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American Idol Season 8 Hollywood Group Auditions – Feb 4, 2009
By PopSavant | February 4, 2009 | 
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Ryan Seacrest opens Hollywood group night show by telling us “this annual event has always brought on the drama… BUT NEVER LIKE THIS!” and warns of impending backstabbing. It’s group audition night, and “who they choose to team up with can make or break them!”
We get a few clips of people having trouble finding groups… anybody who has ever been stuck with a bunch of stoners for a school project knows the dangers here. Old friends Danny and Jamar obviously don’t have that problem and their group goes to work in the kitchen, sounding just as good as their auditions have led us to expect they might be. Rose Flack, on the other hand, ends up lumped together with Bikini Girl (Katrina) and that turns out like I imaging anything involving Katrina eventually does. Rose does a lot of eye-rolling and mimes shooting herself in the head, complaining that everyone else in her group seems to think the competition is all “about being cute.” Repulsive Katrina coupled with mental basket case Rose… can’t wait to see what the results are with this group.
Across the way, Tatiana Del Toro is shrieking at her group: “THIS IS EVERYTHING TO ME! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I’VE BEEN THROUGH TO BE HERE! I’VE BEEN THROUGH HELL AND BACK” One of her team-mates pipes up with a sarcastic “have you ever met Satan?” making me instantly like her. Tatiana is toxic, and eventually leaves her group and gloms on to one containing Nate Marshall, Nancy Wilson, and Kristin McNamara. They let her try it for a while, though Nate is (wisely) against it. Tatiana eventually dumps them too, and heads tries to make peace with her original group. Nancy, looking a bit like an animatronic escaping from Disney’s Haunted Mansion, stalks over and confronts Tatiana, but nothing terribly interesting happens other than Nancy leaving after delivering a passive-aggressive “You have a blessed day!”
Nancy’s group, meanwhile, is also in disarray, as Kristin goes off to sit by herself, saying “I just need to be away from the noise,” which is an odd statement for someone who apparently hopes for a career featuring a lot of amplifiers and electric guitars. The group fractures, Nancy yelling at Kristen and then Nate in turn.
Katrina, meanwhile, has had enough, and leaves her group to go to bed crying, but unfortunately not in a fit of sudden self-realization about the banality of her own life. She’s still there in the morning as her group comes to check on her, refusing to come out from under the covers. Rose and the others write her off and go down to the auditions, but a peppy Katrina shows up as if nothing happened, cheerily telling everyone “I’m HEEEERE!” Rose, who for some unfathomable reason is wearing her contestant ID clipped to her hair, and the other girls walk away from Katrina in disgust. Rose’s prediction is that “we’re going to be that group that gets up there and it’s just an absolute train wreck.”
The singing begins with a warning from Simon: “I’m only going to say this once: forget the words, you’re out.”
First up is a group calling themselves White Chocolate, consisting of India Morrison, Matt Giraud, Kris Allen, and Justin Williams, with their version of the Jackson 5’s One More Chance. They start out with a little doo wop and then mix in a little rap, which makes me initially think the performance will suck – Idol contestants often resort to that sort of thing when they don’t have the pipes – but my fears are unfounded in this case. The harmonies are tight and all four hold up well enough during the individual bits. They all get to stick around, with Ryan telling us that the other groups are cheering, but secretly thinking “damn, I wish we were that good.”
Next up is Action Squad, composed of Alex Wagner-Trugman, Ryan Pinkston, Anne Marie Boskovich and Emily Wynne-Hughes. The group spent an inordinate amount of time practicing their cool Action Squad secret handshake and the lack of actual singing practice shows up as they perform Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop. Emily, in particular, screws up royally, forgetting the words and generally not singing very well. Paula’s reaction: “I’m speechless” … and if Paula can come up with a meaningless bromide for the occasion, you must have sucked pretty bad. Of the four, only Alex and Anne Marie make it through. Emily tearfully tells us that “this is really the only thing that I know how to do!” which is too bad, because she wasn’t very good at that. Ryan Pinkston, for his part, says he “saw a side of Paula that I didn’t know was there… I saw an EVIL in her eyes.” Perhaps she was the one tormenting Tatiana in her trip to hell, who knows.
The group featuring Danny Gokey, Jamar Rogers, Taylor Vaifanua and some forth unnamed chick deliver what Simon calls a “very, very good performance” … but we all knew they would. All four advance to the next round.
Likewise the next group, made up of Jeremy Michael Sarver, Adam Lambert, Matt Breitzke, and Jesse Langseth. They receive a “terrific… really, really good” for their rendition of Some Kind Of Wonderful.
That brings us to Team Diva. The members are Lauren Barnes, Katrina Darrell, Rose Flack, and Jasmine Murray, and they don’t like each other one bit. There song is completely uncoordinated, and nobody really does well at all. Bikini Girl’s line is “got me on my knees,” which offers a glimpse of her most likely path to success in her future endeavors. Rose hops around stupidly and forgets the lyrics to her song. Simon can tell the group is on edge, and encourages them to identify the poison apple, saying: “Forget this PC rubbish… name names.” It’s obvious that Katrina is the culprit, and she tries to get a little sympathy: “I’d been in heels since five AM! I have scoliosis!” The ploy doesn’t work, and all but Jasmine get the axe. Katrina laughably tags the other three as “fake girls” and refuses to make nice. Katrina doesn’t really care, though, because her real purpose – getting exposure – has been accomplished. She has a bright future posing for tricked-out car magazines, I’m sure.
All day standing in heels? Tell that to Seacrest, see how much sympathy you get. Bitch.
As Katrina stalks out, Kara remarks that “I guess she’s ready for her close up” which is a reference to a great line from a great movie, and its delivery almost makes me like Kara for half a second.
We get a couple of clips of other people we’ve met getting cut, including David Osmond and that Austin-Aruchleta-Clone guy.
Tatiana’s group is next, and I hate the lot of them. Their performance is borderline and Tatiana knows it, trying to sell out her teammates by adding a little of her own “I wanna get throoooogh-ooooo” vocals after the main performance is over. Randy warns her: “none of that today,” but the entire bunch gets to stick around. Tatiana tearfully thanks both Jesus and the guy holding the “sound stick.”
Last up is Team Compromise, made up of Nathaniel Marshall, Nancy Wilson, and Kristin McNamara, singing Duffy’s Mercy. Kristen and Nate aren’t too bad; Nancy isn’t good. Again fishing for controversy, Simon says “so you all won’t be having dinner tonight,” prompting a confused Kristen to say “Me and you?” Or maybe she’s not confused, because she’s got a look in her eye that says she’d totally go there if Simon would. The judges say “one of you girls is safe, and one isn’t” which doesn’t do anything to reduce the odds, since the group on stage consists of two females and a gay guy. Tension builds – Simon accuses them of purposely sabotaging each other by singing poor background vocals – and Nancy and Kristen glare daggers at each other, leading Paula to say “it’s not nice to see what’s up on stage right now” … which is apparently code for looking at Nancy, because they kick her off the show. Nate goes to give her a conciliatory hug and Nance completely freezes him out. I’m glad she’s gone.
And that’s it for Hollywood night two. Tonight was the first really enjoyable show of season 8… Group week is always good for entertainment, but this episode was particularly thick with people I couldn’t wait to see go under the guillotine. Some talent starting to show up, too.
More Hollywood episodes next week… lets hope they live up to tonight’s show. See you then!
Topics: American Idol, TV | 2 Comments »
February 6th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Hey, so much for your prediction about Bikini Girl not making it to the top echelon of nudie magazines. I just read on Best Week Ever’s blog that she’s already received an offer from Playboy, the highest class cooter mag around!
February 6th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Wow. Hef’s lowering his standards in his dotage… of course, we’ve yet to see what Playboy’s photoshop crew can do with her.
Thanks for the reply!