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Well! That was nice. Last night's Elton John-themed extravaganza had most of our singtestants in top form, blaring out smooth '70s and '80s roller disco music of the sort that one might actually want to listen to in their own private time.

Now, I'm just going to put it out on Front Street. I will confess to having enjoyed some herbal refreshment before last night's show, so I kiiiind of thought everyone was amazing, but in the dreary gray light of day I now know that not to be true. Things look different in the morning, and yes, some people were not so good. What has not changed from last night to this morning, however, is that I still feel like it was a very strange show. Didn't all the judging seem really drawn out, with little discussions and back-and-forths that didn't need to happen, and weird diversions like Howie Mandel laboriously explaining his new sad show to Stefano's dad? I was half worried there for a second that they were trying to kill time because Casey had, in fact, died backstage, but no, there he was skee-blappin' away a little while later. So I'm not sure why everything was as slow and wordy as it was, but it was strange. I felt like they were trying to distract us from something, as if there was something mysterious and bad happening just off camera, the studio audience in on the trick, a Capricorn One-style hoax perpetrated on us, the home viewers. I can't imagine what it would be, though one guess is that maybe Tim Urban was standing up in the rafters with a noose around his neck like crazy Laura in that episode of 90210, doing Maggie's monologues from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and threatening to jump. That's one guess. Hm. I'm probably right, aren't I? Well, anyway.

The Good

So remember that hobo bride Haley, the drifter who keeps sneaking in open windows and through storm drains just to sing on the stage during the show? Well, yeah, I've complained in the past that someone should do something about her, because she's not actually a contestant on the show, so she's eating into the real kids' time. Well, let me just say that I am now glad that Idol's security team is about as capable as Deputy Dog, because this strange foundling singer was actually quite good last night! She sang "Buh-buh-benny and the Jets," a neverending song about nothing, with a sweet growl and purr and eerie confidence that we've not seen in her before. Wouldn't it be fun if all of a sudden, coming out of nowhere, this Haley person started turning in good performance after good performance and became a front runner? A true American story! Of course, they could finally get their act together and send her back to the boxcars where she belongs, I'm sure her TV-less hobo guild is worried about her, but if they don't, the rags-to-promised-but-never-delivered-on-riches tale would be a fun thing to watch.

Baby Lockthemdoors! I turned to my viewing partner last night and again said what I've been saying since semifinals: this kid is going to win. Isn't that ridiculous?? He really is going to win, isn't he? Last night he sang the lone country song that Elton John ever wrote/performed with just the right sweetness and twang to keep tween America's day-of-the-week undies in a bunch. And, for pure ham effect, he gave a lame shoutout to his grandmoms. Now, I hated that. Hated that — it was so gross and unprofessional. But everyone else really seemed to enjoy it, this little chubby-cheeked hayseed givin' howdy-dos to the lady what done born his momma or his daddy, so I imagine it helped him to the top of the heap in the voting. I don't know what grim and dire theme weeks await us, but if this kid can survive Motown Week as ably as he did last week, he might just be the Teflon Kid. This whole Scotty McReary phenomenon might be annoying if the kid wasn't actually good, but he is good. He sounds nice when he sings, and he seems to have a degree of musicianship that's surprising to see in a 17-year-old dude from the baseball team. He's a sneaky bugger, this little Scotty. There are secrets in those little raindrop eyes of his.

Who else was good? I suppose, as usual, that Pia Zadora sang ably. She did one of my favorite Elton songs, "Don't Let My Son Go Down On Me," a song inspired by Aeschylus's classic drama Oedipus Rex (Jocasta really brings the house down with that one. The House of Thebes, that is. #nerdalert), and it was powerful and clear, despite a few muddled big notes toward the end. So yeah, it was good. But as evidenced during her little photoshoot montage (oh yeah, everyone got makeovers and had a fancy EW photoshoot and felt special for a few minutes before the crushing anxiety and strange guilt set in once again), alls anyone can really say about her is how pretty she is. Because there's nothing really to be said about her personality. She's all bland polish and no substance, she's a sleek white surface with no footholds or places to get a little traction. She promised an uptempo song next week, but then in her little post-sing backstage interview she said it was going to be "River Deep Mountain High" which, like... no, Pia. That is a great, great song, but you need to have a little soul to sing that jam, and soul is not what Pia has. Pia Toscana has no soul. I'm just putting it out there. Pia Toscana is a godless demon.

The Bad

Ohhhh Stefano. Stefano, Stefano, Stefano. What the Big Red Boat was that cruise ship mess? Ryan's buttler (SPELLING INTENTIONAL) chose to sing "Tiny Dancer" and to do it in the style of a desperately unhappy resort singer who desperately wants the audience to feel his good-times vibes, even though nothing is going right in his life and he's fighting an enormous internal sexual battle and some days he wishes the sky would open up and the sweet black nothing of space would rain down and obliterate everything. It was crushing and weird to watch, especially the end bit where he walked over to J.Lo and made her take his hand. Ughhhhh. No! That was worse than Scotty's grandma shout-out! Way worse! Plus it made all the judges uncomfortable about giving him criticism, because he'd so clearly flung his tattered, unhappy heart across the stage and had still whiffed it. But of course they were under strict instructions from Ryan to keep it polite and light, so that's what they did. Well I'll say it if they won't. It was awful, Stefano. It stank. It was almost as bad as your under-chin facial hair. Seriously kid, get rid of that nonsense. Well, not that it really matters anymore. I'm pretty sure he's going to go home tonight. Just a theory.

The other person who will be joining him on the sad bus ride home is, I believe, Thia Megia. Thia is a competent singer who will probably be something to behold in five years or so, but right now she is just criminally dull. She sang "Daniel," one of Sir Felton's boringer songs, and she sang it predictably boringly. She just stood stalk-still in the center of the stage and moved her arm a little bit and that was about it. She said she was singing to her older brother, as the song is about a brother or something, but that was not nearly enough of an emotional hook to carry us through the longgg meander that was this performance. It was so long! The shortest person got the longest song. What a country! Nobody knows who or what a Thia Megia is; she's now had several weeks to show us and has not delivered, so I think we ought to send her back to high school. Just go back, Thia! You'll be fine in the future. Someday in the future you'll be blasting out "Sun and Moon" in the Broadway revival of Miss Saigon and you'll forget for a minute that you were ever on this dopey little talent show. Time moves both slowly and quickly, all at once, little Thia! Enjoy both parts. Enjoy high school!

James Durbin. Oh what a goober this kid is. What a complete nincompoop. I'm sorry. I know he was fans "out there." I know they exist. Because, I guess, they're turned on by his meaty hip gyrations and chipmunk squealing and earring rattle. But guys, what is even happening with him? During the photoshoot reel the photographer was like "He just has such attitude." Hahaha. What? No. Attitude? Who? No. Attitude. On American Idol. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Attitude. What's his attitude called, exactly? "Pianofire"? James's hard rock attitude is called Pianofire and it's because during last night's performance of "Saturday" there was fire in the piano, big spewing flames coming from a baby grand. I haven't seen a piano that flaming since Ryan and Jake Gyllenhaal played "Chopsticks" that one time. Bada-zoom! But yeah, this whole fake "attitude" business is really silly. I don't want James Durbin physically injured, but weren't you kind of disappointed that he didn't fall down the stairs or off the piano or anything? I mean, can you imagine someone falling on this show, let alone someone like James Durbin?? I don't know if my heart could take it, but it would be a good way to go out. "Here lies Richard Lawson, 1983-2011. He died as he lived, laughing hyena-like at reality show contestants falling down." I'd be proud of that death. But I am not proud of James Durbin. No siree bob. There's nothing to be proud of there, Mary.

I, I, I Don't Know What to Say

You know that feeling of I don't know what to say. You know that feeling. It's how I feel about Naima and Casey this week, and often really. In Naima's case I love that she tries new and daring things every week, that she isn't scared of showing a little weirdness or diversity or whatever you want to call something that isn't the typical vanilla business on this show. I love that she does that! But the actual performances are so... Last night she did a reggae "I'm Still Standing" and, dawg, I gotta agree with Randy. It was a little cheesy. From her put-on accent to her Rasta colors-emblazoned jumpsuit, it felt like maybe what you'd get in Jamaicaland at Epcot. I want to like her, and I hope she stays because she's at least doing interesting things compared to her bland as biscuits lady counterparts, but she's just not quite hitting it, ya know? Ya feel me? For me for you? Sigh.

And then there's Casey Abrams, our weird beard-ghost who is unnaturally still stalking the Idol stage though his body expired last week. He got his beard trimmed, thank god, but not enough. He still looks so scary. So very scary. He sang "Your Song" and it was so silly how he kept trying to infuse meaning into the nonsense lyrics. I'm sure they're not nonsense for Bernie and Elton, but for Casey Abrams, they are nonsense. I just don't get him. I feel mean saying bad things about him, but then what am I left with? Last night Casey Abrams was very much Casey Abrams. And I just don't know what that means.

I also don't know what that means for the increasingly one-note Jacob Lusk, a vocal powerhouse who does nothing but vocally powerhouse through his songs. He's good, but he's not really... memorable. Not as unmemorable as Haley has been in the past, last night I seriously thought the show was done after Jacob had sung because I totally forgot (rightly forgot, as she's not really on the show) that Haley existed. But this morning? I remember Haley and remember very little of Jacob. I like Jacob. He seems like someone I'd be friends with in civilian life. But we're not civilians here. We are in the midst of the fearsome Idol Games and I cannot think of peacetime just now. Lauren Alaina is a similar case. She's a good singer and seems nice and dim enough, but "Candle in the Wind" was a really weird choice and just slipped through the sieve holes of my wine-curdled brain and now she is gone. I know nothing about her. Can we please get a Fantasia or hell even a Blake Lewis up in this season? I am so sick of shortbread Trefoils and really want some Samoas, nome sayin'? That's all I'm sayin.

The Wind in the Whispers

Willy Whispers was wearing his rose-bangled murdering suit last night and seriously laying it on hard with the whispering. He sang a rock concert encore version of "Rocket Man," and it was competent in the way that Willy Whispers is competent, but it was also so amazingly creepy in the way that Willy Whispers is always so amazingly creepy. If someone is going to sing a song to me while they murder me, I hope it's not a whisper-lite version of "Rocket Man." Anything but that. (Maybe "Saved the Best for Last"? That could work.) Whispers had his guitar again, thank god, so he couldn't do his hypnotizing Cartilage Dance, but it was still pretty bad. That last note! That hushed, hissing last note! Show of hands, how many people dropped dead last night at that note? Show of hands. Well, I can't see any hands, but I'm sure a lot of people fell into the eternal abyss after Willy Whispers willied out that note last night, sending microscopic balls of aural poison through the TV screen, so he can come and harvest delicious skin at a later date. I'm glad he said that he is retiring the rose suit, because that joke has played itself out. I kind of feel like in general Willy has played himself out. Don't you? Don't you agree with me on everything always?

Do you agree with me on this, that Stefano and Thia will likely be buried in the snow in the wasteland territory just outside the Idol gulag's fences? I'm scared, of course, for Ryan. I'm scared of what will happen to Ryan if Stefano is told to go. I suppose Ryan could just offer him one of his many guest bedrooms, one of the ones with the mirrored ceilings and secret whirring spy cameras hidden everywhere. Maybe it's for the best for Stefano to go "home" tonight. Maybe then he and Ryan, and yes poor suffering Tim, can figure out their business in private. Maybe they can get down to the business of figuring out their privates. I'd like to think that Sir Elton would, with a piano bang and a wail to wake up the weasels, heartily approve.

Programming Note: I'm headed to the Continent this afternoon, so I will miss tonight's double-elimination. I've tapped the very able Madeleine Davies, who's been recapping the show for Gawker.TV, to fill in for me tomorrow. Enjoy, and see you next week. Adios!