Dim the lights! Bring on the melodrama! Watch as I continue to NOT recap this season of American Idol!

• Jimmy Iovine makes for a great Monday Morning QB with a script prepared. He’s the Simon this judging panel needs, dead on right about everyone. Even the judges agreed with him, though they soft-peddled it because, well, they’re all afraid of being the mean one.

• Steven Tyler only needed to be bleeped once.

• I nailed the list for the six female contestants to go through: Jessica, Hollie, Shannon, Elise, Erika, Skylar.

• The guys were a lot shakier. To whit:

  • Reed Grimm did not make it through. As entertaining as he would have been from week to week as a truly wild card, he wasn’t worth giving a spot to.
  • Heejun got through on America’s vote and Jimmy I is right: He’s not good enough. He shouldn’t be there.
  • Creighton and Aaron both missed the list.
  • The country kid did not get the Country Vote, and we got spared Eben, in the end.

• Who did make it through? Philip Phillips, Jeromy, Deandre, Joshua, Heejun, Colton,Jermaine.

• We cleared the Hollie Decks, but the guys have Jeromy, Jermaine, and Joshua. It’s still better.

• Both Deandre and Jeromy did a better job singing for their lives tonight than they did on Tuesday night, but I still think Deandre is not long for this contest.

• Props to Erika for singing a Lady Gaga song, which you know Gaga only lip synchs to in live shows. Too much stuff going on in that song, and Erika vocalized it all. Impressive.

• They laughingly said that Jermaine’s telephone number wasn’t 13 so it wouldn’t be unlucky. Yet they have a Final 13. Go figure. (Yeah, I know, giving him a telephone number of 36 instead of 13 was likely a limit of the telephone company’s and not the TV show’s…)