America’s Got Talent – Season 8, Final Night of Performances – Live Blog and Discussion

America's Got Talent - Season 8

We’re almost there! So cut out all that bickering in the back seat. The final six acts will perform tonight to vie for the million dollar prize and a rapid descent into bar-room trivia game answer. Tomorrow night will be the exciting, filler-packed finale featuring several special guests and Nick in more sequins than the Coney Island Mermaid Parade.

Tonight we’ll see performances by dweeby country singer Jimmy Rose, emo church singer Cami Bradley, and multicultural operatic singers Forte; acrobatic dancer Kenichi Ebina; awkward teen magician Collins Key; and nasally comedian Taylor Williamson. How is America supposed to choose the best among these acts, when their talents are so diverse? But anything can happen tonight to capture the hearts and minds of the country’s viewers. Taylor might even say something funny.

Here’s Nick with a tux and a red flower in his lapel. I’m sure his shoes  broke the Bedazzler. It appears that vast crowds of people waited outside of Radio City for the opportunity to touch the fingers of the passing contestants. More likely that was just the line for the local Starbucks, which has just started serving the pumpkin latte.

The finalists perform twice tonight. One time is a reprise, preferably improved, of an old act, and the other is a new act, preferably entertaining.

Jimmy Rose leads off. I bet he wasn’t expecting that. He’s going to try to capture lightening in a bottle again with his first song, one he wrote called Coal Keeps The Lights On. Is this an ad for his industry in case he loses? Nick asks him about the song, but I can’t understand the answer because I don’t speak hillbilly.

Next comes Kenichi Ebina. He’s doing his first act, too, which got thousands of You Tube hits. It’s the one where his head appears to fall off. We get plenty of brainless on this show, but no headless. This time he also twists his hand all the way around and some other breathtaking body manipulations. Dip him in buffalo sauce, because this man is boneless!

Following that is Cami Bradley, who will repeat her performance of Cher’s Believe. She practically fellates the microphone. The moody wailing, tinkling piano keys, and feathered bangs result in another standing ovation. Howard says she was a hillbilly sitting in a church when they found her. Now she’s a famewhore sitting in the Snapple All Natural Talent Suite. Howie claims she’s the most original singer they have, despite the fact that she covered someone else’s vastly overplayed song, while Jimmy wrote his own and then sang it in an indecipherable language.

Collins Key is supposedly leaving countless girls screaming. That would be quite a trick. Doing the same magic act a second time wouldn’t be wise for him, so instead he’s going to be more intimate with his performance. What, is he going to make his pants disappear? He does a trick that involves Heidi and Mel biting the opposite ends of two playing cards they’ve signed , like Lady and the Tramp at a poker game, which then appear to meld together. He’s still boring and he keeps ruining perfectly good cards.

Next is Forte, performing Andrea Bocelli’s The Prayer, their act from Vegas Week. Does this mean they haven’t got a prayer? Howie philosophizes about how difficult it will be for America to choose them after seeing Kenichi and the comedian, even though Forte had really great lights and a choir this time. He must spend a really long time in car show rooms.

Now for Taylor Williamson. He also can’t repeat his act., and I would rather he didn’t. He claims the producers insisted, though, so for his camel joke, a guy in a camel suit comes out. That’s funnier than he is. Then he’s compelled to make a joke about Heidi being married to a seal. The rest is not any funnier either. I really don’t get his appeal.

Back to Cami, so it’s a different order in the second round. Sneaky! Tonight has to be the performance of her life, she asserts with the hyperbole of your average reality show contestant. So she does a Camification of I Want To Hold Your Hand. She’s showing some leg for good measure. She’s just a little too sweet and innocent-seeming. I suspect a Rosemary’s baby is hidden in a black bassinet somewhere in that church basement.

Collins comes next. We get to see him crying again after his first appearance. That instills confidence. He tells us he posted a video prediction on You Tube yesterday. Then some people took photos of themselves, which they posted with hashtags. The judges each have select one of those photos, which they hold up, and the people who correspond to them step forward. Damn, isn’t that dark-haired girl the same, supposedly unknown-to-him one who appeared on stage for one of his other tricks? Anyway, yeah, he predicted their appearances and the hashtags. These tricks are all variations on the same thing. Collins wants to keep magic young, fresh and relevant, he says, which is why he uses social media.  How is magic ever old, stale, and irrelevant? You make something disappear, that’s pretty ageless.

Now let’s hear from Jimmy again. Up til now he was jist uh drimmer, but he tawk chintzes in laff and now he’s here. He sings another out of the ordinary selection, The Dance, made famous by Garth Brooks and several hundred other reality show contestants. Mel says he’s so nice she would take him home to mum. They would need an interpreter.

Next is Taylor. He claims he has the “biggest people in comedy” telling him he’s doing the right thing with his life. Does he mean Howie? If he’s big in comedy, then I’m pretty damn sizeable in live-blogging. Taylor takes a lot of pauses between lines to snort and make non-sequiters. They point to his mother in the audience, who appears to be a blond in a tight red dress.  That was unexpected.

Kenichi now. He dances with himself many times over on the big video screen. Mel felt it was a little bit off. This from the woman with enormous hair and poorly contained cleavage. Howie freaks out about the importance of voting, much as I did last week for the New York City mayoral primary, which I bet Howie skipped.

And finally, it’s Forte. They all faced a lot of rejection before now. They were told over and over again they were just not good enough. “Never let go of that dream,”advises the chubby one tearfully. Yeah, tell it to Marty Brown. They sing something in Italian, accompanied by lots of blinking, criss-crossing laser lights, as Caruso often had in his performances. Howard calls them the Crosby, Stills, and Nash of opera. Maybe one of them will impregnate a lesbian pop singer later on.

Voting is open! See you tomorrow night to find out what happened.

About E.M. Rosenberg 240 Articles
Favorite 40-volume series issued by Time-Life Music: Sounds of the Seventies. Favorite backsplash material: Subway tile. Favorite screen legend I pretend wasn’t gay: Cary Grant. Favorite issue you should not even get me started about: Venal, bloodsucking insurance industry. Favorite character from the comic strip “Nancy”: Sluggo, or maybe Rollo. Favorite Little Debbie snack: Nutty Bars. Favorite Monkee: Mike.