David's got soaring eagles on his T-shirt at the moment, so you know he's ready for that finale song. Randy tries to get the loser girls in the audience to shut up long enough for him to once again pretend that David just blew everybody away. The degree to which Randy has no credibility anymore cannot be overstated. At least Paula's crazy and Simon's always thinking about marketing. Paula compliments David on heeding Andrew Lloyd Webber's advice and using his dead, joyless eyes to communicate to the audience. Simon uses his time to take another potshot at Jason, which is lame, and even David A,, who has had the backtalk beaten out of him by now, says that's not cool. Simon then dares to suggest David struggled a bit at the end, but before the villagers can carry him off to be drawn and quartered, he calls it the best performance of the night so far. When Ryan comes out, he gets David to admit that the judges absolutely terrify him. I can't imagine why he would be so petrified of what authority figures will say to him after he sings. Weird. Ryan just begs him not to freak out and die on him.
Back at the cola monitors, we're back to David Cook, and he and Ryan talk about how this week's theme will totally fuck him over if he isn't balls-out fantastic. Yes, he actually says "the bar I set for myself is so high," but it's kind of the truth, at least in the isolated bubble that is this show. He'll be singing The Who's "Baba O'Reilly," which is every bit the stadium anthem that other ill-advised song choices like "We Will Rock You" and "Sweet Caroline" have been. David wisely alters the song more than he did "Hungry Like The Wolf," slowing it down to dirge speed, which isn't a whole lot of fun, but it gets the job done vis-à-vis making this the David Cook song that "Hungry" really wasn't. The time limitation is felt at the end as David gets to the "They're all wasted" part, and looks like he's about to cut loose, but then he pulls up. Nobody likes musical blue balls, dude. Don't do that. Randy thought it was a return to form, Paula still wants to violate him in a billion different ways, and Simon smiles and says, "Welcome back, David Cook." There's a "David's gonna cry" vibe hanging in the air like after his Mariah song, but it doesn't come to pass. I bet Paula's naked desire for him dried him up quick.
After the break, Ryan greets Rascal Flatts in the audience, then walks right past a dead-ringer Ryan Seacrest doppelganger in the audience, completely without noticing. That was freaky. I hope that dude doesn't have any Uma Thurman stalker crap on the brain. Lord knows what it would take to creep Ryan out.
Syesha has chosen Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," and because it's Syesha, we can't entirely be surprised that she compares the "pivotal time" that Cooke wrote that song to the pivotal time in her life right now. On American Idol. She really, really went there. Back on stage, she looks eight million kinds of fantastic, but now she's back to singing the same old stand-still diva mess that got me so apathetic towards her in the first place. We'll see if the overt Randy-baiting of her oversung notes will pay off. The fakey-fake tearful glances certainly might. Randy didn't love it, even calling out the over-pushing on the big notes -- Randy, if you're going to be the biggest horse's ass on the panel, at least be consistent about it, will you? Syesha starts to cry (for real this time), which immediately gets two people on her side: Paula, at the judges' table, and Carly in the audience. Who else? Simon goes for the big suspense and says he agrees...(Syesha's trickle of a tear becomes a gusher in the meantime)...with Paula. He specifically says Randy was out of his tree. Which...he wasn't, but he so often is. Ryan asks Syesha why she's currently blubbering like Brooke White at a puppy mill and Syesha manages to call down the ghosts of the civil rights movement to support her on her quest to be America's favorite girl. The judges pick on Randy for being mean, which is all fun and games until Ryan starts to have a panic attack about running over time, so he hustles out the numbers and shoots it to the video.
After having paid tribute to his own weed-smoking and hairstyle with Bob Marley, Jason has decided to pay tribute to his own weed-smoking and mumbly affect with a Bob Dylan song. I know "Mr. Tambourine Man" is about weed because Michelle Pfeiffer told me so, see. For the first few chords, we're back to a Jason that I can live with, even though it's basically just a guy with a guitar doing Dylan. But he's doing it pretty well...until we get to the jingle-jangle morning, at which point Jason completely loses all his words and just rides it out until the end of the chorus. Holy hell. If Brooke White had died from any of her 19 nervous breakdowns, a goose would be walking across her grave right about now. Jason recovers and sounds pretty good throughout the rest of the song, but jeez. Randy takes the lazy route he sometimes takes and asks Jason what he thought. Luckily, this gives Jason a chance to apologize for the lyric-flubbing in a way that doesn't seem desperate. Paula allows that the performance wasn't that great but she still likes him, for whatever reasons Paula has for liking anybody. Simon is so beyond over Jason right now -- I can't imagine Simon ever has time for people who don't want to be on the show anymore -- and he bluntly tells him to pack his suitcase.
After the break, we've got, like, a minute and a half to cram in David Archuleta singing "Love Me Tender." See, because it says "tender" right there in the title. And "sweet" in the very first line. This song's got it all! So it's another Brian McKnight interpretation here as David turns Elvis's most boring song into a soulful white-boy ballad. On the David A. scale he sounds great, and I will say that if I were a person who was in any way inclined towards David Archuleta, this performance would be driving me crazy right about now. But what kind of person are you if you're in any way inclined towards David Archuleta, you giant weirdo? In the absence of being a total freak, then, all I'm left with is David's huge, sincere face taking up my entire TV screen in a way that is disgustingly wholesome. Randy uses the word "tender" in his critique, so I think we can safely ignore the rest of what he says. Paula loved it. And Simon thought David "crushed the competition" tonight. Man, for this kid's sake, I hope that Jonas Brothers market will hold up the way Simon thinks it will. Ryan reads off David's numbers and calls him "Crusher," which is funny because that was the name of my grandparents' cat when I was growing up. Appropriate, no?
Rundown: David Cook not being quite as special as we'd like him to be, but still the best. Syesha being ambitious and good, then presumptuous and bad. Jason repeatedly requesting to be sent home. And David A. making sure we don't forget just how non-threatening he is at all times.
Tomorrow we lose another one. Everybody involved really hopes it'll be Jason.
Want more Idol? Check out our gallery of the most insane performances ever.