The One The Producers Want

Ok, good morning. I decided to forgive Grease. . . and settled in for the next installment last night, and wow, my inner conspiracy theorist has been in a state of perpetual buzz ever since. The show opened with no apology or explanation for last week's repeat and no explanation of what happened to any votes that may have been phoned in last week. We got a quick greeting from Billy and Denise, channeling Ryan Seacrest and Brian what's his name at their best. We then got another group performance of Summer Nights with marginally better choreography, but since the song is really one male and one female performer with a chorus, it was done in a tag-team style, with each contestant getting to sing one line and then passing the mic on, which just doesn't work very well. What's going to happen when they get to Hopelessly Devoted? Then, we got the first bombshell of the night. Two weeks ago during the live episode, Billy and Denise repeatedly said that viewer's votes would determine who would be sent home. Well, last night, they announced that the two lowest male and female vote getters would have a sing-off and the judges would decide who got sent home. Obviously, something very unexpected had happened with the voting. Did my Austin actually get the lowest number of votes? Could Matt still somehow be in the competition? A very awkward, apparently improvised, redesign of Idol's results show followed in which we eventually found out that while Matt was indeed one of the lowest vote getters, Jason was also one of the two lowest, which was quite a surprise. No surprise for the girls though, it was Allie and Ashley (the ringer Ashley brought back last week, not the Lindsey Lohan lookalike Ashley). Obviously when the votes were counted two weeks ago, Jason must have been the lowest (and it was later confirmed that he was), and in order to save the show's credibility, the producers took last week off to figure out how to re-jigger the show and throw the results to keep Jason in the running, hence this week's previously unannounced sing-off. The unlucky four were shepherded off the stage cloaked in shame and the remaining ten proceeded to perform, apparently in reverse order of most votes gotten.

Now, apparently, someone is reading my posts, because it was revealed that these contestants for a Broadway show would actually be singing Broadway songs. Imagine that. We were then quickly introduced to guest judge Andrew Lloyd Webber, and while the more cynical among us could assume that bringing The Woman In White to Broadway drained all his finances and he now needs to slum for the highest bidder, he actually has a history with the show, having produced the British version with judge David Ian, which last year cast The Sound of Music and this year is casting his own Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Plus, once upon a time, he did know what he was doing creating musicals, so it can be assumed that he mostly knows of what he speaks.

Max then kicked off the performances with Can You Feel The Love Tonight from The Lion King. However, any notion that this was a theatre oriented show quickly evaporated as the orchestra began turning out the movie's orchestration rather than the Broadway adaptation. While much of the post-performance critique focused on Max's much ballyhooed, but rather low-key make-over (really, all they did was slightly trim his hair), he was a thousand times better than he was last week. Yes, there were still some wrong notes, and trust me, theatre-goers who are paying $111 plus service fees for their tickets are not going to be as forgiving as the studio audience, but he really sold the song, far better than he did last week. I'll feel his love any night he wants.

Laura was up next with Superstar from Jesus Christ Superstar, and Jesus Christ is right. Her first two shrieky notes were horribly off key. She recovered well, but it was really a karaoke performance. She couldn't find the passion behind the words, and with showtunes more than any other type of music, that is key. This unfortunately seemed to be a theme among the girls for the night, in a week that once again saw the initially unmemorable guys giving superior performances than the fading divas.

Derek gave probably the riskiest performance of the night, performing Footloose from the musical of the same name, and it paid off. First of all, of all the shows I have ever seen, Footloose The Musical is by far the worst. What the hell was Walter Bobby thinking, going from Chicago to Footloose? His career has been paying for it since. I only saw it because it was part of my Broadway in Chicago subscription package and I like to think that it was the free one, because I would never pay money to see something that putrid. Derek however, could have saved the show had he been in it. He gave a great performance, full of energy without going over the top which would have been so easy to do. He worked in some great dance moves as well and while Austin is still the one to beat, Derek put him on notice that he could just as easily take this competition.

Ashley then performed Take That Look Off Your Face from Tell Me On A Sunday/Song & Dance, and honey, all I can say is, take that performer off the stage. It was not good. Again, she focused too much on the notes (without a lot of success) and completely ignored any emotion behind the lyrics. Listen to Bernadette Peters on the Song & Dance recording and you'll hear exactly how this song should be sung. Fortunately, for once, the judges actually provided real criticism and took her to task for her lackluster performance.

Kevin followed in Derek's footsteps with another song from a widely panned show that quickly came and went, performing Burning Love from All Shook Up. While he was good, he was not as successful as Derek at making us forget the stench of the original. While he hit the notes better than any of the girls, his was the most karaoke-like performance of any of the guys.

Then, Juliana did Don't Cry For Me Argentina. Oh, Honey, what on earth possessed you to choose this one? This is probably the most iconic showtune ever and if you're not Patti, it's not going to work for you (although Karen Carpenter gave a remarkably assured performance of it on the Carpenter's 1978 album Passage, track it down, it puts Madonna to shame). Sure enough, I was crying for Juliana. While she effectively, if in a slightly campy way, used the balcony to give her performance some theatricality, the song landed with a thud. Out of tune and with no conviction, this was probably the biggest disaster of the night.

We then got a break from the performers for a short interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber and some clips of the group rehearsing with him. While Mr. Lloyd Webber has written some good shows, he is decidedly populist (which does happen to be the point of Grease), and I got to wondering what would happen if the producers could land Stephen Sondheim as a guest judge. Imagine Kathleen belting out The Miller's Song or Chad crooning Johanna. If they could rise to the occasion, that would be a show. We then got a bizarre group performance of The Phantom of the Opera from the show of the same name. It was again done in the tag-team performance style, and at a much slower tempo than in the real show, so the group resembled less a troupe of reality show contestants and more a band of zombies. Back to the drawing board for next week.

After this odd interlude, we got Chad, with another song from a horrid, although this time inexplicably popular, musical, with My Eyes Adored You from Jersey Boys. He explained ahead of time that he was still recovering from the flu, and it showed. While it wasn't a great performance, it did allow him to show off his ability to capture the flavor of Grease's (for once I'm referring to the actual Broadway show) time period, and he looked so good in close up. My eyes are adoring him, although I think he'd be much better suited to Fiyero than Danny.

Kate, last week's best performer, also chose to plunder Evita, at which point I noticed that all the girls doing Lloyd Webber songs were choosing his early songs. No one seemed interested in trying their hand at Let Us Love In Peace, I Believe My Heart, or All The Wasted Time, which are just as good as any of Andrew's earlier works. Kate did Buenos Aires, a very interesting choice, and while she fumbled through most of it, she nailed the end. Unfortunately, Broadway audiences are not paying just to hear the end of the songs performed well. It was another unfortunate choice from a show that really should be left alone by amateurs.

Austin had probably the best choice, Ease on Down the Road from The Wiz. An old, somewhat forgotten, but still respected show like this allows for a good performer to make a song his own and avoid comparisons to the original, and that is exactly what Austin did. He is still the one to beat, singing and dancing to perfection. I saw Diana Ross do this one in concert a couple of years ago, and while the devout, hard core Ross-head audience went nuts when she did it, it was nothing compared to the reception Austin got. Well done.

Last of the top ten was Kathleen, with another risky choice, Memory from Cats. While it is not as iconic as Don't Cry For Me, it is probably Lloyd Webber's most well known song, and one of the best known showtunes, period. Fortunately, enough artists have covered it that there really is no "definitive" version, which in that respect, made it an easier song than either of the Evita songs previously performed. No worries for Kathleen though, she nailed it with what was until that point the best female performance of the night, and ended up being the second best female performance of the night once all was said and done. In my opinion, she's probably the best choice for Sandy at this point.

Then we got to the singoff, and the conspiracy theories really started flowing. Billy announced that indeed, if they were going to send the lowest vote getters home, it would have been Jason (again, how?) and Allie (no surprise there). The shameful four then had to do a tag-team performance of Tears on My Pillow and the judges announced that they were saving Jason and Allie, sending Matt and Ashley home. While I am glad that Jason is still around, I thought that the votes were supposed to determine who got sent home, not a meddling group of judges with a vested interest in the outcome. This is how we ended up with Bush as president, and do we really want another repeat of that experience? So, in the end, it was the second lowest vote getters that got sent home, which could be false advertising or breach of contract, and, as they were also both the ringers that got a second chance last week, we are now, three weeks later, back to the same point we were at at the end of the last semi-final episode. Kind of a waste of time if you ask me, but at least from here on out the competition is between people who actually earned their places. I wonder if there's going to be any more sing-offs.

The saved contestants then got to do their performances. Jason did the only non-showtune number of the night, singing Buddy Holly's That'll Be The Day. It was an interesting choice, I would have thought he'd want to show how well he could do a Broadway song since he's auditioning for a Broadway show, but like Chad, it allowed him to try to break away from the contemporary mold he's cast himself in (and may have been responsible for his poor showing in the voting) and do a song from Grease's time period. It worked ok, and I do think that some of the judges were a bit unduly harsh in their criticism. Kathleen for once was right on the money with her critique and I'm not sure what Andrew was trying to say, but it appears he landed on the good side when he wrapped up.

Allie then gave us the biggest surprise of the night. She sang I Don't Know How To Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar (cementing the Lloyd Webber picks from his 70's era) and gave the best female performance of the night. What a transformation. She hit all the notes and was the only female to find the emotion behind the words. I finally saw what Kathleen was talking about, but the question is, can she consistently give this kind of performance? I hope so because if she can, she'll go far.

We then got a quick re-cap (and again, they showed Kate's rehearsal take in which she hit the wrong notes instead of her live take in which she got them right) and then Matt and Allie got a duet in which to sing good bye. No mention of who next week's guest judge will be. I'll be sitting by my phone waiting for the call. Again, this episode felt somewhat bloated, and there were many awkward moments as they either needed to fill time or cut time. I believe next week is down to an hour, so it should be tighter as there are still 12 contestants to perform. Will there be a singoff? We'll have to wait and see. If not, Matt and Ashley have a lot to cry foul about and the credibility of the show will be as permanently tattered as Florida's board of elections. And, let's dump the nicknames, please.