X Factor Week 4 Recap and Results

It’s time! To face! The fact that this show is now less relevant than The Great British Bake Off. A show about BAKING. It’s Halloween Week on the X-Factor. Fitting, given the show is a zombie itself at this point. But yet I must continue to watch, because it is the oxygen that my hate lungs need to continue producing the bile that fuels my snark-furnace. I have a very fucked up biological make-up. In previous years, the Halloween show has brought us such delights as Jedward murdering Ghostbusters and Wagner doing Bat out of Hell. Last year’s show was when Little Kandy Girl Lash, now known as Little Mix, started to come into their own, and just look at them now: a musical juggernaut the likes of which we have never seen. Who knows what’ll happen on tonight’s show. Maybe Chris Maloney will sing Backstreet’s Back while dressed as a zombie Shirley Temple? Maybe Union J will perform as fanny pads, because that’s just how badly they want to be close to you, baby. Literally none of these things could happen, but it’s nice to pretend, isn’t it? What will actually happen is that everyone will proceed to sing regular songs but with slightly more eyeliner on than normal. On with the show!

Dermot arrives to the strains of Thriller. Well done, show. Four minutes in and you’ve already hit the point of cliché. I think that’s a new record. Dermot gives out the voting numbers, because waiting until after the acts have performed might involve continuing the charade that this show is about finding a good singer. He also explains that Lucy the lesbian is too ill to take part in tonight’s show. She’s developed a very severe case of lesbianism. Doctors took a reading and discovered she had 11 Ellens per Portia on the Nell McCafferty scale. This means they’re going to have to pad out the show even more somehow, doesn’t it? Yay!

Kye is up first. Every week, when I see what act is up first, in what was formerly the death slot, I speculate that this means we’ll see the last of them. And this year, with alarming regularity, they proceed to make it through. So I’m not going to get my hopes up this week. In his VT, Kye is confused. Gary wonders what they can learn from last week’s travesty. Kye says he needs to have fun. And what better way to learn to have fun than with a little help from Robbie Williams, the court jester of British pop. Kye is going to sing one of Robbie’s own songs. Robbie gives Kye lots of useful advice, and we can literally watch him growing as an artist in front of our eyes thanks to the intervention of Mr Williams. That’s a lie. Needless to say, Kye is performing Let Me Entertain You. Which is thematically relevant to Halloween because... well, it isn’t But Kye is wearing even more eyeliner than normal (i.e. a truckful of  Maybelline has been deposited onto his face) and on the X-Factor eyeliner = Halloween. Kye is wearing his hair up so he looks kinda like one of those emos or Goths who decides to dress as a normal person for Halloween because that’s so hilarious.

JUDGES! Nicole says that it was very entertaining, with all the conviction of a parent reassuring their child that they’re still special after watching them bomb at a school talent show. Louis isn’t sure that Kye did enough to save himself this week. Gary says that Kye came back with a boom, that he came back with a bang... basically Gary just offers a selection of onomatopoeias as his critique.

Oh fuck, it’s Union J. IF YOU ARE A YOUNG LADY YOU WILL LIKE THIS BECAUSE THE X-FACTOR TOLD YOU SO. Their intro-video makes me want to stick pins into my eyes. It’s all about a MAD week in the cray-cray world of Union J. ZOMG. The purpose of this is to show they have fun personalities and that you’d want them to be your boyfriends! On Monday Gaymi has his aversion therapy! They hook electrodes to his testicles and force him to watch gay porn! Lol! On Tuesday they went to the Skyfall premiere, where Gaymi relapsed and sucked someone off in the gents! OMG! On Wednesday, Poor Man’s Harry Styles had foetal matter implanted into his face to ensure he continues to look like a poor man’s Harry Styles! Amazeballs! On Thursday, they recover from Rylan’s birthday party, where they were dressed as crazy blood-splattered doctors which was soooooo funny!!!!! These boys really don’t have single brain cell between them, do they? They’re collectively at the same level of intellect as Niall Horan. On Friday, they met Robbie Williams, or maybe it was Thursday, or Saturday... I’m not sure, it’s very hard to keep up with the insane world of Union J, and once was enough to watch that VT, thanks. This week, the boys will be singing that well-known spine-tingler, Sweet Dreams, by Beyoncé Knowles. They perform the song from atop a car. How very urban. How very MK1. Never forget. I think its a subtle anti-speeding message. The youth of today really respect the messages that Union J endorse.

JUDGES! Gary challenges them to come back with something different next week. Damn, they were just planning on doing the same song. Nicole Sherzingerbot thought it was perfection because they stand and own it and pay attention to the girls. It’s very important that they pay attention to the girls, she says, eyeballing Gaymi. Gary disagrees with Nicole’s assessment and they continue to fight over the subjective beauty of it all. Nicole ultimately wins the argument, citing Roland Barthes’ notion of the death of the author as justification for her interpretation of Union J’s performance as manifest beauty.

RYLAN NATION. Rylan waltzes around with a product placed Samsung tablet computer. He happens to walk into Gary Barlow and they have a contrived and set-up conversation in the mould of The Only Way Is Essex, or the cancerous crust on the arse of humanity, as I prefer to think of it. A show that’s more interested in selling a sponsor’s product, via an enforced narrative, featuring Gary Barlow. This VT is a case study in several of the things that are wrong with the X-Factor. It was Rylan’s birthday this week. Zingerbot showed up and performed Happy Birthday, having updated her software with a new eroticism suite. Judging by Lucy’s reaction, it seems to have worked. Rylan descends from the ceiling on a Perspex slab while singing Toxic. I should clarify that this is his performance I’m talking about, not his birthday party. Rylan alights onto the Judge’s Table and transitions into Horny. Again, I must clarify that I’m talking about the song, and not a state of being. He then moves into Poison, a song from Zingerbot’s own oeuvre.  Toxic Horny Poison? On a scale of 1 to Rylan, I give this performance five point Rylan.

JUDGES! After 4 weeks with both feet planted firmly in the 1980s, Louis takes a giant leap forward into contemporary music by correctly identifying Nicole’s song. Tulisa commends Rylan on coming out and performing “to the best of [his] ability”. The wording there is crucial. Gary confeses that he has not given an honest critique of Rylan yet. He says that it wasn’t worse than last week, it was too loud to hear him and that the dancers were good. Nicole rebuffs Gary’s remarks by standing up and gyrating while singing “Horny”. She is as mad as a bucket of cats. Rylan promises that if he makes it through to next week he’ll strip away all the artifice and prove he can sing. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, dear.

It’s time for Adella, the artist formerly known as  Epona, the Celtic Goddess of Donkeys, Mules and Horses, in her mortal form as Ella the Baby Pony and Adele Clone. I think I’m just going to find ways to make her name longer every week until she wins this competition. Given her massive mouth, I thought Halloween is the the perfect opportunity for Adella to dress up as Vagina Dentata, but nope, she’s wearing some clothes from the Janet Devlin cast-off rack. Obviously they’ve been let out just a little bit. Why am I so horrible to Adella? I mean, she’s only SIXTEEN! Sixteen, I say? Yes, sixteen! In her VT, Adella meets Robbie Williams who tries to relate to her and fails terribly, because being SIXTEEN and an immortal pony goddess with a voice like a soaring mountain isn’t really comparable to being sixteen, in Take That, and smearing jam across your buttocks in the hopes of getting noticed. For a moment it sounds like Adella is going to sing Rolling in the Deep, but it’s actually Bring Me to Life by Evanescence. Did you know that internet scientists have proved that it is literally impossible to search for anything related to television, film or video games on Youtube without finding an earnest fan-made highlight reel of emotional moments set to either Bring me to Life or My Immortal? It’s true, try it out yourself. Anyway, Evanescence came betwixt the nu-metal and emo eras so... that’s Halloween?! As part of her Devlin-ensemble, Adella is wearing a cape which she not-so-triumphantly discards during the performance. Nicole is paying some serious attention to the performance. Take a look at the screencap above. She is listening the fuck out of this song. Or maybe she’s performing a hard reset.

JUDGES! Gary doesn’t like it when people mention Adella’s age. Conveniently forgetting he mentioned it himself about 48 times last week. Nicole says it’s her least favourite performance of Adella’s, but that’s like saying that an electronic fund transfer is her least favourite way of receiving a million euros: either way it isn’t that bad. Gary and Nic have a spat about keys and epic choruses and stuff. Adella summons a pantheon of Celtic gods to let loose their fury on Nicole. The judges only mention her age once, which is disappointing for anyone playing 16 Bingo at home.

What can I say about Chris that I haven’t already said? Well, I don’t think I’ve called him a cum-farting nancy-biscuit yet, so there’s that. In no way would I advocate that anyone jump on a plane, travel to London, and stab Chris Maloney in the throat live on National Television, but I think that if that WERE to happen, it wouldn’t necessarily be a terrible thing. His VT is all about reminding us why Chris is the people’s champion and not a vile piss-shitting titty whistler. So it’s a rerun of his first audition all over again to remind us of HIS TERRIBLE NERVES AND HE COULD SHIT HIMSELF AT! ANY! POINT! I think this is the fiftieth time we’ve been made to endure Chris’s first audition again. ME NERVES are especially bad at Halloween with all the fireworks and bangers going off. The chances of a nerve-related Christopher shitplosion increase sevenfold during the run-up to Oct 31st. Between Chris and James Arthur’s panic attack last week; can they not just get a prescription for some Xanax? Gary informs Chris that his mother is a big fan. Chris says his Nan is so proud of him. So they’ve confirmed that people who like Chris tend to be over 60. Is that the target demographic for this show now?

For this week’s performance, Chris will be wearing Page 21 of the Topman winter catalogue. I think himself and Kye have been swapping fashion tips. “Does this look 20 years too young for me?” neither of them asks the other. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement of non-criticism. Chris is singing “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight”, which fits thematically because they said so. The staging is pirate themed. I have no idea what it’s meant to be about. I didn’t see Brian Friedman in any of the VTs tonight so I’m just going to assume all of the Halloween set-pieces were left to his understudy. Maybe Brian has eloped with Lucy. I steadfastly refuse to say anything more about Chris’s performance, because that would involve reliving it in my head. In decades to come, children will look up at their mothers with wonder and pride and think, “My mummy survived the night Chris Maloney sang I Just Died in Your Arms.”  

JUDGES! Nic thought it was a fun 80s Halloween pop opera. I don’t like you any more Nic. She wants to give him a hug for some reason. Perhaps to check if he is truly made of cheese. We do know that Nicole likes her food after all. Louis doesn’t see Chris as a recording star, which may be the most sensible thing Louis Walsh has ever said. He sees Chris as more of a panto performer. Chris lights up at this. Tulisa thought the vocals were very strong but that the songs Chris sings (80s power ballad cheeseboards) are letting him down. She lays the blame firmly at Gary Barlow. Barlow responds by telling her that her “fag ash breath” is disgusting. Tulisa’s face goes from nought to “I’ma fucking cut you, bitch” in about .5 seconds. She responds that Gary stinks of red wine. It’s all very immature and awkward in a watching a teenage daughter fight with her dad in a restaurant sort of way.

Remember to download the X-Factor app! Or don’t. I don’t give a flying fuck.

District 3’s intro video is a self-congratulatory piece of fluff about how great their performance was last week. It was the first time they’ve enjoyed themselves in the show. Every other week it was like having toenails jammed into their urethras. They’ve hit upon a fiendish plan to ensure continued success: last week, they flashed some abs and weren’t in the sing-off. This week: it’s penis time. Then they go to meet Robbie Williams, who reads something about their performances to date that he was told to read by the producers, then offers some trite advice. Robbie tells them to be a bit more natural, which I hope is a subtle way of saying “Stop with the fucking fuaxmerican accents, you are not the theme tune to The OC”. Performance time! So... the boys are singing I’ll Be Watching You, a song about stalking, while dressed as the raping, murderous droogs from A Clockwork Orange. The X-Factor: now with unfortunate rape connotations. Then they switch to NeYo’s Monster and it all becomes even more of a rampant clusterfuck.

JUDGES! Tulisa asks one of the boys for the cane he used in their performance, and proceeds to ram it up Gary BArlows’s arse. Ten minutes later, when the applause dies down, she informs the boys that she preferred Sting to NeYo. You and 7 billion others, dear. She also manages to use the phrase “en pointe” in an incorrect manner for about the fiftieth time this series. Gary Barlow tells them that their breath smells. He’s also fed up of mash-ups. For once I agree with Gary Barlow. Only Rylan, in his quest to perform more songs per episode than anyone else, should be allowed to perform mash-ups. Nicole was very confused by the staging and doesn’t get the costumes because she has never seen a film rated higher than PG, and even then her parents always protected her from traumatic endings, Phoebe Buffay style.

Nicole looks shocked to when Dermot prompts her to introduce Jahmene. I never know what to expect from Nicole. At least with Louis, it’s always going to be a variation on:

• Everyone in [insert location] needs to vote for you
• You’re like a little [wildly inappropriate comparison]
• I think you’ve got the X-Factor
• Pun based on song title
• You sang your heart out

With Tulisa, I know it’s going to be something about urban roots, having red wine breath or being en pointe.

And with Gary I know its going to be some turgid mediocrity. But with Nicole, I have no idea if she’s going to forget her act’s name, compare them to a foodstuff, or thrust wildly in their direction while implying they have testicles made of titanium. Long may it continue. 

Anyway, Jahmene! In response to last week’s tears, Jahmene admits that everyone needs to feel emotions sometimes. He’s delighted to serve as an inspiration to people who have been filling out Asda application forms in their droves in order to become the next Jahmene. Last week, he received a special invitation from Samuel L Jackson to perform at some charity fundraiser that goes unnamed. Great way to draw attention to whatever cause Sammy was helping out, X-Factor producers! I have little else to say about the VT, because actually being invited to perform for Samuel L Jackson is legitimately cool. Jahmene performs Killing Me Softly. He needs to learn how to tone it done. There’s serious oversinging going on. It’s like listening to Mariah Carey being raped by a swan. Jahmene is accompanied on the giant screen by slow motion images of Tulisa and Dappy from N Dubz happy slapping Gary Barlow to death. It’s glorious. NB: I may be drunk while writing this.

JUDGES! Tulisa says that she’s going to start calling Jahmene the Man Who Can’t be Moved. Let’s add “I am going to start calling you X” to the list of Tulisa clichés. Last week she threatened to start calling Rylan her Babybel. Two minutes before coming up with Jahmene’s new monicker she was referring to him as her “Muffin”. Nicole, never one to be outdone when it comes to wordplay, calls the performance “Jahmazing”. Next week: Nicole suggests various other variations on the word amazing. Dermot asks Jahmene what SLJ was like. “He’s tall and humble” confirms Jahmene. It’s easy to be humble when you’re Nick Fury, godammit.

Jade Ellis is up next and I am delighted to report that this week sees the return of Jade’s adorable daughter! Unfortunately, she spends most of the VT quietly playing with some toys but has a great moment at the start where she squees with delight. VOTE FOR JADE’S DAUGHTER TO WIN. Dressed as a robot set into a spiderweb borg alcove, Jade is performing Freak Like Me. I CALLED THIS LAST WEEK. It’s rather limp and lifeless, unfortunately. She’s going to squander the extra votes the tiny adorable miniature human bought her.

JUDGES! None of them really liked it. Tulisa argues that there’s a ‘feme every week, and the acts get to try new things each week in order to jive with the ‘feme. Ah Tulisa, your first mistake was thinking anyone gave a shit about the theme. Your second mistake was telling Jade it was okay to give a performance with as much verve as a stone.

Last up is James Arthur, the secret lovechild of Ben Mitchell and Matt Cardle by way of the Elephant Man’s womb. Last week James gave a haunting performance of Sexy and I Know It. After the judges acted like Jesus himself had just graced them with an acoustic cover of a song about being the centre of attention, Ben retired backstage to have a chat with Emeli Sandé. This officially marks Emeli Sandé’s three thousandth appearance on television this month alone. Someone should turn it into a competition. Where is Emeli Sandé going to show up this week? If you guess at least 30 places correctly then you get to go a Labrinth gig and perform with him. Which funnily enough is exactly what James did last week. Looking at the images on-screen, I’m very disappointed that there were that many people in the same room as James Arthur and not one of them thought to form an angry mob and chase him away with pitchforks. “That crowd was just stupid”, James declares. He really knows how to endear himself to an audience. Following his performance with Labrinth, James is now officially the most credible X-Factor contestant ever. He’s so credible, he makes Matt Cardle look like Aqua. He’s so credible, that when he leaves this show, he’ll do an interview with a newspaper wherein he blasts it for being so fake. He’s so credible, he should just quit the show and go out on his own. Please? Anyway, before all that happens, we have to make it through this weeks performance. For Halloween, James has raided the Kyeliner. He’s performing Sweet Dreams by the Eurythmics. Oh Annie Lennox, you did nothing to deserve this. A computerised wire mesh version of James Arthur’s face spins around on the screen in the background. I don’t know what it’s meant to signify, but it’d easily make the most terrifying screensaver ever. The amont of makeup he’s wearing is even more ridiculous than normal.

JUDGES! Louis Walsh makes some random noises. Tulisa says that James is current and relevant. She would know, she’s been in N’Dubz. Nicole proclaims that he is “The Difference”, which sounds more like a name one of the groups on this show should have. She says that he’s an international recording artists. No he isn’t love, that’s why he’s on the show. Gary Barlow is too inebriated from his obvious red wine problem to proffer an opinion.

RESULTS SHOW!

Tulisa has a nicorette on tonight, which I presume is some “cheeky” response to Gary’s comments about fag ash breath. Oh Tulisa, that’s so urban and edgy of you. Don’t ever change. There’s a group performance but I don’t care about this since they stopped autotuning them, then the first special guest of the night: fun. I must admit it is somewhat amusing hearing Voiceover Man enthusiastically boom “FUN” following their introductory VT. They sing that song they do and I note that the lead singer has a massive mouth of Ella Hendseronian proportions.

The second guest is Robbie Williams, in his annual appearance on this show. I was busy slamming my head into a wall repeatedly while shouting “Why do I still watch this show?” and missed most of Robbie’s performance. I am obviously devastated. Union J and Jade end up in the sing-off, which means there are enough people out there voting for Chris to have prevented him ending up in the bottom two for 5 weeks now. Whoever you are: I will find you and gut you.

Union J perform first, mauling Pink’s [Censored] Perfect. If the Judge’s decide to send the boys home, I think Gaymi should triumphantly punch the air and skip off stage while shouting “I’M FREEEEEEEEE!”

Jade sings Dido’s White Flag and is superior to Union J in every single way. So naturally enough, she ends up going home when Nicole and Gary choose to save Union J instead.

Nicole, my love affair with you is almost at an end. I want my bizarre food analogies back next week, and when given the opportunity to send either boyband home, YOU WILL COMPLY.