In honour of standards night at Canadian Idol, I’d like to toss a “hey, daddy-o” to my friends in the Stone Frigate Big Band. If you were watching, I feel your pain.

Ben’s covered his smarmy self with a purple velvet jacket and white pants. It’s like Barney got his wish to be a real boy. He inexplicably introduces the standards show with a couple of classic rock references.

Jake’s in a black monkey suit and actually looks pretty good. Farley is disguised as a Fridgidaire with a derby hat. Sass has a green dress with an enormous bright red ornament around her neck. This is what you get when you ask her to dress like Billie Holliday after she gets back from lunch. Zack is wearing a very snappy charcoal striped jacket, and way too much makeup.

With the flowered black slip dress, sheer long gloves and fedora, Suzi’s got the ‘30s bordello vibe going. You know, less the tats and pink hair. Alternately stomping and vamping around the stage, she does a pretty decent job of Minnie The Moocher. Thanks to the Blues Brothers soundtrack the Cab Calloway version is perma-stamped in my head, and Cab doesn’t have much to worry about. If corpses were to worry. Still a way better performance than I expected out of her tonight.

A nice suit can lend a big man some gravitas, but not Aaron. He looks like some handlers shoved him into a pinstriped stuffsack and screwed the little hat on tight to prevent any explosions. Aaron’s here to give us the leading man’s goofy sidekick version of I Can’t Believe You’re In Love With Me, complete with a little dance around the mikestand. As the judges point out, this is exactly what he’s good at, this is what he understands, and just as soon as we can shake this bad case of Nackawickosis he should soft-shoe his way back home to some dinner theatre where he’s sure to entertain the hell out of the local Order of the Purple Heart.

To be really period, Melissa would have been corseted within an inch of her life and her strapless number would have been two sizes smaller. As it is, she settled for ill-fitting and once more this pretty girl looks a little frumpy. She does a bang-up job with De-Lovely, though. At times overwhelmed by the required avalanche of syllables, this was still an impressive performance, especially for 17.

Josh opts for the Man from Glad look, complete with purple shirt to be a sort of simultaneously hipper and creepier photo-negative of Ben. Hair is combed back into a sort of a windblown The Donald look. He’s here to croon When I Fall In Love and does his damnedest to drop the indie mannerisms and mellow out his tone. He’s mostly successful, although he does grit his crappy teeth and vibrate couple of times. Even dialled back, he’s still injecting more of himself into the song than any other contestant.

I’ve heard it said that a man should have a hat. Just not that particular hat, Rex – it makes you look like a 10 year old who’s been rummaging in his Grampa’s closet. The suit’s OK, although I’m not much for brown. Feeling Good gets put through the Rexification process and comes out the other end mangled but still reasonably entertaining. This is more of that shouting with tone stuff and the worst of the 5 good performances but still acceptable. He still hasn’t convinced me he’s got anything left in the bag, though.

Casey looks absolutely fabulous tonight, if not strictly period. Her elegant black gown would be perfectly at home on the red carpets she’s not going to be walking. I Could Write A Book is a nice opportunity to show off some elegant phrasing and swing with a live band. Casey can’t even swing her arms right, much less swing the beat. She’s out of tune for about half of the notes, comes in late a bunch of times, and puts about as much emotion into it as you’d expect from her. Dreck from the first note onwards.

Daryl is dressed like Tim Burton had him costumed as “Fey Schoolboy #2”. He head-tilts, eye-boinks, jazz-hands and just generally swishes his way through a totally misguided version of What a Wonderful World. I don’t know if there’s a way for him to save this song, it was simply a horrid choice for him. But lord, he could have dialled the gay back from the Boy Georgian levels he had it cranked at.