American Idol Recap: You Make A Grown Man Cry

Salutations, Gasmii! CathodeBoob is taking the glory-note bullet for you tonight – plus also the mad googling downloader bullet, since my satellite was out. Thank you, uploaders everywhere. It gave me a nice 1980s noise-on-the-vinyl, click-on-the-mixtape kind of vibe to watch the show from the POV of people’s phones aimed at their TVs. I love media.

So, despite the slightly higher-tech credits, they’re cutting costs by having Seacrest do double duty and host guy and melodramatic announcer guy. Or maybe he’s always done that, and he’s finally mastered it? There will be shocks, people will melt down, and most of these people will never be heard from again (I added the last part). 

Theme. Oooooohhhhoooohhhh. Terminator. Android. Microphone. Whoosh.

The last season of American Idol I saw was the one where they kicked off the future Oscar winner.

Or, at least that’s the last one where I bothered to learn everyone’s name. This ep is the first of this season that I’ve watched. I have no history on any of these guys. So I’ll likely misjudge a few. I’m also just googling the song lyrics as I go to try and ID them. So correct me if I’m wrong, but be nice about it, ay? The remainder of my relevant background is that I was a musical theatre major for about 6 months around the time these contestants were being born. And my husband has some friends who have been on the radio. A few of them have poured me drinks in the bars where they now work.

Music. It’s occasionally a living.

Tonight is solo night. The boys gotta bring it all, says Randy.

Ryan reminds us there’s a list of songs that these poor chumps have to choose from, so that’s why you’ll hear the same song about 2.8 times tonight. Also, there are multiple vocal coaches – remember when Debra Byrd had to help all their little green throats at once? But now there are more singing shows than there are good singers, and so the Idol recruiters have to keep sweetening their deals with more and more supposed perks.

Anysigh. To push them further toward a heart attack and subsequent early death, they will be performing with a live band – and some backup singers, don’t forget.

There’s a ton of guys that we could get to know, or maybe we already did when I wasn’t watching, but we get the most spineless malleable worm first. Nobody cares that you’re nervous, Paul Jolley. Seriously Gasmii, when was the last time you acted like this in an interview for a real job? Get a grip, dude.

The band keeps trying to start, and he keeps going, “I’m so nervous,” and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was trying to milk some extra time out of this, and also show them what he sounds like when he speaks over music, because people who like shmoopy pop like that sort of thing.