Paula vs. Kara: Why Opposites Attract

I know what you’re thinking: “why not just have half a martini?” I’d remind you that half a martini is still one martini, it’s just smaller.

I agree that Kara is waffling on a tightrope of inconsistency and uselessness but to go as far as to yearn for Paula, this must really be getting to you and I want to help talk you down. I think the annoyance with Kara is that she’s now trying to play the role of Paula and there’s no insight into what drugs she’s taking, if any at all. Come to think of it, it’s highly possible that the entire panel this year is sober and that’s probably not a bad thing but it fails to explain how we ended up with Andrew Garcia or Tim Urban.

Kara doesn’t even attempt to slur her words and maybe that would ease the transition for you. With Paula, it was always a slightly different buzz from week to week and she seemed to change it up just enough to keep us guessing. That’s what made it fun!! Sometimes it was “last customer at the bar, 10 minutes after last call Paula” who’s made no effort to leave the bar but she’s mumbling and coherent so at least that’s a good sign. Always a sort of Foster Brooks thing where her entire 30-second critique blended into one word, it was great TV. You knew, at the very least, it wasn’t Coca-Cola in her cup.

I admit, I miss seeing Paula stand up after a performance she particularly enjoyed, huge smile and applaude, saying something like: “Marshmallows!! Absolutely Marshmallows!!!” It was that ying-yang drama that made her forever our girl and I can see why you might be pining for the good ole days.

Does she bug me? Maybe I just block it out better than most. She was specifically hired to lend fresh industry insight perspective and I don’t think that’s changed but there’s definitely something that seems twisted this season. She’s certainly become much more of a whining bag of nonsensical, contradictory advice. This season, she has some of these kids trying to act older and younger at the same time. I think her biggest issue is that she’s so overly concerned with lyrics and the intent implied within that after “Come Sail Away” she’d be put off that Aaron Kelly didn’t employ a starboard tack or hoist the proper sail at exactly the point before the chorus when a gathering of angels appeared above his head and began to sing.

KARA: “It’s the angels singing to you, Aaron, not you singing to the angels. And why would you hoist the main sail when the voices are coming from the heavens? It’s a head wind, it’s coming towards you and doing what you did, it’s gonna knock your boat right into the sea. So now you’re in the middle of the ocean and you don’t even have a paddle and that’s how I see you right now in this competition. You’ve got to start making better song choices.”

And the 16-year old kid looks back at her and has no fucking clue what she’s talking about.

It might be that Kara is caught between who she is and what we expect or who the producers want her to be. She suddenly sits too close to Simon for a reason. Maybe she’s being told to do this specifically so that we’ll talk about it here. Maybe Ellen has an odor, I doubt it. I always saw Paula leaning on Simon for support, literally she was about to fall over. My favorite Paula moments were when she reacted to morning headlines which spoke of what a wreck she was the night before and she’d always respond that evening by annunciating each syllable like Forrest Gump trying to overcompensate sobriety. I always wished she’d show up more wasted than the night before and Ryan would be forced to stage an intervention. Ryan now only has to interrupt the show to ask Kara why she’s sitting on Simon’s lap.

In order to properly understand it, you have to put it all into context of the judges after they’ve viewed a bad performance and nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. Randy starts with a monosyllabic: “Ooh, ah, hey, well,um, hey, um, dude” before he eventually reassures the contestant how much he’s just trying to keep it real by adding a canine reference. Paula never wanted to be the harsh critic so she wasn’t any help. She’d stammer and turn to Simon, picking a non-existent fight to essentially yield her time on the floor.

This year we add Ellen saying something short, sweet and funny and we still have yet to critique the actual performance. Simon tells us what we already know and both Randy and Paula boo him for saying what they were too afraid to put into words themselves. But always prior to Simon is the role of  “female judge most likely to have sex with a contestant,” originated by Paula with Kara as the eager understudy. This is where this season got fun.

I want her on that wall. I need her on that wall.

Once Fox dialed her in, she’s seemingly only committed to Simon now. Let her ask each contestant to take their shirts off and see what happens. Let nipples be a consideration when deciding the Top 24. Ratings are down. How bad do these kids want this?