American Idol Semifinal: Week 2 Recap: The Boys

Breaking News! Crystal Bowersox was rushed to the hospital today, and cannot perform tonight! She cannot perform! Everything must change, and the universe must be restructured to accommodate this new information. Up is now down. Black is now white. Ellen is now a comedian. Kara is now a music industry insider. There are doctor's orders at work. This is official! Translation: We forced Crystal Bowersox to have dental surgery. She is still full of bruise and swell. Tomorrow, she will be sufficiently iced, but check her teeth! Do you dare gaze into the dental horror that is Crystal Bowersox's mouth? Let's go together. We don't have to stay long, just long enough to know the truth. Hold my hand. Don't look directly at the brown ones.

Fortunately there are 10 guys on the payroll, ready to perform tonight instead of Crystal and the Harridans -- and I'm sure the lack of rehearsal time and interruption to their schedule won't negatively effect them at all!

News! Kara got a spray tan. Good decision. If she had trotted out that bright red dress without turning on the tan, it would have been hard to take.

News! Ellen is doing a few jokes tonight! Real jokes, as if she were a comedian on a television show, trying to entertain an audience, instead of a wide-eyed regular guy off the street, just happy to be here, Ryan. Right, there is a reason that Ellen is on the show and it's not because of her blinding insights into the music industry. She can be funny -- if she can stop surpressing that, we might be able to figure out why she was added as a judge.

This week the contestants' interview segments will reveal something about themselves that we don't know. They will also extensively recap what happened on stage last week for us including bluetone taped segments of the judges' comments. Who needs these recaps? Was someone watching ice dancing during the show last week? Were you?

MICHAEL LYNCH: Michael's unknown secret is that he is really into musical theater, making him the first straight man to ever reveal this secret. He went to a performing arts high school and now he just loves to dance around on stage with his little shiny cane accessory, kicking up his heel accessories. Way to challenge my assumptions, there, Michael. You are just one giant man, full of cute surprises. He sings "This is a Man's World" by James Brown, with the stated objective of defining himself as a front man, not a supporting act as Simon described him last week. He's cute, and he does try hard, but he's kinda just goodish. The judges react as if he had just turned himself into a giant pile of money. Randy gives him a standing ovation. Ellen makes a JOKE! A REAL ONE, praising the song as "educational." She gets laughs. Kara calls him potentially "a great artist." Simon gets on the pimp train too. Ok, whatevs, but he will be slain in the theme weeks, srsly.

JOHN PARK: John tries to shock us in interview by sharing that he has only been speaking English since 4th grade, and his first language is Korean. This would be a surprising revelation if he didn't look so completely Korean. Like yeah, I was born in Michigan, are you going to frakin' die from shock now, or what? He has an acapella group called "Purple Haze" that is waiting anxiously to get their lead singer back, having long since given up on their collective manhood. John sings a very boring John Mayer song, sporting a white v-neck t-shirt, clearly aware of the source of his many votes. I am not in his demographic. At all. The judges praise him -- he is so much better than last week! Yawn.

CASEY JAMES: Casey's revelation is that he does not have a television. Instead he works on his house and tries out different hairstyles in the mirror, plucking a stray here, an eyebrow there, widening his eyes, narrowing them, opening his mouth really wide, closing it, going "WEEooWEEooWEEoo" and seeing what that looks like from the side, etc. While cavorting around in his rehearsal space, he shows us a mysterious box but quickly closes it, promising to reveal its contents only if he makes it to the top ten! Vote, girls! We want to find out what's in that medium-sized brown box, right?! Thank you, Casey. Last week I was bemoaning the lack of a reason to punch you in the face. Now, I have one. And maybe that's what was in the medium-sized brown box after all. A much-longed-for justification for scorn. Casey's rendition of "I Don't Want to Be" recalls Bo Bice, Chris Richardson, and everyone else who ever used it on the show. He pulls out some lead guitar, but no one really cares. Even Kara is unimpressed, saying he took "two steps back" tonight. Casey will not be going home, though. We must know what's in the box.

ALEX LAMBERT: Tonight Alex reveals that he has his own secret language that he made up in sixth grade. It sounds like fake "my ancestors are Cherokee" stuff like on Better Off Ted. He whines about his terrible stage fright, saying, "I get nervous that's not regular nervous. It's not even me any more nervous, it takes over my whole body." It takes over his body and styles his hair like Carole Brady*, puts on a plaid sport coat, vomits, writes a couple of bad checks, picks up a guitar and sings "Everybody Knows" by something or other. It was less of a disaster than last week. Randy praises his niche-finding. Ellen exhumes her banana analogy and praises his unique style (now the banana is ripe). Kara praises his recordable tone that producers would die for. Really? That twangy, coppery, whingy little voice? Ryan, experiencing a journalistic personal best, asks: "Would you be upset, like depressed, if you weren't on the show?" Alex: "Yeah, it's like, totally my dream right now, so yeah."

TODRICK HALL: Todrick is going to sing Tina Turner. Ryan asks Todrick why he's choosing another lady song after he got shouted at for picking a lady song last week. Todrick replies that he knows that he can change up the song just enough this time, and not repeat the mistakes he made last time. To be fair to Todrick, these contestants have been told again and again to pick a song and change it up, make it their own, just like David Cook and Adam Lambert. After some grainy footage of Todrick in tights dancing the Nutcracker, he sings "What's Love Got to Do With It?" all slowed down and breathy, with a weird tempo, weird rhythm, and a weird amount of fist-pumping. In other words, he does exactly what he did last week all over again. Ellen goes off her mission statement completely, and forgets to any anything funny. Kara criticizes his R&B runs. Randy tells him he changed the song too much. Simon tells him to quit singing.

JERMAINE SELLERS: Jermaine interviews that he wears footie pajamas because his father won't turn the heat on in their house. He complains cheerfully about the judges' comments last week, and comes off likeable. He emerges on the stage having shaved his hair up into an inexplicably rounded point. It's like he used the cover of a butter dish to mold his hair. Maybe he is trying to "change it up" and "make it his own" where "it" is the shape of a human skull and "his own" is a weird-ass hair tumor. To make matters not at all better, he is wearing a plaid bow tie, a spotted shirt, a grey cardigan, and jeans that look like he fell into a puddle of bleach. He sings "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye with the same goofy, slippery vocals and sleazy eyebrow motions he pulled out last week. Everyone hates it.

The thing is, Todrick and Jermaine basically repeated their performances from last week. And got screamed at for it. But why should they not? Last week, they got enough votes to stay. Why change?

Back from the break, Randy warmly tells us, "Thank you for choosing Idol." Idol peanut butter? Idol for state senate? Idol = life?

ANDREW GARCIA: Andrew's secret is that he is a break dancer. He can spin around on the heel of his hand. He is singing, "You Give Me Something" by James Morrison. I've never heard the song before, and I probably haven't heard it now. However, it's not terrible. Without his guitar, sitting on the meaningful stool, bathed in a bank of blue spotlights, Andrew is completely believable as a kinda contemporary jazz guy. Likeable, if a little wobbly on pitch. The judges are meh.

AARON KELLY: It's time for the exploding fetus to reveal a secret about himself! What will it be? That he's secretly cooking two livers? He lisps to us apologetically that he really likes photography, and actually says the words, "It allows me to be myself in my pitchers. Nobody can tell me the right way or the wrong way to do it. I can do it just my way." Face to face with that kind of droopy, moronical optimism, I have no choice but to vomit flaming knives from my mouth, hair, fingers, and toes, and destroy the world with my fury. Sorry! But then, wait. Aaron's soft voice and blinking innocence lead me to believe, suddenly, that he is super gay. Now I feel bad talking about how he is a wet, dripping fetus clutching the microphone with his gelatinous unformed fingerbuds. But, I can't help what I know. He gives us "My Girl," singing and riffing through all the riffs and pauses, over an arrangement that couldn't be more diluted and Disneyfied. There was actually a pink and yellow sunburst radiating in and out on the LCD screen behind him. The judges liked it. Aaron giggles self-effacingly. So, yeah, he is a gelatinous, quavering, moist GAY fetus. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Except if you're on television. In which case, dry off.

TIM URBAN: What don't we know about Tim Urban? Surprise! He's one of the Duggars. Urban is just a stage name. Dammit! Now he will never get voted off. Tim reveals that before he squeaked out that whispering falsetto last week that he said a little prayer for help. He must have prayed to God to take his voice away and replace it with a handful of wet feathers and depressed beetles. Tonight he sings some crap like you probably heard when you were in college and you went to an open mike and some asshole with hair like Shawn Cassidy got up and danced behind the microphone like a middle school girl high on Fanta and orthodontic glue. Randy hates it. Ellen recommends that since he has no stage presence and no charisma, he should become an actor. But she meant it, like, not as a joke. Simon liked it. WHO CARES? The only reason Tim and Alex are still around is because the American teenaged girl likes her man limp, nervous, and licking his lips constantly.

LEE DEWYZE: Lee reveals his secret: He had to go to a school for juvenile delinquents for a while, and a teacher helped him turn his life around. Nice story -- I think I heard America give off a collective "Awww." Lee sings "Lips of an Angel" against the very significant night sky and stars background. He wears a blue t-shirt and jeans and manages to make it look like it doesn't matter. I liked it, the judges liked it, Lee is in the pimp spot, and I think he pretty much has it made into the top ten. I believe he will be dismissed at some point right before the end, basically following a Daughtry-esque plot progression into a career as a front man for a band, not a pop star.

Best Performances: Lee DeWyze and Andrew Garcia
Worst Performances: Jermaine Sellers and Aaron Kelly
Going Home: John Park and Tim Urban

*Carole Brady joke brought to you courtesy of my son's rockin' violin teacher, Mrs. V.