American Idol Thoughts, Reviews, and Recaps

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The final 12 is finally set, after three extra weeks of eliminations, we finally get down to business. Last week saw the more obvious elimination of Amanda, Nikko and Janay, and the unfortunate elimination of Travis. I honestly thought that Scott and Anthony would be taking the long ride home but, alas, I was wrong.

Also, in a strange turn of events, Mario Vasquez decided that the whole Idol thing wasn’t for him and left the competition Friday citing “personal reasons.” As such, the person eliminated with the most votes got to come back. Therefore, Nikko finds himself in Mario’s slot. I am still baffled that Travis got the least number of votes. I guess it shows how much power the judges really have over the outcome. They did not like him.

So, our new top 12 involves Nikko. Fair enough.

As the performances go, I have to say the first half hour was incredibly unimpressive. Jessica Sierra opened the show continuing the trend of putting last week’s strongest performer in the opening slot. The first three performances: hers, Anwar’s, and Mikalah’s were incredibly awful and boring. Mikalah is just not doing it for me… still. She’s got a decent voice, but she is just another standard, processed pop star. The point of getting young people in these roles is they don’t need brow lifts, and collagen injections, and all this other crap. She looks like her face will shatter if you hit too hard.

Constantine performed in the fourth slot, and it was easily both his best performance in the competition and the best performance to that point. He finally shook it up a little and did something to make people remember they’re watching a show about performing and being interesting. He really needed this to at least try to start differentiating himself from Bo, who has really started to outshine him.

After Constantine, we got back into another stream of awfulness. Lindsay turned in a weak performance, which I don’t think she can afford because the judges are very obvious in their disdain. In fairness, she hasn’t done anything to come out of the woodwork and shine. I think she’s still in more based on the fact everyone else was worse rather than her being better.

Next was Anthony, who is another survivor I can’t figure out. He really brings nothing to the table. Why is he still in?

Nadia Turner followed Anthony and we finally turned the corner. After the half hour, they kicked it up a notch. Nadia, Bo, Scott, Vonzell, and Carrie all turned in strong performances to keep them in the hearts and minds of America.

The week was capped by the returning Nikko Smith, who turned in a decent performance. I didn’t see it as a fan-winning performance, though.

There are at least five people who are lucky only one person per week gets eliminated. Randy seemed to get progressively more irritated as the night continued. I understand his concerns… of all the week’s for people to really come out and pop for the audience, it took till the seventh performance until someone did. Everyone else was boring, out of key, or safe.

I don’t think the bottom four this week is tough to pick. Assuming they keep a similar format, I think you’ll see Lindsey, Nikko, Anthony, and Mikalah in the bottom four. I have to think that Nikko didn’t win anyone over this week, so the question is who gets Mario’s, Travis’s, Amanda’s, Janay’s votes? Unfortunately for my heartburn, Mikalah gets Janay’s, and Nikko probably gets most of Travis’s. It will be interesting to see where Mario’s vote goes, since there’s no clear cut winner, and I’d be willing to lay odds that he was one of the top vote getters until stepping down.

I’m going to figure Nikko didn’t win enough votes to keep his second wind going. I’m saying he heads back to whence he came.

Out for now, I’ll be back tomorrow with the recap show.