S18.E06: Auditions 6

[Mr. Sparkle]

Sixth round of auditions airs Tuesday, July 11th, 8:00 PM EDT. 

[Tango64]

Kudos to Sofia for holding on to her X even after realizing the puppets were a “suck up to Simon” act. 

[ams1001]

I wish they would put the contestants' names on the screen like they used to.

• 14yo Mexican dancer: she seemed so sweet and then she went all horror movie on us. I liked her.
  Also liked that she took a real bow after she was done.
• Is it really that impressive that military people can march in formation? I mean, the military is kinda known for that sort of thing.
  Audience member: "Heard. Heard." Is that what the young people are saying these days?
  They were pretty good.
• Magical Uncle Fester: he was fun. And kinda cute in a weird way.
• Japanese brass quartet: Wasn't a fan...
• Dance montage. Everybody gets a yes!
• Venezuelan "dancer": Sofia translates "Simon told me no in London so I'm coming back for a yes" into "he's coming back for revenge." Okay, I wasn't expecting fingers dancing in tiny sparkly boots. But it was entertaining in a "this guy should still get a no" kind of way.
• Why are we watching people in the audience making out?
• Why are we hearing about this guy's failed marriage?
  Yeah, sure, this seems totally not staged at all.
  And a commercial break in the middle of it. This guy cannot possibly be good enough to warrant this stupidity.
  Nice voice, I guess, but definitely not worth all that buildup. Also I couldn't even understand most of the lyrics. And I really couldn't care less what his wife thought.
  ("Faith enjoyed Trent's song...but they are still not together." 😄...oh, was I not supposed to laugh at that?)
• [Sofia] "Oh, no, puppets": I want to see the people behind the puppets.
• Aerial couple: Why does she sound like she has an accent if she grew up in LA? Or did I hear her wrong?
  And why am I spending more time watching the judges and audience than the performance?
  Why is everyone looking so shocked when all she's doing is hanging onto the straps and being pulled straight up? She's not actually doing a trick and everyone is just in awe. 🙄 
• Country singer sisters: Meh. (Have I mentioned that I'm not a country fan?)
  "I'm 25 and she's 23 and we're two years apart..." Thank you for helping me do the math.
  "We're gonna bring our band out if that's okay." I really wanted Simon to tell them no, it's not okay.
• Sword swallower: "Dangerous stunts. Do not attempt." Well, that's my cue to go do...anything else.
  'K, I pulled out the kitchen towels from the laundry basket and folded them while listening to screaming from the other room.
• Lavender in the lavender dress: she was good but the praise was a little over the top. If she wasn't blind+autistic+adopted she would not have gotten the GB.
• Does every GB winner get a box of confetti?

[Lonesome Rhodes]

Legit ep.  Some truly unique takes and outside of finger dancer, no obvious Gong Show material.

Simon was right about the Mexican girl - she absolutely shines on stage.  Didn't care for her emoting, but the hybrid contortioning was worth seeing.

Simon was also correct about MOS.  There were a few awkward transitions, but overall, I loved the concept and I love brass.

The Portland divorcee was incredibly weak.  I give him points for conjuring up the scheme, though.

The puppeteers had to be professionals.  Their singing voices were high quality.  The Simon voice was brilliant, talking or singing.  Assuming they bring more excellent material, they should go a long way.

The rope couple may be good for the Luxor, but they do very little for me.

A favorite moment was when one of the female jidges remarked how much she loved the pre-performance interview for one of the montaged acts.  I can't decide if that destroyed continuity was on purpose, or just a horribly bad edit.

The other remarkable bit of sleight of editing/story was the country gals.  They got a standard hero intro montage and they were certainly competent.  No question they perform professionally.  Yet, the song just didn't hit.  Here is where Simon can shine, and he did.  His concise criticism about needing to "pop" in the first few seconds was evocative of Idol, and it was spot on.  it also may have been the best misdirection of the season by the editors/producers.  More, please.

 

[Frisky Wig]

The country sisters song was catchy and I thought they had good voices. The world does not need ANOTHER song that glorifies drinking but I think they should’ve gone through. They were better than some acts who HAVE gone through, IMO. 
 

I thought the brass band was really unique! I liked that weren’t yet another dance troupe. 
 

Speaking of dance, the girl at the beginning was quite talented. 

[Mr. Sparkle]

That was a little better than it's been the last few weeks. Maybe skipping last week helped. 

• Young dancer - I'm not a dance fan, and it started off slow, but got more interesting. Kind of cool performance. 
• Military singers - first time I'm going to Hell - they weren't really good. Lead singers had mediocre voices. 
• Uncle Fester - same old card tricks, but he brought personality to it. Showmanship really is everything. I wish we saw more of the act. 
• Japanese brass - LOVED THEM! Original and fun to watch. 
• Finger dancer - dumb. Entertaining for about 2 seconds. 
• Failed marriage singer - actually not a bad singer, but so contrived and obviously set up. 
• Puppet show - definitely picked up when the Simon puppet came out. 
• Aerial couple - good looking naked people spinning around. Never saw that before on this show. 
• Country singers - agree with the judges that it had a bar band feel to it. I also agree that we've seen much worse acts go through. 
• Sword swallower - he actually brought some originality to sword swallowing! I liked it. 
• Lavender - second time I'm going to Hell - mediocre singer at best. Got through on her backstory. 

[marketdoctor]

A little late to the party, but I realized Bob's Burgers did the finger dancer as a story, and arguably did it better.

AITA for wanting the struggling marriage guy singer's wife to say "that was nice, but you really shouldn't have slept with my sister" or something?

I think some of the "great backstory, mediocre acts" get the GB because they wouldn't survive more rounds of audience voting.  It's sort of like how I thought the puppet show had good singing (and better than some of the "singers singing" acts), but adding puppets made it more interesting.  For me, that's more of a tiebreaker than a lot of bonus points; YMMV.