Minicap: The X Factor

A little humility would do this girl some good.

We’ve made it to the conclusion of boot camp, folks, where we’ve finally succeeded in shaking the remainder of the nuts out of the X Factor bag – though definitely not all of the mediocre and/or annoying singers.

Thursday’s episode began where Wednesday’s oddly 1/2 hour shorter episode left off, with the remainder of the group performances, leading to cutting a third of the contestants, followed by individual performances, and concluding with the final cuts of boot camp – taking us down to a mere 32 acts by the end of the night.

I’m dubbing this episode ‘the one where Kleenex’s stock skyrocketed,’ because there’s HELLA crying all night long. And the gals definitely need to take a class on the benefits of waterproof mascara. Holy makeup rivulets, Batman.

The final group performances feature some of our favorite contestants, as well as some random people who apparently wandered in off the street because I’ve never seen them before in my life, and also a group composed primarily of doughy white guys who like country music.

No one truly surprising goes home all night long, unless you were actually expecting them to send through Jaye Davidson – I mean, Siameze Floyd – with his fried hair and cut-out pants.

I really wish this show would spend less time on padding and more on the singing – the individual performances are glossed over in a high-speed sheen of quick cuts between 15 second clips…which is a shame, because some of this stuff is, like, REAL good. Particularly Erica Crow – is there anyone out there with a heart that doesn’t want to just give this cute little girl a big squishy bear hug? She’s the definition of adorable. Hopefully her soon-to-be fame won’t go to her head or take a giant dump on her soul.

I won’t ruin the full recap by telling you who makes it to the final 32, but suffice to say, it’s pretty much exactly who you would expect, i.e. any contestant that seemed to be WAY talented (or just really eye-catching) that the producers bothered spending any significant amount of time focusing on. So yeah, not that nameless girl in the leopard print mini-dress that they keep showing hyperventilating while lying prone on the floor backstage.

See you in a couple of days for the full recap! To check out our last recap while you wait, click here!