The Voice: The Battle Round Begins! (Gets Ugly)

The Voice

By TheCzar | Friday, May 13, 2011 | 1:00 pm | 17 Comments
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in: Featured, Recaps, The Voice

Ok. So I’m going to make this a little easier on you. In this episode, we move on to the battle round. This round sucks for both the contestants and the judges, so I don’t know why they do it. Here’s what you can expect:

  • This episode marks the start of the “Battle Round,” where the judges choose two contestants to sing a duet. But here’s the catch: After each performance, the respective coach must cut one singer from each duet. As we’re reminded, the singers are singing together yet competing against each other, which sucks for them.
  • Each “Battle Round” episode will feature only one duet from each team. Let’s do the math – after all, we love TV, so math must be our favorite subject! There’s four teams, with eight contestants on each team, so that equals 32 contestants (minus any original duets from the blind auditions, where the pairings equal one contestant anyway). Now each episode takes two contestants from each team – that means eight contestants per episode – 32 divided by 8 = 4. So we have four episodes of this. With one battle round down and three to go, you now know you have about three more weeks before you have to tune in for the voting part.
  • The Judges are given a “consultant,” – aka another professional in the music industry – to help them with coaching and, if needed, picking a winner in the battle round.
  • But it’s gonna be worth it. Whoever wins this thing gets a recording contract with a company called Universal Republic. They’re important. Google them – if Facebook hasn’t turned you off to Google by now.

And that’s it. That’s pretty much what happens in this episode. But, since I am getting paid for this (I’m not), I will do the full recap anyway. So let’s get right to it.

In a complete brush off, Carson speeds through the judge/consultant pairings. And it reads like this: Christina uses Cia (sorry if I butchered her name, but I can’t find it anywhere on the internet), an Australian recording artist who suspiciously resembles Olivia Newton John; Adam uses Adam Blackstone, the musical director of Maroon 5 and apparently, the only person in this group not afraid to reveal last name; and Cee-Lo chooses Grammy-winning Monica, which is not a surprise since she is very pretty.

Cee Lo and Monica 5.12.11“Yawn (Stretch) Oh, my, how did my arm end up in such a compromising position?”

Oh, and Blake is paired with Reba McEntire, whoever she is…

We start with Christina Aguilera’s team. Having been in this business forever and understanding the Nielsen rating system, she’s not wasting any time. She starts by pitting Terralyn against Frenchie. And what kind of song do you choose when you have two strong, beautiful African-American women singing together? “Single Ladies,” of course!

With each pairing, we are teased with a tiny bit of behind the scenes footage, which may entail the rehearsal process, feedback from the coaches and contestant testimonials. It depends on what footage the producers think is best, mixed in with some needless commentary from Carson Daly. He does have a contract, after all…

But we have a nice moment with the two contestants and Christina. Not only does Christina coach them through the song, but she tells them not to worry about the words. They’re not important, especially if you’re standing in front of a nation and singing their anthem. Nah, don’t worry about it at all.

Christina coaches 5.12.11I never worry about the words. What are words, anyway? Just things WE NEED TO COMMUNICATE!

After some on-camera interviews that reveal Frenchie’s insecurities and Terralyn’s inner-cattiness (“I’m holding back until the performance to show what I’m really made of”), we finally get to… The Battle Round!

During the Battle Round, the duets are actually performed in a boxing ring, just to throw in our faces that this is a battle, dammit! Because when I think of music competitions, I immediately associate them with two guys on steroids hitting each other in the face.

The contestants are able to do a final rehearsal with their coach in the boxing ring, where Christina discovers some tension between Frenchie and Terralyn. Well, says, Christina, your peers are important. During the Grammys, when I fell down, Jennifer Hudson was there to cushion my fall. But now that she’s lost all that weight, she’s not soft enough to land on, so now I hate her.

Christina in the battle round 5.12.11Put up your dukes, girls. It’s a fight til the end!

We’re almost 10 minutes into the episode before Carson does his best sports announcer impersonation to introduce the fighters. His best is my worst, and I’m a pretty high-pitched girly-girl. But we move right into the song, each of our contestants getting a few verses to strut their stuff. And strut their stuff they do. Not only do they sing well, but unlike Miss Aguilera, they both manage to stay upright in 3-inch heels.

Franchie and Teri battle 5.12.11It was better than CATS!

They’re both so good. How will Christina choose? She gets advice from the other judges, who are each required to weigh in before she makes a decision. They’re not much help. Cee-Lo says something offensive about Frenchie’s weight, Adam says he was having too much fun to pay attention and Blake likes them both the same. She turns to Cia, who’s not much help either. After a commercial break, she chooses Broadway star Frenchie. Experience counts.

Spoiler alert: All of the duets are darn good. This is where I am at a loss. Not being a musician myself, I can’t honestly say I could really choose between one singer or the other. Perhaps knocking each out other actually would help.

Blake is up next. He pairs Patrick and Tyler up to perform “Burning Love.” Yeah, I’ve never heard of it either. It’s by some dead guy named Elvis. Patrick is ecstatic, Tyler is not. Since Elvis represents the marriage of country and pop music, it’s the right pairing. But with Reba as the consultant, it’s 100% country training the entire way, so Tyler better catch up.

Reba explains country music 5.12.11The first rule of country music is to make sure you only sing out of one side of your mouth.

During the one-on-one feedback sessions, we finally get to see Blake’s comedic chops. With the most deadpan stare, he tells Patrick, “You need to make me believe you’re a hunk, a hunk o’ burning love.”

Blake stares 5.12.11Ha ha. I’m just kidding.
No I’m not. I want you right now!

Of course, he doesn’t tell Tyler that, but I’m sure he gave him good feedback anyway. Poor Tyler, the families are backstage for support and you can’t help but notice his dad’s not there. In the last episode, he came out to his dad on national television, who wasn’t exactly supportive of his artistic endeavors in the first place. So sad. I think there’s going to be lots on on-camera testimonials and crying in the future if he makes it.

We move right into the competition, where again I can’t really tell you who sang it better. The majority of the judges suggest Tyler should win, leaving Patrick to silently fume.

If looks could kill 6.12.11Kill. Christina. Aguilera. Now.

Blake shows off his comedic chops, telling Tyler, “Where I’m from, the runs are a bad thing.” I’m not sure what that has to do with music, but poop jokes are always very, very funny. Regardless, in the end, he chooses Patrick – I think mainly because Blake sensed Patrick was about to whip out a shotgun and take over the building if he didn’t, but I’m sure the country thing had a little something to do with it.

Before anyone can comment on Blake’s apparent homophobia, we move right on to the next pairing. Adam chooses the two chicks with the highest voices – Casey and Tim – to sing “Leather and Lace.” With almost 20 years’ experience on Casey, Tim should be a shoe-in. But it’s not so easy. Tim can’t seem to say the word “moonlight,” nor is he willing to open himself up to the suggestion of not dropping the “t’s” off of every word he sings. So Casey wins – but not before we get a glimpse of her father creepily talking about how great she looks in her skin-tight dress.

casey's dad 5.12.11Come to Papa, sweetie.

Hey, Joe Simpson made a living doing it.

Last but not least, we have Cee Lo’s team. He pairs Niki and Vicci, because their names rhyme. And their voices match. Singing “Perfect,” they give the best performance of the night. But let’s rewind. If you’ve been watching the show, you know we don’t know much about Niki, whereas Vicci had a heart-wrenching story about her father passing away. Now we finally get a glimpse of Niki, who actually says she realized one day she could either go to school or follow her dreams and try to “make something out of herself.” Well, since college is the less practical choice, I’m sure she made the right decision.

The rehearsal process is a much friendlier experience with this group. Niki and Vicci actually work together rather than try to compete against each other, which is probably why they rock it. Plus there’s lots of cuddling, which always opens up the creative juices.

Cee-Lo and Monica cuddle 5.12.11There are so many advantages to women being taller than me.

The actual battle is hard to explain. It rocks. Go online and watch it, you lazy bum. I mean, if you really want a visual, here it is:

Niki and Vicci sing 5.12.11See? The picture doesn’t do it justice when there’s no audio, does it?

Unfortunately, there was one little mishap. The band stopped playing, revealing they were actually lip-singing. To help avoid an awkward moment Vicci did a little jig:

Vicci does a jig 5.12.11When all else fails, revert to your dance training.

No, I’m just kidding. It was a tough choice, but in the end, Cee-Lo chooses Vicci, reasoning that there’s no way Niki can become a pop star with that ridiculous hairstyle.

Niki's hair 5.12.11It’s beautiful and practical. You can land a plane on my bangs.

Ugh. So, so painful – and it’s made even worse in the last few moments of the show as we witness Cee-Lo consoling a crying Niki. Suck city.

So if you enjoy watching talented people’s dreams get crushed, you’re going to LOVE the next three episodes, which promise even more drama. I’m now just watching because I’m forced to. Well, till next week – if we all don’t off ourselves by then.

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17 Comments

  1. 1
    vallegirl vallegirl
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    But from what Cee-Lo said to Niki while he was consoling, it sounded like he was willing to help out, or put her in touch with people who could help her, so she at least got something out of it.

  2. 2
    JimmyT
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 2:16 pm

    Yeah, despite the crushed dreams I’m liking this show a lot and I’m going to see it again and again (thanks for the Jon Lovitz-SNL-Cats reference!).

    My only grip with week was with Blake. I think that Tyler did a better job, he projected his voice a lot more and in general showed more control and technique. I think that TheCzar is right and that there is a bit of country favoritism here since Blake kept making comments about how Tyler did too much for “where he comes from”.

    It is going to be interesting to see how that will play out with his other contestants.

  3. 3
    itchy
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 2:28 pm

    This battle format kind of drags, they’re going to need to step it up a bit. If they drag this out, they’re going to lose their audience — who’s going to remember the people from this week three weeks from now? Other than that Frenchie monster. Although I think having already been a Broadway “star” (and not merely, like the others, an almost has-been), I don’t think she should be in this.

    So far, the Haley-with-larger-breasts has this thing on lock. They’re going to need to better than Patrick — maybe they can tug out his ears and teach him to spider-hand his microphone?

  4. 4
    vallegirl vallegirl
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 2:31 pm

    Tyler was lucky to even be on the show, though, since only Blake buzzed in for him, and his style was best described as “non-descript.” Shave the beard and put him in a t-shirt and jeans and he’s vanilla pudding.

    And I didn’t think he was better than Patrick, just higher-pitched. Patrick’s a baritone so his voice wasn’t going to “project” like Tyler’s, anyway, but when he sang solo there was a richer tone to his voice that didn’t exist in Tyler’s.

    Plus, I agree with Blake about runs. I generally hate them on principle, and Mariah for making them so ubiquitous, because they don’t really show skill as much as knee-jerk showboating. Telling Tyler to quit it was just sound advice for the future.

  5. 5
    Lizbot
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 3:03 pm

    Actually, all of my predictions of who would win the duelets (cute what you did there) panned out. All of these people were talented, but it was interesting hearing them sing side by side, because I thought that there were definite differences in quality of voice and performance that came through that way.

    Personally, I thought that Tyler and Patrick were the 2 weakest performances of the night (but still a better duet than anything that I’ve heard on Idol — although granted I haven’t payed much attention to Idol lately, so I might have missed something good). I knew Patrick would win before they even started singing, because 1) he’s cuter in a more conventional way that Tyler and 2) Tyler is gay (Blake seems like a “traditionalist” who is going to want to appeal to a “traditional” fanbase with his contestants). But listening and then watching the performance, I thought Patrick deserved to win because he was just a bit more confident in his performance than Tyler was. I don’t think it matters, though, because I don’t think either of them had any likelihood of winning given the quality of competition they’re up against. Patrick’s best chance is to skate by on his looks for a while. Hate to keep going back to this point, but either of them could have made the top 5 on AI. The talent gap between the two shows is intriguing to me (I’m not just talking about vocal ability, I’m also thinking in terms of maturity of performance skills).

  6. 6
    sanen85
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 3:42 pm

    Maybe I heard wrong, but I could have sword Nikki said that she could either drop out of school or follow her dreams. It makes much more sense the way you heard it, but I still swear that’s what I heard.

  7. 7
    Lily
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 5:11 pm

    Loved the recap! Just wanted to let you know that the mystery consultant is SIA, and she’s pretty well-known outside of top-40 circles. http://www.siamusic.net/

  8. 8
    TheMiki themiki
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 5:18 pm

    This show is seriously making Idol look so ridiculous. There are so many ridiculously talented unsigned singers out there, and somehow Idol manages to consistently find the most bland, pitchy, useless ones out there and ignore the people with actual skills. The more shows that crop up and showcase real talented people the more obvious that becomes.

    I agree that the last battle was amazing, and I agree with Cee-Lo’s decision. That little white girl has soul. Blake’s battle was pretty meh, and while I think Tyler did a better job too, I agree that it doesn’t really matter cause neither one of those guys has a snowball’s chance in hell. I’m surprised we aren’t seeing bloodbath match-ups here. If I were a judge and I’d somehow wound up with some super annoying duo of singing sisters, I’d throw them into battle with the best vocalist I had and get rid of them in week one. Am I nuts? Cause I would have chosen my top four and pitted them against my bottom four, leaving them the possibility of surprising me in the duets, but making sure I didn’t eliminate my second best by pitting them against my best **coughCeeLocough**

  9. 9
    Lizbot
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 9:02 pm

    Miki, I was thinking that too. But I couldn’t remember who else Ceelo has in his stable. I’m hoping (for his sake) that he has a strategy for getting rid of the Thompson twins.

    I think the problem with Idol vs. a show like the Voice is that the judges don’t have any real investment in the outcome. On the voice, each judge has a personal investment (pride and reputation) in picking a winner, so i think there’s a bit less bs when it comes to really selecting the talent. Not that there aren’t some mistakes, but with this shows format it allows them to cut down on their mistakes by matching up their best talent against their worse.

  10. 10
    itchy
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 11:11 pm

    I’ve never seen the first season of American Idol — maybe that one was more like this show, in that they were still making an effort to find real singers? Even the worst singers on the Voice are better than the Idol finalists of the last three years.

    Also, what is the deal with this Frenchy woman? What did she do to get kicked off of Idol?

  11. 11
    itchy
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 11:18 pm

    Oh yeah, and the whole idea of picking teams of eight only to eliminate half the team right away is stupid. As the rest of you have pointed out, these rounds exist only to allow the judges to keep the four they actually wanted in the first place. So it’s just four weeks of time-filler really.

    And then there’s the whole “voice” concept of this show, where the contestants were supposed to have been picked according to how well they sang — not the way they looked.

    This seems to have been thrown out pretty quickly. These battle rounds she be done blindly too — at least, the chair of the coach in question should not be allowed to watch the performance.

    Someone stopped thinking two seconds after the pitch meeting on this one.

  12. 12
    ohhhyeah
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    I wouldn’t get too excited about the singing talent. Every season people rave about the talent they found on American Idol at the beginning of the season, and by the middle of the season everyone’s complaining about the lack of talent. The format for The Voice is new so that adds to the excitement, but after a few performances, when people’s tendencies begin to reveal themselves and each song they sing begins to sound the same, everyone will be complaining about how a program that showed so much promise at the beginning could go so wrong. But at least there will be X-Factor to look forward to until the middle of its season.

  13. 13
    TheMiki themiki
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 11:57 pm

    And X Factor will have Paula fighting to stay upright in her chair, so it won’t matter if they actually find any talent.

  14. 14
    sarcasatire sarcasatire
    Posted May 13, 2011 at 11:59 pm

    @itchy, Frenchy was kicked off of Idol because she posed naked back when she was 19. You know American Idol, they can only recognize talent if it comes in a boring, vanilla pudding package. I mean, if slutty behavior hindered people from being celebrities where would Christina Aguilera be? Or Pink? Well, one upside to The Voice is that they don’t give a crap about age or past transgressions. Looks, on the other hand..definitely come into play.
    I loved the looks of disappointment during the first round when the coaches pushed their buttons and turned around to face their biggest disappointments. A great voice encased in a body lacking the ‘it’ factor. Like you said, the battle round is just a way for them to correct those mistakes. Forget, talent vs talent…it’s Pretty vs Ugly! Or Marketable vs Not.

    The two girls singing “Perfect” for Cee-lo was a great indication of that. The Latina has that ‘it’ factor and while the other girl’s voice was amazing, her hair and clothing suggested a mediocre career. Even Cee-lo’s empty promises of ‘call me, I’ll see what I can do”, seemed pretty halfhearted. Unless his goal was to introduce her to an Atlanta hairstylist.

    As far as the coaches, do they only work with their talent during the Battle Rounds? I mean, after the top 16 are selected, will they continue to prep their teams and pick their songs? Or will they just sit back and badmouth the talent of the other coaches, hoping to sway America’s voting? And in terms of a popularity contest, how much of the voting will hinge, not only on the likability of the singers, but also on the likability of the coaches? Will Christina’s fans just want to see her team succeed and vote ‘blindly?’

    And after 4 weeks of Battle Rounds, will we really have another 16 weeks (4 months!) of seeing hopefuls eliminated one by one? Goodness grief.

  15. 15
    ohhhyeah
    Posted May 14, 2011 at 12:28 pm

    “As far as the coaches, do they only work with their talent during the Battle Rounds? I mean, after the top 16 are selected, will they continue to prep their teams and pick their songs?”

    I believe they’ll continue to coach their protégés until the end.

    “Or will they just sit back and badmouth the talent of the other coaches, hoping to sway America’s voting?”

    They’ve been surprisingly nice to competing coaches’ singers so far, but I can’t imagine that not happening when contestants from different coaches start facing one another.

    “And in terms of a popularity contest, how much of the voting will hinge, not only on the likability of the singers, but also on the likability of the coaches? Will Christina’s fans just want to see her team succeed and vote ‘blindly?’”

    I don’t think this will be much of a problem unless the show maintains its focus on the rivalry between the judges. If they keep going that route though, and they’ve already asked the question ‘which COACH will discover and develop the next great talent’ (paraphrasing here), then I would imagine there will be as many votes for the coaches as for the singers. Come to think of it, now I’m not even sure what this contest is supposed to be about. Is the winner supposed to be the best singer or the coach who discovered and developed the best singer? In the end I suppose it doesn’t really matter so long as I’m entertained.

    “And 4 weeks of Battle Rounds, will we really have another 16 weeks (4 months!) of seeing hopefuls eliminated one by one? Goodness grief.”

    I’m just wondering what gimmick they’re going to employ next. Will the contestants have to sing standing on their head while drinking a glass of water? I’d like to see the audience given rotten vegetables they could throw at contestants who displease them.

    I was thinking the whole ‘not seeing the contestant until the chair was turned’ was a farce as well, because is there anybody who believes appearance and marketability don’t go hand in hand? What that did do though was weed out the good looking talent that didn’t have the chops to go with it, so I suppose it did serve some purpose.

  16. 16
    Mike
    Posted May 14, 2011 at 10:06 pm

    The entire “blind audition” concept is an absolute joke. These rounds are engineered so the judges can weed out any of the contestants who slipped through on talent rather than appearance.

  17. 17
    Enrique's Mole
    Posted May 15, 2011 at 1:05 pm

    I hope Adam doesn’t pit Jeff Jenkins against Javier Colon – I don’t know who he’d choose, and I really want Javier to continue on.

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