, dude." Paula: "I thought you started off fantastic." Simon: "I don't think you have a distinctive voice, and I think the song you chose tonight was dated." Corny would about sum it up. All this performance needed was back-up singers on ice skates and maybe some confetti falling to the stage at the end.

In a brief interview segment, Seacrest hangs out with the guys in the Coca-Cola Red Room. He asks Chris Sligh, who's sitting across the room, what the buzz is about tonight's show.

"Tonight," says Chris, is all about the guys looking pretty...it's a singing competition, but Sanjaya's lookin' awful pretty, Brandon always looks pretty, You know what I'm sayin'?"

"Okay, well I'm glad you're on that couch," Seacrest snipes, as if a flat-iron has never touched his oh-so-perfect hair, nor make-up his angelically unblemished face. This one want to be a Real Boy so badly, and if the Blue Fairy doesn't come, well, he'll just do it himself!

Brandon Rogers impressed the judges at auditions. Especially Paula, who thought his voice had a terrific smile and a really nice, muscular body. His pitch also had a shapely ass. He's a background singer, and was worried he'd be on the bubble during Hollywood Week, but making the Top 24 has been a confidence booster. "From here on out, I've gone to that place where people actually believe that I can be a lead singer."

He's singing Rock With You tonight, and makes an interesting choice: performing the first verse as a ballad. That works, but as the tempo picks up, he's just okay. Brandon seems to have trouble finding a key and sticking to it. Could be nerves, though, because the further he gets into the song, the more he rights himself.

Judges. Randy: "It was a little pitchy...you don't always have to do so much with the song." Paula: "You're a lead vocalist now, and you are great." She always has so much to contribute. Simon: "You've got to come out on stage and make an impact...you're better than that (performance)." Compared to much of what's coming, dude was a superstar.

Sundance Head had an amazing first audition and has sucked elephant nuts ever since. He thinks "in part" that he's still here because of that first audition. And he's right. "I was so embarrassed," he says of his Hollywood Week train wreck of a performance.

Sundance is singing Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues. There's a sentence you don't see every day. I always thought this song was Knights in White Satin, which gives it a rather unpleasant KKK vibe, so it's nice to know I was wrong. Anyway, Head is pitchy and off-key, until he hits the chorus, where he makes Jesus Arms and howls like Fangface. This is one of the worst performances I've seen on this show, ever. Worse than Kevin Covais at his best.

Judges. Randy: "I don't even think you were on pitch the whole song...it was really strange for me." Paula: "I...Sundance, I think you picked the wrong song." Or perhaps, Paula, you picked the wrong singer. Simon: "Very old fashioned, very uninspiring...I didn't like you tonight."

Paul Kim auditioned and seemed quite sane. Then he started going barefoot and not changing his underwear in a desperate effort to create a personality where none existed. He explains that being barefoot on stage makes him feel free and comfortable, so he's sticking with it. It's such a dumb affectation. "Remember me? I'm the Asian guy. The Asian guy who hates William Hung. The Asian guy who hates William Hung and doesn't wear shoes. The Asian guy who hates William Hung, doesn't wear shoes, and wears the same underwear. The Asian guy who is one step ahead of wearing angel wings and hot pants and glitter eyeshadow just to make sure I stand out somehow." Bah to him.

He sings Wham's Careless Whisper, starting in a key too low for his voice, making him sound breathy and difficult to hear. When he hits the chorus, he achieves karaoke levels of greatness. Then he pulls out a falsetto, pees on it, kicks it across the stage, and kills it with a baseball bat. It's a horrible, inhuman sound, like a cat trapped in a microwave with a razor blade up its ass.

Judges: "It started really kinda pitchy and kinda weird and kinda stiff for me...the falsetto didn't quite work...I still like your potential." Paula: "You kind of oversang the song." Simon: "I would suggest you put your shoes on next week...it's a singing competition...it sounded like a third rate version of that song."

Seacrest takes the stage. He's barefoot now, and if he's that big on the monkey-see/monkey-do thing, I'm totally getting on this show and singing without pants. Being barefoot makes Ryan look about three apples high. He's Pretty-Boy Smurf. Then he makes a remark about wanting to show off his recent pedicure, and I've gotta say that while I'm all for personal grooming, any guy who gets a pedicure is one step away from wearing lipstick and false eyelashes. Keep that in mind for later.

Chris Richardson is next. At auditions, he was compared to Justin Timberlake because of his R&B-ish voice and his buzz-cut. Tonight, he reaffirms it by wearing a Sexyback suit and tie. "I just wanna rock out," he says.

He sings Gavin DeGraw's I Don't Wanna Be. This song worked wonders for Bo Bice two seasons ago. Chris puts a slight hip-hop spin on it, although his voice isn't very strong. He's more speak-singing than anything else. He performs the whole song while bouncing up and down at the knees, though, which is kinda cute. He has great energy and the camera likes him (as do the girls and certain homo recappers), so I suspect he'll be around for a while.

Judges. Randy: "The show just started right here...I liked that...do your thing, baby, don't be scared." Paula: "It was a lot of fun, way to go, good for you." Simon: "I thought your voice sounded very small in that song...I thought it was a bad vocal, personally." He's right (again). Chris's voice just wasn't there tonight. But he didn't make me cringe like, say, Sundance. So fair play to him.

Nick Pedro is next. Seacrest interviews him, trying to make him nervous about forgetting his lyrics. I hate it when Seacrest goes douche. In flashback, we see Nick sing Fly Me to the Moon at auditions, then we flashback further to last year, when Nick quit during Hollywood Week. Nick thought he was screwed during this year's group round, after being saddled with (or by) Matthew "Brokeback Cowboy" Buckstein and some never-identified fellow. But he made it through, and here we are.

He sings Now and Forever by Richard Marx. Richard Marx?!? Okayyy. Nick is rather listless here. Not much energy happening at all. No power behind his voice. It's a nap-inducing experience, although to his credit, he pretty much hits all the right notes. And with this crowd, that's an achievement.

Judges. Randy: "It wasn't good for me, dawg. It was really, really boring. Where's that Nick that I love?" Paula: "It kinda fell flat. Sorry." Simon: "I actually didn't think it was that bad." That bitch is always contrary. I don't dislike Nick at all. His voice is okay, and he's easy on the eyes, but he's also very forgettable. Nothing about him pops, and popping is everything in this competition. Speaking of which...

Blake Lewis is stepping up. He's the hipster beat-boxer who I want to make out with and slap silly at the same time. He beat-boxed at auditions, and I guess it's a skill of some kind, but a useless one. It's like waking up with a superpower one day, except your power is that you can change the color of your socks. Where does that get you in life? Blake, wearing a stupid sideways hat that I want to knock off his head, interviews that we haven't seen the last of the beat-boxing. "I'll bust it out here and there, but it's very much a singing show." He smiles and says, "Being here in the Top 24 feels amazing. Exclamation point." And I love him all over again.

Blake sings Somewhere Only We Know by Keane, and for the first time tonight, everything works. He sounds great, he looks fantastic--relaxed and confident, and aside from a pitchy bit of falsetto, this, for me, was a perfect performance. Seriously, if he recorded this, I'd buy it, and I don't even buy music. Vocally, it's better than Keane's original. Excellent job, Hipster Lad.

Judges. Randy: "I kinda dug it, man...I do miss the beat-boxing...but I liked it." Paula: "Your vocals were spot on...and you're cool." Simon: "Not the best vocal...but you are the first person who's come out tonight an actually sounded like someone in 2007."

Sanjaya Malakar is next, and talks about his sister for a thousand years. If we hadn't actually seen her, I'd suspect there was some Sleepaway Camp action going on here, because Sanjaya could totally be his own female sibling pretending to be a boy. It's five layers of gross on a foundation of creepy the way he goes on about her, like she's dead instead of just eliminated. He thinks his sister is better than he is, he put her on a pedestal, etc. This is what he tells us. "I knew that I would have to work that much harder to...represent her in this."

Yeah, okay. So he takes the stage, a cross between Ugly Betty's gay Justin and the lost Supreme. I don't mean to hate on the kid, who seems to be really sweet--and he's only 17--but it really wouldn't hurt him to butch it up a little. Sanjaya sings a Stevie Wonder song, Knocks Me Off My Feet, with a lyric that goes "I don't want to bore you..." Well, color that a failure, because Sanjaya just turned half of America into narcoleptics. The whole Northern Hemisphere goes dark because he's sucking up all the energy in creation. Awful. Just awful.

Judges. Randy: "Oh, God...it was really bad. Sanjaya, I'm sorry, dawg." Paula. "You're a sweet soul...I wish more personality and more force came through in your performance." Simon: "Without a question, the most dreary performance we've had all night."

Chris Sligh, the big Jack Osbourne lookalike, is next after the break. He auditioned in Birmingham, and says that humor definitely helped him along in the competition. Flashback to Chris telling the judges that he really wants to make David Hasslehoff cry. He interviews, "The reality of the competition is that only one of us is gonna be standing up, singing Do I Make You Proud. " He looks into the camera and deadpans, "And I'm looking forward to that."

Chris comes out wearing a shirt, tie, and jeans, and sings...what is this? Nirvana? No, but it initially has that sort of feel to it. The hell is this song? My pal Google says it's Typical by Mute Math. Hmm...that's a risk, singing something obscure. The judges hate the karoke, old-timey stuff, they hate it when you try to sing something by an A-lister (Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston), and they often hate it when you sing something they don't know--because then, oh God, what box do they put you in?!? If this show is about anything, it's about putting people in their box and keeping them there for five months.

Anyway, Chris sounds good. I don't think he's fantastic, but this unfamiliar song is very accessible and catchy, and he sings it well. He's unique while still sounding commercial. He's not a zombie like Sanjaya, he's not clawing away at it like Sundance, but he's not as engaging as Blake. I'd put this as the second best performance of the night.

Judges. Randy: "I am a Chris fan, I loved it, I like you, I think you're the bomb, baby." Wow, surprising! Paula: "You're anything but typical." If nothing else, that "critique" proves she was listening. Simon: "I agree, your humor got you here...I kind of felt I was at some weird student gig..."

Seacrest pops onto the scene like Orko and wants to know why "the students" are singing. These sort of in-depth questions leave me befuddled as to why Ryan doesn't have a regular segment on 60 Minutes.

Simon cracks wise. "You do the links, sweetheart, I'll do the judging."

But Seacrest retorts, "Don't call me sweetheart! We don't have that kind of relationship, I don't want that kind of relationship." Pedicure Boy defends his masculinity for a season and a half. Finally, we get back to the topic of Chris. He has something to say.

"Obviously, the audience is diggin' it. This kinda music is very popular right now...just because I don't sing Il Divo or Teletubbies doesn't mean I'm not a good singer." For the uninformed, Il Divo are a freaky-ass boyband/opera quartet and the Teletubbies were...well, gay creatures of some kind. Cowell created Il Divo and produced the album A Teletubbies Christmas.

This remark puts Simon into a massive snit. As Randy, Paula, and the audience hoot like maniacs, he just frowns and pouts. I don't think he's playing around. For whatever reason, this was a low blow to him. "I think you've hurt his feelings," Seacrest says to Chris.

"Well, you've made this very uncomfortable, Ryan." I don't know how this is Seacrest's fault, but that's how Cowell's mind works. Maybe he really, really likes calling Ryan "sweetheart."

Jarrod Cotter is next. He was a Never Seen who apparently auditioned in New York. "America hasn't really seen me yet," he says. Yep. So your odds of winning are slimtastic, Jarrod. "I hope to be here for as long as they want me here." He should hope to be here no matter want. That's all I can say.

He sings Brian McKnight's Back at One, and sounds okay, despite going off key a couple or twelve times. In his 90-seconds on stage, he manages not to annoy me, which the best thing I can say about him. Jarrod can stay for now.

Judges. Randy: "It was pretty good...I didn't like the ending, though." Paula: "I liked it when you were singing more up-tempo songs...I feel like there's more to you." Simon: " I don't think anyone's gonna wake up tomorrow morning going 'what an incredible vocal performance.' I think you've got to take a few more risks than that." Jarrod vows to push himself till the judges like him. Eff them, he needs to worry about the viewers.

A.J. Tabaldo, another Never Seen, is next. He says this is his fifth time trying out for the show. That's both admirable and sad. A.J. actually made it as far as Hollywood last year, before getting cut in the first round. "My Idol experience has been every word in the dictionary: scary, fun, exciting, just everything you can name, I felt that emotion." He neglects to mention disappointment, sorrow, and pain, but we've still got a few weeks ahead of us.

A.J. sings Never Too Much by the recently-dead Luthor Vandross, wearing a polo shirt with an upturned color. He sings a whirlwind of gay under a rainbow of fabulous. But while A.J., like Sanjaya before him, needs to get in touch with his man-parts, it's clear that the kid is having a blast, dancing and smiling all over the place. That energy really carries him through. Despite a shot of Simon staring at A.J. like he's never seen such a creature, the audience gives him a standing ovation at the end.

Judges. Randy: "You're a really good singer...I don't know if you brought anything new to it...but you kinda worked it out in your own kinda way." Paula: "You can definitely sing...I thought you did a great job." Simon: "It was good, nothing great, nothing terrible. I count that as a kind of theme park performance...very predictable." Then he adds, "Maybe you're better than I originally thought," and I believe that comment has everything to do with the audience reaction to A.J.'s performance. He'll never win, but I can easily see him in the Final 12.

Phil Stacey is last. He's the guy who was auditioning while his wife gave birth. Phil tells us he's an active duty United States sailor, and this is news to me. Did the show mention this, or was the baby thing all they pushed? Phil's audition dysfunction was that his songs started horribly. He says he's been working hard since then.

True to form, he begins waaayyy off key. And he's staring at the camera with his icy blue eyes like he's trying to hypnotize me, which I do not enjoy. This song is all ballady at the start. It's boring. Then the chorus kicks in and Phil starts belting like a rockstar. There's some kinda Nikki/Jessica Heroes thing happening here. He's like two different performers in one body. The first one is sucky, but the other one ain't bad. Except for the Jesus Arms. Why does everybody do Jesus Arms?

Judges. Randy: "It started a little rough for me...but guess what? Phil, you get the Best Vocal prize of the night. In tune, rich, full, yeah!" Hell's no, dawg. Hell's no. Paula: "The beginning was a little shaky, but man, you just opened up and you were right on pitch. It was great." Simon: "It was okay at the end...I don't think you nailed it, I think it was okay." Thank you, Cowell! I don't know what goes on here, sometimes. This was half of a great performance, and as compared to Blake and Chris, Phil has a long way to go.

There's some filler about Simon being mean, and Seacrest suggesting positive reinforcement, to which I say, if you've made it this far in the competition and you can't bring it, you have no business being on the stage. Sing well or be gone.

Seacrest urges us to vote, and I'm predicting that the booted boys will be two of these four: Sanjaya, Paul Kim, Nick Pedro, or Rudy Cardenas. Sundance may suck, but he's gotten so much play that he's become A Character, which is what the show wants and which will keep him safe for awhile.

Tomorrow night, the girls compete for two hours. Hopefully, they'll be better than this group!

Not voting--yet!
--Frank