All American Girl, Episode 1: The Good, The Bad, The Bubbly

Carrie Hunt takes the stage and performs an almost ear shattering (although technically dead on) operatic aria. In awe (or perhaps abject horror) the judges have little to say.

We come now to the most unique and interesting young lady of this episode. Her name is Evelyn Conners and she – bear with me now – juggles while balancing on a board, which is atop a small log. Wait, I’m not finished! While she is attempting this tricky maneuver, she is also reciting the 50 states in alphabetical order as fast as an auctioneer on speed. I don’t know how, but she somehow made it work and look cool. Perhaps she can team up with recently ejected American Idol hopeful Vanessa Olivarez for an Odd Couple revival on Broadway if this whole AAG thing doesn’t work out. She is certainly more entertaining than Maria Ariano, who decides the best way to get ahead in the competition is to drag her fellow contestants out onto the stage and literally wrestle them into submission.

Jaime Preston returns and this time decides to dance for John Salley. She grabs her crotch and spend a couple of minutes rubbing herself with her hands while John has to be hosed down by security. (Not really, but by the time she was finished, he obviously had badly hyperventilated) Oddly enough, my own headache is miraculously gone. What can I say, I’m a critic but I’m not a dead critic. The host then informs us that each of the coaches will pick a team of five girls. So we have three judges with five girls apiece. But wait! There are 24 girls that are supposed to advance! 5 x 3 = 24! My headache decides to begin its second performance.

The girls that are not immediately eliminated or selected to advance by the coaches are called back in groups of four to six at a time. Multi-tasking Evelyn and sexpot Jaime are selected to advance, as are two women named Kelly and Shauna that I don’t recall ever seeing in either of the performance rounds. Sock-hop Tarah makes the cut as do three other women whose names are never revealed. We see a brief montage of weeping girls and once again I am struck by how rushed this all seems. This is a show that almost begs to be compared with American Idol (British judge, performance auditions in multiple cities, same production company, etc.) yet the creators of the show seem to have forgotten what makes AI such a successful show. On American Idol the main performers are on camera long enough for us to get to know them a little bit and start to actually care about what happens to them. AAG parades names and faces by us with such startling rapidity that it’s very difficult to even remember individuals, let alone want to know more about them. Hopefully as we close in on the final 10 we’ll get a chance to see some real personalities emerge. Regardless, this apparently takes us down to the promised 24 young ladies who are advancing to the next phase of competition.

The second stage of the competition is comprised of several sections. The girls will be evaluated on:

1. Athletic ability
2. Personality profiles
3. Intelligence
4. Dance

There will also be an “intimate” question-and-answer session with the coaches. After this is all completed, the coaches will pick their three teams. It’s actually starting to make sense to me now and I see why the producers have been racing at such breakneck pace. They have a lot of ground to cover for just one episode! In an attempt to show lines of contention forming amongst the coaches, we see the two female coaches talking about how overly competitive John is being. John is refusing to let anyone – even the host – know who he wants on his “team” because he doesn’t want Geri and Suzanne snatching any of his favorites away from him.

First up in Stage 2 is the athletic competition. The girls have to swim across a pool, climb up and over a cargo net, crawl across a mat under some additional netting, run through a set of car tires, and then take some free throws at a basket. If they sink one of the free throws, five seconds is knocked off their time for the course.

The ladies are shown preparing for the course and the most common lament is the fear that they will lose their bikini tops when they dive into the pool. The second most common comments come from the “less endowed” women who wish they had to worry about falling out of their tops. Speed talking, juggling Evelyn tells America that she prides herself on her ability to “not get a wedgie!”

The event begins and is largely done as a montage of the various ladies doing their best. One in particular almost wades across the pool instead of swimming because she doesn’t want to get her hair wet. The fastest girl through is Kira, who ends up with a time of 30.6 seconds after sinking her free throw.

For the dance competitions, a choreographer works with the girls for two hours and teaches them what we are told is a very complex set of steps. They perform in three groups of eight girls each, but one girl, Rachel Hartley, has an anxiety attack and is sent off to get medical attention, missing this phase of the competition entirely. The ladies dance to the Coyote Ugly soundtrack hit “Can’t Fight the Moonlight” and for the most part avoid knocking one another down. With very few exceptions the ladies do not do a very good job.