up is Fantasia, singing...wow. You have to be very, very confident to get up and sing a song called "Bore Me." Particularly with Simon Cowell within 5000 yards of you, much less right there in your line of sight. Is this song title a hidden clue from the producers that Archuleta's got this in the bag? Or, wait, are the producers conspiring against him now? Every year it gets harder and harder to keep up. So Fantasia's painted her hair red, and not a single word she sings is decipherable in the slightest, and she borrowed all the beeps and snorts from Beyonce's "Work It Out," and as always it sounds like it must hurt a whole lot to sing like Fantasia, and ultimately? She's totally fantastic. And capital "I" Insane. Did she always know how to dance? This is awesome. Cut to Simon, mouth agape, struggling to comprehend. She has literally knocked Simon's brain clear across the room. He's finished. So am I. Wow.
And then? Just as Ryan's about to send it to commercial, she pretends to make out with Ryan. I vote we just declare Fantastia a Double American Idol and call this season a wash. Who's with me?
After the break, Ryan brings out David A. like we're about to start whittling things down to the Bottom 3. Only that's all that's left is the Bottom 3 (or Top 3 if you're being kind, which: not what they pay me for), so what's Ryan trying to pull here? Ryan totally makes fun of the Archie Girls in the pit (can you imagine having to stand there in front of them for two full hours each week? How many people you'd have to murder afterwards just to calm yourself down?), and... oh, I see what they're doing here. This is just a backdoor way of introducing the visits home. And can I tell you, if it weren't for this season's introduction of the call-in questions during the results shows, nothing would annoy me more than these interminable visits home.
So: David Archuleta. Murray, Utah. It's the usual home-visit tropes: local morning show, high school cheerleaders, overcrowded town square, the mall. Only multiplied by a billion because all of Utah is currently losing their shit over David Archuleta at the moment. How do that many screaming 14-year-olds not scare the hell out of you? But David seems to take it all in with his trademark baffled smile, without a thought burdening his young head, and says "gosh" approximately 17,000 times. At one point he tears up, which probably made a lot of people feel better knowing that he's a human boy with feelings beyond "compassion for the homeless and feline AIDS." Not me, though. I still haven't gotten over that scene in A.I. when Haley Joel's face melted off, and this here cuts way too close to that particular memory, so I'm left even more creeped out by young David than usual. And I have to ask, again, what is with this obsession with getting the camera as close to David's face as possible without actually giving him a root canal? Why do that? Nobody needs that much Archuleta in their face. You're trying to sell this kid as non-threatening, remember. We don't need to be frenching him with the lens. Back in the limo, David says how "overwhelmed" he's been by the sheer number of people at these events. "Gosh, where do they park?" Ha! Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are, but that was really funny. And human, for God's sake. We saw a couple glimpses there, I think. Past the stage grooming and rehearsed pleasantries, we got a peek at the...well-groomed and pleasant kid underneath. Which kind of makes the artifice that much more maddening because it's not necessary, but whatever. Gosh.
When we return, we have literally run out of filler and are forced to watch something actually happen. David A., Syesha, David C. One of them goes home. Simon promises a "real humdinger" of a finale week, and the rest of the judges once again pretend they don't know this fancy English language Simon speaks. Cook gets them all to grasp hands, and Ryan announces that Archuleta will be competing in the finale. The crowd goes apeshit for a billion years, and the other two congratulate him and then separate themselves from him ever so slightly, because apparently David Cook has developed a Seacrestian sense of televised drama. So now it's just Syesha and David C., which, if you've been paying attention at all, isn't even close. And indeed, it's Syesha's time to go. The crowd tackily screeches for David, but thankfully nobody's a bit surprised by this, least of all Syesha. Cook wraps Syesha up into his suddenly-gargantuan frame (seriously, out there with Arch, Syesha, and Ryan he looks like a giant), which isn't a bad way to go.)
So Syesha thanks her fans and then sings herself out with that Alicia Keys song she did so well yesterday. Her dad and Archuleta both sing along with her. Not too bad, Syesha Mercado. Though I guess her third-place showing means she's more of an inspiration for Hillary than Obama. Ah well. David v. David finale week, y'all! See you there!
Watch our video recap for even more details on Syesha's ouster.