'American Idol' Recap: An Old-School Audition Show In Houston

January 27th, 2012 9:41am EST

Skylar Laine Last night we got an old-school ‘Idol’ audition show with the sob stories, bad auditions and performances from the judges that made this show the (almost former) number one show on television.

Nothing seemed processed last night. In recent years, everything has been so telegraphed on these results shows. You know the good. You know the bad. You know it all as soon as they enter. Even worse, you know just how good or bad each is going to be and exactly how the contestants will go about proving this.

Last night, all bets were off as we got some of the most earnest bad performances ever on this show and probably the most compelling judge banter since the new crew came in.

The Three Best Auditions:

3 - Skylar

This was the southern belle whose family owns a grocery store/restaurant. She was a good authentic country singer kind of in the Kellie Pickler mold. We didn’t get to hear much from here because she was so instantly good that the judges didn’t seem to want to waste any more time and just put her right through. I agree with them.

2 - Christina

This is the girl with the rose tattoo who made the extremely intelligent financial decision to use her money to buy a plane ticket to an ‘Idol’ audition rather than pay her divorce lawyer. So I have to give her a lot of credit that she’s got a very cool rock ‘n’ roll voice with a nice pop sensibility, but even if she’s got the pipes to make it through to the group stages and live shows, it’s probably still not a very wise idea to become indebted to your lawyer for something that hardly guarantees any money. Still, her voice is right on the money. (See what I did there?)

1 - Cortez

This is the guy about whom the judges were oddly indecisive. Randy seemed to want to stop him about four seconds in, even though he never really hit a sour note. And he just kept getting better. He rocked a soul version of Adele’s “Rollin’ in the Deep” the built nicely as he felt more comfortable and started hitting some unreal notes by the end. Good thing J-Lo kept hitting Randy’s hand.

The Four Worst Auditions:

3 - Julie Shuman

This was the girl in the stretch pants and the reverse Leia hairdo who felt it necessary to scream “Rollin’ in the Deep” at the top of her lungs. Amazingly, as loud as she was, she could not scream loud enough to drown out her stretch pants. Deep knee bends and spastic dancing caused her pants to make sounds normally reserved for leather tanners and people making taffy. At least her hair stayed in place.

2 - Phong Vu

This is the guy who was starstruck by Steven Tyler but first had to make sure with the camera man that he was Steven Tyler. One of the rare mistaken case of starstruckitude you’ll ever see. He sang ‘Unbreak My Heart’ and kind of sounded like the drowned out singers on a karaoke backing track. It really almost sounded like the vocal equivalent of softly weeping into a stuffed puppy. Also, one of the most authentically bad auditions since the Live a Virgin guy of some years back. So many of these bad auditions are self-aware, but this was a good old throwback honest-to-God bad singer who had no idea how bad he really is and gave it his all. There just aren’t enough of these anymore.

1 - Alejandro

This is the guy who wanted to start a revolution apparently by eating airheads, because his tongue was a deep shade of blue. He sang something by Paramore with a voice that sounded like a weird mix of opera and complaining at the returns window at Target. Like a recitative for the angry and confused old man. This abomination was followed by a blend of Tebowing and crying with a dismissal by the largest security guard in human history. A great old-style rejection with Randy repeating the last words of the song by means of review (“No, no, no”) and the judges sending him out with Steven saying, “No. Not Right Now” and Randy simply saying, “Never.”

The Best of the Judges:

The best judges’ moment of the night was the montage of disagreements over girl singers. It isn’t very often that we see split decisions, and I found this portion fascinating.

Mostly, I agreed with whoever was rejecting the contestants. I thought all the singers were bad. Most of the time it was Randy and Steven on my side, but the last girl (who I thought was the worst) drew J-Lo’s ire while actually getting in thanks to the favor of Randy and Steven.

Most of the time the auditions are very clearly one way or the other, but I’d love to see more moments where it isn’t quite sure and we get to see the judges hash it out. It’s much more compelling.

Other Random Thoughts:

I’m going to go completely off the board and discuss the McDonald’s Chicken McBites commercial that seems to be the sole sponsor of ‘American Idol’ at this point.

In what world is it a good idea to make these little bits of deep-fried poison the “hipster fast food snack”. Are we supposed to believe this? That hipsters want nothing more than to get out in their energy-friendly old car and eat some Mickey D’s while they take cell phone videos of each other? Does this make anybody hungry?

A good ad campaign for that? Chicken McBites: We’re trying to make something as good as Chik-Fil-A.

Photo Credits: Michael becker / FOX

Previous: Kate Middleton Shows Off Better Leg Than Angelina Jolie

Next: Malin Akerman Has To Watch What She Eats Due To Autoimmune Condition