By STEPHANIE McGRATH
AllPop
Well, "Popstars" wrapped up last night with a bang. Wow, what a fascinating episode that was: babies, boredom, bad apartments -- those are just some of the elements that came into play during the spectacular show.
The narrator opens "Popstars" with some spiel about Sugar Jones' "rosy future" and then tells us that tonight we'll get to see a look into a "typical day" for the girls. Yay.
First the girls go on a whirlwind tour of Toronto radio stations. If you think you've heard all this before, well, you have. Remember Episode 11, a.k.a. "Meet The Press"? Yeah, so do I. This bit of Episode 13 is exactly the same. More ENTHUSIASTIC DJs shriek at the girls in tiny little sound booths and then the girls say their little speech about how it's all about the music. Riveting.
Oh boy, now Sahara, Maiko, Andrea, Julie and Mirella are about to make their very first appearance on MuchMusic. VJ Rick shakes their hand and screws up some of their names. (That was funny).
Oh, there's Michael. He gets to shake Rick's hand too.
So the girls chat on MuchMusic about "connecting" and their "music" and blah blah blah.
Michael tells the "Popstars" camera that "This is MuchMusic! This is great, this is it. This is what's supposed to happen."
Awwww Michael, they grow up so fast. Don't worry. You're going to get to do it all again next year with your boy/girl group.
I just realized that I forgot two pages of "Popstars" notes at home on the floor by my TV. I may have thrown them there in disgust last night. Who knows?
Anyway, the sequence of the following events may not be exactly right and I won't be quoting the Narrator (I know, try to get over the tragedy) but here we go ...
After a few promotional appearances, the Sugar Jones gals get to have some "personal time".
We're told that cameramen gave away the location of the group's top secret condo. (Ummm, that was probably your own cameramen, "Popstars" people. I mean, you've showed their building and its surroundings often enough.) What this means is that the girls now have to find their own places to live.
So Julie is shown circling ads in the paper while the camera follows Sahara as she goes to see an apartment. It's a dive, and if you were really creative and had lots of money to fix it up then it might be funky and arty. But for now, it's a dive.
Sahara moons over the windows, but once she leaves she blabs about not being able to wrap her mind around painting and putting in new floors.
You know what, Sahara? There are actually apartments that come with clean bathrooms and nice floors. Have you never had an apartment before? Aren't you old enough to have lived on your own for a short period of time at some point in your life?
During this show somewhere (I forget exactly when), the girls are shown filming that annoying commercial for Motorola where Sahara gets all diva-ish about bottled water. The commercial is annoying, and so it makes sense that the making of the commercial is annoying. Let's ignore that part of the show.
The girls eventually end up at a live performance by Latoya. You remember Latoya, don't you? She was the most talented singer of the auditioning bunch who was cut and then given a personal development deal by Universal. Sugar Jones joins Latoya on stage for a quick song. She's still the best singer of the bunch.
Yay for Sahara! She found an apartment. Wow, her building has one of those cool old elevators that you see in movies about artsy people who live in New York. I wish I had one of those elevators.
Now we get to see Sahara's apartment and ... wow, it's a dump. My apartment is nicer than that. Yuck. You'd have thought that one of the cameramen would have put down his camera for five seconds when she was looking at this place and said: "Sahara, honey. We know you're a bit sheltered, but seriously. I mean, a dumpy apartment does not a bohemian musician make."
It's a studio place that needs to be painted in a really, really bad way. It doesn't even have appliances! Sahara shuts her bathroom door so the cameraman can't film her powder room because it apparently needs a lot of work. Okay, I can only imagine what her bathroom looks like if she thinks that's the area that needs work.
Sahara starts chatting away about how she's creative and then begins describing how she'll set up her new place. Sahara! Get. Out. Of. Lease. Now.
So, next up (I think), the girls visit a hospital in Hamilton. At this point, the narrator started babbling about how using their celebrity to help others is really important to the girls.
Sugar Jones make goo-goo faces at a tiny baby in an incubator while the child's parents look like they have absolutely no idea who Sugar Jones is and why the girls are making "awwwww" faces at their baby.
Anyway, even I am not heartless enough to poke any sort of fun at the girls while they're doing charity work with sick children, so we'll skip on to the next step.
Which is a special meeting at Universal Music.
Allan and some other Universal gang members tell the girls that "Days Like That" entered the chart at #22.
The girls squeal. But since #22 doesn't sound amazingly stellar, the Universal guys decide to make the number special.
"That's where Janet Jackson debuts," says someone. "Christina [Aguilera] comes in at 44".
(I'm guessing neither Christina nor Janet will feel threatened by Sugar Jones. But hey, maybe they're shaking in their boots.)
The girls shriek again and then they call Sahara, who couldn't make the meeting, and put her on speaker-phone.
"SHUT UP," Sahara says when she's told what number "Days" sits at on the charts.
"Number 23 is Ricky J and number 24 is Madonna," Julie tells her.
Sahara screams.
And then the show just kind of ends. The girls are shown being primped for another photo shoot, and the narrator tells us they're happy to be "out and on their own".
Narrator: "The world, as the saying goes, is now at the feet of Sugar Jones."
What? That's the end? I slave away over these recaps only to be treated to a cheesy, anti-climactic ending! Where's the drama? Where's the fighting? You mean there were five girls living together in a condo and no catty arguments occurred? YEAH RIGHT! That's the reason I've stayed tuned all this time. There must have been some boyfriend drama, at least.
Was that even the last episode? Can someone tell me that? Hello! Is anybody out there?!
The Narrator's brilliant last comments sounded pretty final and there were no promos for next week and Lone Eagle originally said there were only 13 episodes.
But how can "Popstars" end like that? Shouldn't there be a little montage featuring Lee crying, Sahara preening, Latoya wowing everybody, Brian looking cranky, Allan looking goofy, Michael looking bossy, and Billie air-hugging?
I'm confused. Sunday nights are going to be so lonely.
Goodbye, "Popstars". I'll miss you (If the show is really over). Goodbye Mr. Narrator, I won't miss you.
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