I was going to recap the whole overwrought pre-credits sequence, all about how last week the top 13 were all on top of the world and tonight one of them will go home, but I seem to have misplaced my smelling salts.
After the credits, Ryan performs an astounding feat of walking and talking, explaining that at the end of tonight, we'll know which girl and which guy from the top 13 got the fewest votes last night. And then the judges will decide which of them will be sent home. While ambling all the way from center stage to behind the judges' table, he does this. Clearly I've underestimated him. Then he introduces the group sing of yet another Stevie Wonder song I don't know, a performance that proves is as awkward and forced as you can imagine something featuring 13 people with widely varying styles and heights passing the lead back and forth to be. Remember Jennifer talking about not wanting DeAndre's song to end last night? She very nearly gets her wish tonight.
Then there's a "music video" where the top 13 are green-screened to look like giants in a Ford commercial; set to their version of Peter Gabriel's "Big Time." What I like about this is that all of the gigantic top 13 guys supposedly set the ground shaking with every step, the top 13 girls are still too delicate to do any such thing even when they're as tall as skyscrapers (or Shannon). While we're still reeling from that embarrassment, Jimmy Iovine grinds the show to a halt to tell us all how special Whitney Houston was, "And that's why it was so difficult for the girls to sing these songs. But Stevie Wonder was no walk in the park for the boys, either." Thanks for that, Jimmy. Up until now I was thinking I could have done just as well as anyone did last night.
So now it's time for Ryan to start cutting people from the herd. He starts with Jessica, Elise and Hollie, calling them to center stage. As with last week, we get clips of each finalist's performances and the judges' mostly incoherent comments, cut in with remarks from Jimmy. Elise admitted backstage last night to having been embarrassed by the public criticism, and Jimmy says she "got hit with the Whitney Houston stick." By whom, exactly? Jimmy says Hollie was lucky to be in her genre, but she was "fantastic." As for Jessica, as though we're worried, Jimmy calls her song last night "probably the best performance I've ever seen of anyone on American Idol." His only concern is that she'll get overconfident. She seems to have a way to go, though.
Ryan asks for the lights to be dimmed, and tells Jessica she's safe. Sometimes trying to build suspense isn't worth the trouble. Ryan tells Elise and Hollie that one of them was in the bottom three for the girls -- and it turns out to be Elise, who is sent over to the ghetto of stools at stage left.
Moving on to the guys, the first group is Heejun, Colton and Jermaine. Jimmy says Stevie Wonder showed off all Heejun's flaws, although he likes Heejun's voice. Jimmy seems unaware that he's supposed to be in a feud. Kind of like my rival Dave Holmes at Vulture, who has been doing an outstanding job of pretending to be unaware of our ongoing deathmatch. Jimmy gives Colton credit for taking direction (Jimmy's), but says he was trying something he didn't feel, like it's Colton's fault all the guys had to sing Stevie Wonder songs. We see that Jermaine disagreed with Randy's criticism of him backstage, and Jimmy agrees with Jennifer that Jermaine was thinking too much during the song. He also steals my line from last night's weecap about Armani not making suits big enough for Jermaine, but he seems to think it's funnier than I did. Maybe I need to be feuding with Jimmy too.
Ryan gives Jermaine a chance to disagree with Jimmy, and Jermaine just goes into vapor lock while trying to think of a polite way to say Jimmy's dead wrong. We'll have to watch where that goes. The lights go down, and Ryan starts messing with Colton again, telling him America didn't like what they saw. "They loved it!" So Colton's safe, leaving Jermaine and Heejun in limbo for now. But Heejun is safe as well, which means Jermaine gets to go over to the stools on stage left and sit as far away from Elise as he still can.
Coming back, Ryan gives Jennifer a chance to plug her new show ¡Q'Viva!, which, even though it's been promo'ed up the ass during this show, I've been avoiding mentioning because I didn't want to type the title. Then Ryan introduces last year's runner up, Lauren Alaina, who I've never seen before in my life. But it's obvious why she did so well, playing to the crowd and name-checking Randy in her lyrics and sitting between Colton and Phil on the finalists' couch for most of a verse. But at least she gets to sing the whole song, so this year's finalists have that to shoot for, at least.
The group of girls called to the front are Erika, Shannon and Skylar. Jimmy says Erika wasn't a good match for the song but she pulled it off, and she needs to work on being more direct, whatever that means. As for Shannon, she insisted backstage that she only cracked on one note, which indicates that she hadn't heard herself played back yet. Jimmy says she has talent but needs more experience. And all Jimmy has to say about Skylar is that she likes the "nasal" tone that Jennifer dinged her for last night.
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Ryan sends Erika over to the bottom three, amid surprised boos. Skylar, however, is safe, so Shannon fills out the bottom three girls' stools.
Ryan moves on to the guys, calling down Phil, Jeremy, DeAndre and Joshua. Ryan does a quick health check with Phil, who apparently went to the doctor today but is now fine. These singers are delicate, aren't they? Going to the clips, Jimmy gives Joshua credit for trying an up-tempo song last night for the first time, but worries that people might get tired of his voice. During DeAndre's clip, we see that DeAndre took Steven's words as a compliment despite not understanding them. Jimmy's not worried about DeAndre at all. Jimmy says Phil is a great musician who knows who he is, but worries that the girls might outshine him. Maybe later. As for Jeremy, Jimmy says that despite what Steven and Jennifer said last night, a Stevie Wonder ballad should have been perfect for Jeremy, but he didn't pull it off. In fact, Jimmy expects Jeremy to end up in the bottom two and get sent home tonight. We come back to Ryan schoolmarmishly asking Jennifer and Randy, "What are you whispering?" Randy, in his Richie Cunningham outfit, says they don't always agree with Jimmy. Good non-answer.
The lights go down for the results, and it turns out Phillip is safe, shocker. Ryan tells Jeremy that he is indeed in the bottom three guys. That leaves one seat in the bottom three for either Joshua or DeAndre. Ryan reminds DeAndre that he didn't make America's top ten last week, "And I'm sorry to say, you're gonna have to endure the stress of the competition some more because you are safe!" I think he just likes to make DeAndre make those faces. Ryan now steps over to publicly shame the two bottom threes: Elise, Shannon, Erika, Joshua, Jeremy and Jermaine. While standing over there between the two trios, Ryan tells us to stick around to find out, "Who faces the fire, and who is safe, like Erika and Joshua." See what he did there? There's long pause while everyone takes a minute to figure out what just happened, and Joshua and Erika are the last to catch the snap. "Anything can happen!" Ryan bleats, like he just sprayed them with a fire hose.
Mary J. Blige either gets to sing tonight in exchange for last night's mentoring, or the other way around. I can never tell. She comes out and performs her new song "Why." I said this when she sang on The X Factor last fall, but it must be nice to come out on this stage with nothing to prove. But then she proves it anyway, so that's cool. The judges are a little slow with the standing ovation, though. Just see if she comes back year.
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After the ads, Ryan is standing to (and by necessity, somewhat below) the two pairs of bottom twos: Jermaine and Jeremy, and Shannon and Elise. Ryan asks Steven who he thinks should leave, and after a long pause, Steven flatly says, "Jeremy." Ryan asks Jeremy how he's feeling, and Jeremy admits that it "stinks" being up here again at the end of a results show. Especially given that he's the only person Ryan bothers talking to right now, which means his departure is a foregone conclusion. Ryan has the lights dimmed, says Jermaine's name, and takes the long walk over to his shadow. "What's that card say?" Jermaine rumbles down at him. "Safe," Ryan says. Jermaine rejoins the finalists ones on the couch. we find out which of the two girls is safe, and oddly enough it's Shannon. Ryan asks Randy if America got it right. "I don't think so," Jennifer says. Randy says not exactly right but probably. In other words, goodbye to Jeremy. Ryan claims that the judges will decide over the break whether Jeremy or Elise is going. Like they haven't already.
Coming back, Ryan asks Jennifer for a decision, and although she takes a long time, she uses more pauses than words in saying, "We're gonna save Elise."
So that's it for Jeremy, who gets a farewell montage set to a song by Scotty McCreery, "Please Remember Me." No promises, Jer-Bear. We're reminded of his job at the infectious disease clinic and his past highlights. After that clip, which is 99 percent stuff we've seen before and 1 percent stuff we already knew, we see Jessica crying on the couches as Ryan asks Jeremy what he'll miss the most. "This whole experience," Jeremy says. And now he'll have to go back to spending every day in a place swarming with exotic and terrifying pathogens, even though he's saying goodbye to Steven Tyler.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.
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