[TrueFaith77]

American Idol - Season 8
Hollywood Week (Episode 3) Recap

Only a miracle can make reality Tatiana Del Toro's psychic friend's prediction of a place for her in the Top 12. The miracle: that the television audience will stop passively taking emotional cues from the Idol producers' crude manipulations. Nobody's survival has depended this much on audience participation since Tinker Bell. The show presents an exaggerated portrayal of Tatiana as the show's villain -- as if she were any more ambitious or proud than any of the other contestants! or anybody else in Hollywood! Wake up! Appreciate that Tatiana is the only one who makes showbiz aspiration... interesting. As one Worster summarized: "No need to elaborate on how awesome she is. She already is." In other words, when she exits the stage from her full-band solo audition and she twirls and smiles and breathily exhales that she feels "incredible" and that she was "awesome," she not only feels relief after a job well-done in the high-stress audition atmosphere, she actually expresses that relief in a way that makes it indelible.

And for the first time on the show, her singing is as indelible as her persona. The show makes light of her tendency to whip out new songs to contradict the judges' initial negative appraisals: the tactic of someone who knows how to claw her way to the top in Hollywood. You know: like all those aspiring stars who keep handy a copy of their portfolio in case opportunity arises -- another reality the show simply mocks, even as it promotes stardom as the noblest of goals. "That ain't your thing," Randy Jackson chastised her for doing to Aretha and Whitney, but defiant Tatiana shows that she makes the Baby Face composition "I’m Your Baby Tonight" entirely her own. When she sings the song for the judges, she has new intensity (for some reason, she reminded me of Jessica Harper in Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise: entranced and entrancing). She digs deep on the low notes and then seems to cut off the back-up singers for a high-pitched vocal run at the end. It's utterly memorable -- and a psychologically apt expression of the song. . .

. . .unlike, say, Alex Wagner-Trugman (despite this, still a fave) and Anne Marie Boskovich's massacre of Fleetwood Mac's "Don’t Stop" on last week's Group Night show. From the literalizing of the song's lyrics in their cheesey group choreography to Alex's face-pulling -- misreading the song's profound rhythmic, poetic, pop-lore expression of Love and perserverence -- this encapsulates the danger American Idol poses to our shared pop heritage. The show threatens to separate expression from pop (especially exquisite pop like "Don't Stop"), individuality from performance.

This threat manifests itself in the show's establishing that Danny Gokey's schmaltzy -- cliché -- take on the schmaltzy "I Hope You Dance" somehow expresses genuine uplift: cue Paula's standing ovation. Sight-impaired Scott MacIntyre's schmaltzy, cliché, and, besting Gokey, off-pitch "Home" also got a standing O from Paula. The gesture was meaningless since he couldn't see it. Fitting. Joanna Pacitti forgot the words, but the failed pop star -- already rejected by the American public after being given major industry support -- serves the show's purpose of supporting the myth that Idol -- and Hollywood -- offers "second chances." You fail: try out for the show. You forget the words: You're in the Top 36. The show's real challenge, however, is for Idol viewers to redeem themselves.

No wonder the producers of the show heighten tension, keep viewers tuned in but tuned out, by moving Tatiana Del Toro from one winners' room to another, simultaneously encouraging a Tatiana freak-out (who wouldn't react after such a ploy?) and creating the impression that she was the bottom of the heap (so everyone will hate her for taking their loser favorite's spot). As GoldDustOrphan at the Fleetwood Mac fansite, The Ledge, put it: "This season of AI seems designed to torture Tatiana Del Toro." That's what Tatiana is up against in appealing to the television audience. On her myspace page, Tatiana describes her "mood" as "determined," signified by corresponding smiley. Tatiana Del Toro believes in miracles.