America's Got Talent Season Four Recap

Last week's auditions are quickly recapped, and then we get a hint of delights to come, including a guy who appears to be levitating a vacuum cleaner and a man whose past job description has been "chicken catcher". Piers is shown declaring, "This is going to be a total car crash," but I am theorizing that the chicken-catcher, who has been in the America's Got Talent promos for months, is going to be this year's Unexpectedly Great Act, à la Susan Boyle.

We are back in New York City to start the evening, although I presume we're just still in New York, because the judges are wearing the same ensembles as before, except this time when Hoff is introduced, he has ditched the sunglasses. Mr. Canary posits the theory that they are returning from lunch, or something.

Tonight's first act is Carol Lugo, an adorable little 62-year-old lady who lives to dance, although she works in a grocery store to live. She appears lithe and toned and sensibly dressed, so I am getting into the Martha Graham of it all, but when she tells of wearing her dancing shoes to work at the supermarket, that is a thing that makes me go, "Hmmm", as my friends at the C & C Music Factory are wont to put it.

Carol gets cheered wildly for being 62, and Piers asks if she's going to single-handedly improve this suffering ol' world by "putting the smile back on everyone's faces" (shit, things have gotten so bad we all have to share one smile!). That's a tall order, but she's going to try. Then the Four Tops's awesome "I Can't Help Myself" (that's the "sugarpie, honeybunch" song) starts to play, and Carol starts dancing like a giant, spastic doofus, and yet it's completely adorable, including her effed-up moonwalking. Sharon calls her "wonderfully bizarre", and she is sent through to Las Vegas. Well done, Grandma!

This leads quickly into more success: Joseph Harris, a/k/a "Yo-Yo Joe", a young Asian guy who can walk a mean dog; the Diva League, a dance group fronted by "four fierce drag queens", one of whom drops into a dramatic split (presumably right onto her tucked-up nads, which causes Nick Cannon to hop about in vicarious agony backstage); and Chris Allison, or "Coney Island Chris", who munches a light bulb and spits up copious amounts of what is hopefully fake blood. Piers loves the geek acts, damn him.

We return from the break to New York again, where Jay Mattioli has been constructing his own magic acts since he was a whippersnapper. He begins his act by wrapping the mic stand with a piece of black satin and levitating it (ah, this is the floating vacuum cleaner from before-you'll understand if you saw it) while simultaneously doing that crazy 35-degree lean that Michael Jackson first showed us in Moonwalker (for which Michael wore special shoes that he actually designed and patented; believe it!)

As Apollo Four Forty's "Can't Stop the Rock" continues to thunder through the sound system, Jay climbs into an apparatus that appears to compact him into a human crèpe, then it decompresses him and he pops out to bust some wicked dance moves. He dances with a very Michael-Jackson-like style, including a moonwalk, and together with Carol Lugo's moonwalking, it really brings home what a huge influence The King of Pop has been. I mean, we've seen a billion fond looks back this past week, but Michael was very much alive back when these folks actually auditioned.

Anyhoo, everybody loves Jay's style, and he is widely praised and voted through by the judgery, but the nicest part of it was seeing his father, bursting with pride, put a congratulatory hug-down on his talented kid. Awwww!!

Another commercial break sends us west to return to Chicago. I guess the producers skip back and forth among the cities to get the best dramatic mix of auditions, but it's hard to keep track of what town we're in. we still haven't seen anything from Los Angeles. Maybe they're saving the craziest for last? Uh-huh, I said it!

Prokofiev's "Montagues and Capulets", my all-time favorite piece of classical music, plays as we meet Franklin Sane (yes, that's a real name), a 56-year-old judge who loves his music and no doubt feels ambivalent about his job as a juvenile court judge in Detroit (Ooh! Triple whammy!). I can see why the dude might want to take a permanent vacay in Vegas. I'm just sayin'. Anyway, Franklin hopes he can do his city proud.

Just after Nick observes to us that Franklin looks "kinda like Norman Bates" (true), we are treated to the creepiest, most atonal rendition of Petula Clark's "Downtown" that I have ever heard. So much for keeping it real for MoTown, bro. Piers and Hoff waste no time buzzing Franklin the Singing Judge as the crowd relentlessly boos, but Sharon allows him to work up to his big finish; the crowd tried to drown him out, but he has the microphone and prevails.

Sharon asks him if he has performed in front of audiences before. "Yes, yes," Franklin assures, then allows that those audiences consisted of, well, prisoners. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment! Okay, that was clearly a premeditated exchange, but Franklin doesn't benefit from his collusion, getting returned to his delightfully challenging job in what I believe is currently the unemployment capital of the country. Poor Detroit! Can't blame a brutha for trying. Oh, yeah, and can someone please explain to Piers that light years are a measure of distance, not time? Oy!

Continuing in Chicago, Nick Cannon frets, "So far, it hasn't been the greatest start to the day," as Franklin Sane's less-than-stellar singing is revisited. But he's the only one yet who has NOT been put through, so what's Nick talking about? Oh, yeah, all the others were in New York. Sigh. This show is harder to keep straight than a floral design convention in San Francisco during Pride Week, y'all!

Next up is pretty young Thea Megia, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from California (and she's auditioning in Chicago instead of L.A.? What is the significance of this?). She is going to sing "I Am Changing" by Jennifer Holliday, and this lets us know she is serious, because this is not the one song from Dreamgirls that everyone tries to sing.

From the second she opens her mouth, she is clearly going to advance in the competition, probably to the finals. Truth be told, she has a couple of pitchy moments, but overall she gets it done in fine fashion, and she is highly lauded. Sharon and much of the audience give a standing ovation, and Sharon very commercially calls her " a great little package". Shades of Kara DioGuardi! Thea's going to Vegas, and we're more than halfway through. Aah, this recap's goin' down smooth!

Still in Chi-Town. Tiny man Jeffrey Johns is shown blowing his cheeks out repeatedly in mock anxiety as Nick talks about how short he is. Jeffrey is also diminuitive, small in stature, teensy weensy, vertically challenged, miniscule, wee, inadequate of altitude, a munchkin, a tyke, a miniature person, tiny, microscopic, and of substandard loftiness. Hey, did we mention he's short? Only about a hundred times. And poor Jeffrey hasn't even got dwarfism to blame. He's 5'3", y'all! Good grief.

But he's cute! And plucky! He'll show us all! His tiny ass runs out on stage and Sharon immediately starts giggling because he's so precious. I'm sure he really appreciates that reaction from women. I am waiting to be moved by a talent that surpasses the 63-inch benchmark, but, although he puts on a serviceable show, jumping off a giant chair and singing a tune about being a great big little small person (from "Annie"?) in a good voice, hitting his marks and showing a decent dancing prowess and gymnastic skill (he's the third adult male I've seen do a split on this show, but trust me, that's a rare feat for a man) as well as plenty of personality, the audience hates him, booing him practically from the start.

Piers and Hoff have buzzed him, and Piers calls it "stupendously irritating". I was trying to figure out what the problem was, because the singing and dancing was decent, but I think Piers just nailed it. It was stupendously irritating, and the reason I usually hate show tunes (my apologies to Thomas Lane) is that they tend to have this kind of "Mommy, Mommy, look what I can do!" type of in-your-face perkiness. It repels a person. Maybe Jeffrey Johns would have gotten farther with the New York crowd, but he bombed out in the Windy City. Fortunately, he retains his pluckiness as he scampers from the venue.

Now it's time for another Montage of Ignominy, featuring Witches in Bikinis (great concept, crap execution); Robert Myers, a man who equates "doing impressions" with "clumsily changing clothes with a creepy-looking Elvis Presley mannequin while singing a Jerry Lee Lewis song"; and Samba Samba Samba, a rather unimaginatively-named dance troupe who refuses to stop dancing even after three buzzes.

Will we be saved from this Sinkhole of Suckitude by the five-sister dance group known as The Fab Five? IT IS MOST DECIDELY SO, says the Magic Eight Ball, as the freshly-scrubbed gals from Utah mesmerize us with their awesome clogging skills and their shiny, shiny pants. They communicate their enthusiasm by whooping like Howard Dean after a third-place finish, but they have mad dance moves and excellent choreography, and the middle sister looks like Mariska Hargitay from Law and Order: SVU, so what's not to like? Welcome to Vegas!

Coming up next, the much-previewed Chicken Catcher. Come on, show; he's up last. Do you really think we don't know he's going to be the most awesome thing you have tonight?

Kevin Skinner, 35, from Mayfield, Kentucky, is cast as the prototypical redneck, with his cornpone accent, his distrust of the Big City and its rapid ways, and his fondness for taking his truck "muddin'". Yep, nothing's more fun than destroying some pristine piece of Nature with two tons of loud, exhaust-belching American engineering. Yee doggies! Thanks, Dee-troit! Kevin's probably a nice man, but America's Got Talent is making him look like the biggest refugee from an episode of COPS we've ever seen, backwards hat, convenience-store Navajo-blanket hoodie and all. Will Kevin's talent be enough to save him from the Trailer Park of Despair?

Of course it will. As soon as he begins to play the Garth Brooks song " If Tomorrow Never Comes" on his guitar, we know this will be a sublime experience, and Kevin's musical skills, lovely vocals and emotional delivery of the material hushes the audience into respectful silence until he finishes, whereupon they burst into wild, standing applause, joined by Hoff. We then get to hear the "car crash" comment in its proper context, as Piers explains his fears that the guy would suck based on his appearance, even though piers is on Britain's Got Talent and has already been Susan Boyled. Clearly, he hasn't learned jack shit. Kevin had better get used to the Big City, because he's a-goin' to Vegas.

Joining Kevin in Sin City will be tonight's "bizarrely wonderful" hoofer Carol Lugo, Yo-Yo Joe, The Diva League, glass-eating Chris Allison, magician Jay Mattioli, 14-year-old singing sensation Thea Megia, and clogging sisters The Fab Five. Catch ya on the flip side!