Grease - Guys' Night (3/4/07)

Tonight, other than sending one potential Sandy home, is all about the guys. We start off with the 4 of them doing "Greased Lightning" with the fitting prop of an actual car on stage.

Each of the guys has some footage from a special 'field trip' designed to help them in their perceived area of weakness.

Austin is up first. He needs to work on his looseness and sense of humor on stage, so he goes to a comedy workshop. Unfortunately he mostly interprets this as, he needs to show that he can "act funny," instead of the real issue which is that he just needs to relax & stop trying so hard at everything. During "Fun, Fun, Fun" he is accompanied by 3 of the girls (making it difficult for David and especially Jim to pay enough attention to Austin to have intelligible comments). About half way through when the goofy 'choreography' subsides, Austin does actually relax and do really well. Most of the vocals are great too; I'd never realized what a range this song calls for. Anyway, David says it's better but is still disappointed; Jim mostly agrees but is still distracted; and Kathleen disagrees and says she appreciates the "energy and attack" Austin brings to the stage & that she thinks he's a great musical theater talent.

Derek is next. He met with a "vocal therapist," whatever that is, but it's different than the vocal coach they all work with every week. He has us all convinced he won't crack again, even mostly through his song "Heaven," but then he does, pretty much sealing his fate. Bummer, as I was finally starting to kind-of like him and think he could be a decent Danny.

Max is told he needs to work on his "physicality" to be able to convince people he's a "gang" leader. Gang in the sense of Danny in Grease, anyway. So he goes to learn to box! Fun. Takes him a while but looks like he gets it. He's assigned "Hard to Handle" and for the first time I can actually understand all the lyrics to this song! Wow, that's some good enunciation. Oh yeah, he gets the stagger & macho attitude down fine too. All the girls in the audience think he's dreamy and though the judges insist on reiterating that he doesn't have typical Danny look (why, because he's somewhat short? Seriously...), they admire his Talent and have enjoyed seeing him improve over the course of the show.

Chad is last and needs to learn to project "energy and emotion" throughout a theater instead of just connecting w/those in front. He does some Shakespearian acting one-on-one with a guy who sits in the last row of the theater, and Chad still has a hard time understanding what he's supposed to do, because he thinks he's the best actor there. (on the show; he's the only actor in the theater so that wouldn't be that hard.) He performs "Don't Stop Me Now," a Queen song I've never heard before that's kind-of hard to follow. It's difficult to sing and Chad's vocal weakness shows; I'm not sure about the projecting. The judges have issues as well but say that they still like him.

Time for the girls' sing-off: Laura and Ashley are safe and run backstage to work on designer prints (get it? Laura Ashley?). Kathleen and Allie are made to sing "It's Raining on Prom Night," but I don't know why they even do the sing-off as the decision obviously has nothing to do with their performance thereof. Regardless, the judges give their decision, and David makes it clear that they were not unanimous. While Allie got the lowest number of votes (really?), she's also the one judgeKathleen & Jim are saving, leaving contestantKathleen to go home the third time the viewers voted her into the bottom 2. Whew!

Lastly the panel members are asked for their favorite Danny of the night, and all 3 pick Max. As do I. I think at this point it's his to lose, we just have to figure out which Sandy he'll work best with.