Guest Blogger Angela: American Idol - The Top 24 Results

I wasn’t planning on blogging about the results show this week because, frankly, I thought it would be anticlimactic. There were so many bad performances that I assumed the better singers would be safe since there were so few of them. Well, I stand corrected.

The first elimination of the night, Janell Wheeler, wasn’t unexpected. While I really liked Janell’s audition, she did have the weakest female performance this week and probably deserved to go home. The next girl to get the boot was Ashley Rodriguez. I’ve never really been an Ashley fan and thought she was overrated from her audition, but there were definitely other girls that should have gone home before her just based on this week's performances. I thought Ashley’s early pimping and her looks would keep her safe for at least one more week, if not all the way to the top 12, but apparently I was wrong.

As if Ashley’s elimination weren’t surprising enough, that was followed by Joe Munoz and Tyler Grady both getting the axe in favor of keeping the incredibly inept Tim Urban and Alex Lambert. WTF?! I know Joe didn’t get any early exposure and Tyler’s quirky, but COME ON. They can SING. I was starting to think that Joe could be a dark horse this season, and Tyler has been one of my faves since his audition. They were both in my top 5 this week! But silly me, I was evaluating their SINGING. Tim and Alex are young, cute, and naïve (the Archuleta factor), which apparently trumps talent these days. Add to that the “victim” factor (they both probably garnered some sympathy votes after the judges’ harsh criticism on Wednesday), and I should have known they’d be safe. Forget the fact that their performances were bad. Really, really bad. Like make your ears bleed bad. Acting (and singing) like a puppy that’s just been kicked was enough to earn America’s votes. It’s sad. America, I’m disappointed in you.

Now none of these eliminations is a travesty, even by American Idol standards. I never thought Janell, Ashley, Joe, or Tyler would actually win the competition. However, I thought all of them at some point had a real shot of making the top 12, and there are definitely inferior singers who have now outlasted them in the competition.

So what’s the lesson we’ve learned from all of this?

Archuleta factor + victim factor > talent

In other words, it’s better to be horrible than to be ok. If you’re mediocre, people might forget about you or might choose to give someone else their votes. On the other hand, if you’re really bad, their sympathy will trump their hearing and they’ll vote for you despite your inability to hit the right notes (ie Scott McIntyre last season). After all, it’s the effort that counts, right? The final product is secondary to puppy dog eyes and earnestness.

So join us next week for three more episodes of American Idol, the search for the most sincere bad singer in the country.

PS If you (like me) were thinking that Casey James wore the same shirt two nights in a row, he didn’t. I rewatched his Wednesday performance (for the umpteenth time), where his shirt had designs on the shoulders and on the collar. His Thursday shirt just had designs on the shoulders. That’s a relief, isn’t it? We wouldn’t want our resident hottie to be recycling his wardrobe at this early stage in the competition.

- Angela Pasquinelli