Today in history: Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho premieres in 1960, the Battle of Arbedo takes place in 1422 and The Voice introduces live voting with some app.
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Yes some bigwig at Channel Nine really wanted The Voice to have an app so there's an app and we the people must use it. Don't you want to be part of history?
But first, let's have Kylie open the show with a performance. I haven't seen Kylie for a while. Her face is now well past Real Housewife and appears to be heading towards Kerrie Ann Kennerley. But she's still got all the magic - the sexy wiggling and breathy pop tunes are Kylie perfect. Plus she drops the bombshell that she's going on tour in Australia and everyone wigs out.
This week the bottom two in each team will perform for an "instant save" and people at home will get to vote via the app to kick someone off live on air. Darren urges everyone to "download the home coach app and make sure you save your favourites" which sounds like a tutorial for bookmarking stuff on the web.
KYLIE'S TEAM: Johnny Rollin is up first. As he is already safe, his rendition of Nico and Vinz's Am I Wrong is basically a victory performance. He does the song while drumming on a big revolving platform while Kylie trolls him by running around the platform in the opposite direction. Johnny is safe, everyone is happy, so the producers bring a bit of execution to the party. Kat, John and Robbie are brought out to hear their fate. Kat is safe, perhaps because she is dressed the most like a member of the Dixie Chicks at Halloween. Robbie and John must duel it out for the live app save.
Robbie has been given Coldplay's The Scientist. He ends on a truly bung note, upon which the camera cuts to Kyles doing an inexplicable Titanic impersonation. It's not great. Kylie has given John a Chris Isaak song to perform but he asks if he can perform her 1989 hit Hand on Your Heart instead. "I want people to know I was a huge fan of Kylie from even before the show," he says. Nobody likes a suck up, John. He performs a country version of the song wearing a velvety jacket and a weird necktie.
Quick, it's time to vote on the Horse-Drawn Coach app - I can't tell which guy is which on the app, so we pick the one in the floral shirt. Oh, it's John. Okay, we voted to save John. Darren takes longer to announce the result than we got to vote. But yes, the results are in - and Colonel Sanders gets his necktie back. Robbie is safe.
"So what happens to this guy now?" my partner asks. I don't know. He gets ejected from the premises. In the ad break, Will.i.am takes to Twitter to complain that there are too many people called Chris.
Kat bellows her way through Dark Horse by Katy Perry which is intense but also awkward, like reading your friend's diary during a sleepover. Joel is caught napping when asked for his opinion on the song. "Um. You're like a dark horse. Yeah," is all he's got. Will was paying attention. Lots of attention. "It was really horny!" he yells. Is he high? Twitter says yes. Sounds legit.
JOEL'S TEAM: Joel loves his team and really wants to give them a treat, so he locks them in his house and forces them to listen to one of his albums. Lakoudis is the first to escape and gets to sing American Woman by Lenny Kravitz. There are pole dancers. "It's a perfect night for pole dancers because my wife and kids are watching at home," Joel says. Will says "horny" again. He's at the giggly stage.
Isaac McLovin and Taila Gouge are up for elimination. He sings something - it's by the Goo Goo Dolls so does it really count? She is 17 and easily impressed. "I've never been to a bar. It was pretty cool," she gasps. Wait till she realises Vodka Cruisers come in purple. Taila rips through Ain't It Fun. We cross to Will, whose butt, startlingly, has become enormous and blue - oh wait, he's sitting on a fitball. Time to use the Coachella app! We pick Taila, mainly because we've forgotten who the other guy is and what he sang. Wrong choice. McLovin goes through and Taila kicks a fitball across the stage as she leaves.
Holly is safe which is great because the Northern Territory apparently doesn't get the show live so she would have been stuffed for hometown support via the app. She looks, honestly, pretty fab in an apple red gown split to the thigh but her breathless, barefoot Zooey Deschanel rendition of Single Ladies is possibly the worst thing ever. "It didn't sound odd," Will says. Bit rich coming from a man sitting on a bulbous blue fitball on a giant chair. Darren wakes Joel to ask what he thinks. Joel, in desperation, says a lot of stuff about Holly's lovely personality.
WILL'S TEAM: Will.i.am's celebrity guest is Adam Goodes. The floppy haired brother and sister have decided to do an Anne Hathaway and sing I Dreamed a Dream. Will gives them useful advice. "Dope," he says, grinning and drawing it out like "doooooope." Their performance is so moving that Will gets off the fitball. Twitter ain't loving it.
"You guys are from Byron Bay right?" Ricky asks. "What's in the water at Byron Bay?" Oh this is too easy.
Matt is wearing a nifty silver jacket and spends his segment talking about how the piano has become a security blanket for him and it was good to get out from behind it. When the lights go up on stage, where is he? No prizes. He sings Rocket Man by Elton John. Anja sings Beyonce's Irreplaceable and it's an effortless but powerful performance. Will pulls out his iPad and starts taking pictures, like my elderly aunt at a wedding. Time to vote on the historic app, which loads only Silver Jacket's face and fails to load Anja's. We vote by tapping the empty space where Anja is supposed to be and for the first time we don't send someone home. She's through. It's 9.30pm and we only have 500 more contestants to wade through.
ZK perform a really quite lovely, indigenous-influenced version of Imagine by John Lennon, with members of the Bangarra dance theatre. It's restrained and filled with actual emotion.
RICKY'S TEAM: Jackson has a little ponytail and is wearing a waterfall jacket. He seeks to continue the stream of musical cliches by performing Seal's Kiss from a Rose. "That's a crazy difficult song to sing. That's like mathematics," says Will from his perch on the ball. Joel avoids talking about Jackson by talking about how much he loves Seal instead. In the Northern Territory, they're up to I Dreamed a Dream. In West Australia they're even further behind - whatshisface and the strippers are on stage. I don't know where Adelaide is up to, maybe it's balls. Stay strong fellow Australians. There is a long and hard road ahead of you.
C Major and Elly Oh (seriously? Are these real names or just leftover ICQ handles?) are up for elimination on the app blah blah blah. C Major, whose hair looks like the roof of a new build McMansion, does Justin Timberlake's Senorita - with a twist. (Spoiler: he's standing up.) Elly Oh rips into a Pixie Lott song, performed in a frothy blue dress and accompanied by bellhops. "I see blood every time you two are on the stage," says Ricky. Truthspeaker!
We've got to vote again. Crap. We've lost the phone in the folds of the doona on the sofa. Never mind. Elly Oh is safe. C Major will be little more than A Minor celebrity. Not sure whether anyone notices - even the judges have a glazed look in their eyes. I'm going to tip the hat to a fellow Canberran here.
Sabrina performs Shakira's new song Empire, decked out in a gauzy, jewelled taupe number. It's great. She looks great. I give up. The Voice wins. Take the damn app. Can we please go home?
