Now THAT’S how a results show should be run – snappy, quick, and mostly lean. Ryan didn’t need to read off the judges’ comments. We still had our drama. There were two musical performances. The losing contestant didn’t have to sing. (I imagine he did for the studio audience, but we didn’t have to deal with it at home.) The only fat on the show was the unnecessarily long recap of what had happened the previous night. It was only 24 hours ago — are our memories THAT fragile?

Diana Ross is, well, Diana Ross. She still thinks she’s 25, though, and perhaps that’s helped by her plastic surgeon. It was a spectacle of a performance. I particularly liked the part where she used Melinda Doolittle as her background singer. BWAH HA HA

The bottom three were Brandon, Phil, and Sanjaya. That last one shocked me. I thought for sure it would be Haley, though she’d be pulled out safe. Maybe I was more accurate than I thought with her. I think America did fall in love with her on Tuesday night, just to a much larger degree. I thought she’d get enough votes to merely be safe. Instead, she got enough to stay out of the bottom three. Impressive.

Sanjaya’s appearance in the Bottom 3 was shocking because I thought he had a lock on things. Normally, I’d say this is a good sign that his tenure as an IDOL contestant will be shorter, but we all know how these things work. His fanbase is now energized for next week. He could sing like Kermit the Frog with a bad case of hiccups next week and his fans will still crash the phone lines to keep him in the top ten. He’s safe next week, though it’s the following week I’d be worried about, if I were him. Perhaps, though, this Bottom 3 appearance will bring down on him the realization that he isn’t God’s Gift To Singing, just because he made it this far. I think he’s overconfident and a bit snotty with the judges. Let’s see if that settles down next week.

Phil’s appearance in the bottom three is perplexing. The military vote is usually good for more than this. On the other hand, they haven’t played up his military background as much as they did with, say, Josh Gracin. Even though he seemed to salute everyone he could last night to remind them that he’s a good soldier, I just don’t think America thinks of him as a soldier just yet. For purely strategic reasons, he’d do well to start emphasizing that more. The sadder thing is that he had a relatively great performance on the night and wound up in the bottom three.

And then Brandon left. I felt a little bad for him. Sure, he hasn’t performed as well as he needs to to win this thing, but he seems like a nice guy. He held up well in the spotlight last night. He has a winning smile. He just seems like a nice guy. But he went first on Tuesday (traditionally a death slot), wasn’t memorable, and blew the lyrics. He was toast.

While I only picked one of the bottom three right last night, I still picked the right one to go home. My overall prediction for the year is also 1 for 1, as I had Brandon leaving us in the first three weeks. I think I’ll start running off those tracks next week. Stephanie has much more voter support than I previously thought. And I think Haley is the new Idol Sweetheart.

Let the good times roll!

De Blieck Out!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 8:03 am and is filed under American Idol. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.