Recap: Hey Paula!: The Comeback

I have a pretty busy Summer of recapping about to commence here at the ‘gasm, but when I saw the pilot episode of this show, I couldn’t resist throwing together a romp through Crazy Town for you.

I found that it was pretty difficult to describe exactly what went down (nailing Paula’s English alone can take hours) in words, but I did my best. I have never felt such joy, pity, jubilation, and grief at one time. If you have any Vicodin, Percoset, or hell, spray paint to ingest, pull it out now, put your hands in the air and HOLLA! All together now! HEY, PAULA!!Paula’s a busy busy busy busy busy STAR, dammit, and she’s tiiired! What a week she’s about to have! She’s in New York to put her face in this machine to test her new stanky perfume…

…and while she’s there she’s gonna accept a Ginormous Clunky Jewelry Award…

…and when she’s done with that she has to do a ton of press appearances for American Idol, my favorite of which turned into one of her most embarrassing recent memories blackouts.

As she sits in her limo, she shakes her head at the camera and her HUGE jewelry makes that familiar sound of iced tea being stirred on a Summer day. Can you believe how BUSY she is?!? She just got off the plane and already she’ss runnin’ outd thedooor.

Gee golly, life is friggincraazy, guyz!

Paula puts periods in all the wrong places and slurs every other word, and I spend the first five minutes of the episode trying to get a look at her pupils. I don’t care what she tells the press. She’s either wasted or she’s got MS. Either way, it’s kind of endearing. I heard you groan. Shut it. I said KINDA.

She pretends to give her manager an update on her life, like he hasn’t been subjected to her loony bs 24/7 for as long as he can remember. Since she’s gonna be accepting her Ginormous Clunky Jewelry Award in 14 minutes and 58 seconds, he suggests she come up with something to say. Now there’s an idea.

I have a fashion for design. Wait…I have a fashion for passion. Fashionpassion. Passion design. Passionfashionfashionpassion.

She nods proudly, like she just wrote “I Had a Dream”. Manager Guy, familiar with his boss’ loose grasp of language, hands over the speech he wrote for her. As she squints at the words and stumbles all over the page, he explains to us that Paula usually just gets to improvise her lines and isn’t used to, you know, reading stuff. Wait a second, Manager Guy! Are you telling me thoughtful and provocative lines like “you…you…look beautiful, voice stun…azing pretty wow yay shut up Simon trying to say, wow pretty wow fantast…azing” isn’t written by a team of Emmy winning scribes? I’m stunned.

Oooonnn. On. Ooor. Or. D.

I was rooting for her as she tried to figure out the word “honored”, and when she finally sounded through it, I cheered out loud.

The Limo driver turns around and looks at her like he’s trying to figure out if she’s seriously this afflicted or if she’s kidding.

She’s not kidding. Watch the road.

“I want mazmalsoup now!” Paula exclaims out of nowhere. Huh? Manager Guy explains that everyone at the Awards Dinner is already eating. She’s just there to give her speech and get out. What? No food? She’s gotta have food, or the pills in her stomach will start knocking up against each other and fighting out twelve rounds of crazy in front of a few hundred people. She warns us that this speech could wind up being the biggest disaster in her life. You sure about that? Think back.

Mr. Make It Work himself, Tim Gunn, is presenting her award while she’s outside posing for pictures and shaking babies. Poor Tim has to repeat the speech a few times, and by the time she slinks in the back door, he’s made it sound like she’s received 878 MTV Video Awards.

So, ginormous clunky jewelry, huh?

Manager Guy is worried. Paula’s tired, hungry, and she can’t read. He bows his head and prays, and even with a war, testicular cancer, and high gas prices on his roster, God listens! Paula starts off a little shakily, but after a while she’s leaning all over the podium and making people laugh with Simon jokes like, well, Paula Abdul.

After Tim Gunn blows sparkles up her cornhole and Ginormous Chunky Jewelry students fawn over her in the lobby, she demands her award and CONGRATS! It’s more hair!

She parties til 2:30 then, shitfaced, stumbles into a Starbucks and panhandles for a latte. Seriously. She begs for money. If the lady behind the counter had any brains at all, she would have offered a trade for the thirty pound golden snake on Blitzo’s wrist. No? Fine. Work the graveyard shift at Starbucks the rest of your life. What do I care?

People scream for Paula and tell her they love her, but where were they when she needed some change? It took way to long to get a chai. Fans can be fickle little pickles. As she tries to get in her limo, she teaches us how to sit down into a car.

First, grab onto the door and hope no one closes it.

Jump backwards.

Fall on the floor.

Paula bounces around the limo. It’s now 5AM. WOAH. It really did take way to long to get that chai. Two and a half hours? What the hell was she doing in the Starbucks for that long? I am glad we weren’t shown, because my face is already frozen in distress.

Paula has a Stank Scent meeting in a few hours, and Manager Guy tells her “we need you to sleep”. She can’t! She has (a coke addiction) insomnia! It started a few (bumps) hours ago and she just can’t (focus) rest!

She makes it to her meeting at the Perfume Lab on time, and hugs a bunch of phony bitches with fake names like she knows them. Come on now, Perfume Ladies! No mother names their child Honorine or Jorgelina. Don’t front.

They dab different scents on blotter papers for Paula to smell, but she can barely sit up. She moans and groans like she’s having a naughty dream and boo bop de doos like Sammy Davis Jr. She tries catching invisible flies for awhile and then at one point, she holds a blotter to her nose, closes her eyes, and freezes for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Honorine (Helen) and Jorgelina (Jane) stare at her awkwardly.

Is she dead?

Nope, she’s back! Time to put on a lab coat and human test some chemicals! She knocks things over and drops blotters on the floor. When she picks them up, she plops right down on the ground and wipes the chemicals all over herself. The Smell Technician tells her she’s mixing violet and rose on her skin, and she starts rocking back and forth repeating “uh-oh” over and over and moving the edge of the paper across her wrist, threatening to commit suicide by paper cuts. Smell Technician coos “It’s okaaaay!” like he’s trying to talk a mentally retarded child down after seeing a clown for the first time. Jesus Christ, this poor woman. Someone, anyone, please help Paula Abdul!

I’ve been a bad girl, mama!

The wind changes and she starts cracking up, still rocking back and forth.

I want this floor smell!

She gets up and bathes herself in floor scent before rubbing up against every male in the lab. She promises that Stank will get every man in the world horny as hell. Worked on this guy.

Stank’s first boner.

That night, she tells her assistants that she’s tiiiiired. Then she tells the cameras she’s tiiiiiired. Then she closes her eyes and swipes at the air murmuring about the coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. As she gets out of the limo, she bumps her head, screams “OW!” and tells the chauffeur that she’s, EVERYBODY NOW! TIIIIIIRRREEEDDD!!!

Day Three is press junket day, and it’s awesome to see the behind the scenes footage from the interviews that’ve since been blared into every home in America, making sloppy, sad, drunken pop culture history.

Paula’ll be on satellite with Fox affiliates across the US this morning and she’s BUSTED. She’s suffering from exhaustion, the flu, and drug addiction, but she’s a trooper. It’s her job to make us cringe and question this country’s prescription abuse, and she’s gonna follow through.

Reporter: Good morning, Paula!

Paula looks around the room and tries to figure out where that voice is coming from.

Reporter: Good morning, Paula!

She slaps her own head and almost falls off her stool. “Oh! Is that what it is?”

Reporter: (sound of crickets)

Through forty interviews, Paula giggles and waves her arms and slurs out Maya Angelou poems, for all we know. Something about twirling fire, using publicity, and “Imadaancer!!” As her montage of shame rolls on and on and on, Manager Guy tells us that Paula’s tired. Yeah, ass. We know. This guy needs to be fired and replaced with, I don’t know. Me.

Snap your bony ass out of it and straighten up, Missy! You look like an asshole!

Nope, yes men it is. This is the saddest part of the whole thing, because even though Paula has lots of people around her, there isn’t one true honest friend. Maybe she should have lunch on the Fox lot every once in awhile, because I know someone who would be her perfect BFF.

Next week, Paula’s completely screwed. And of course, TIIIIIIRRRREEEEEDDDD!!!