And now the shocking twist to this season of American Idol: judges will be able to save an ousted contestant anytime between now and the final five. But wait! There’s a twist on the twist. Judges can only exercise this mercy once! Dunh dunh dunhhhh!!! Who will they use it on? Well, certainly not Jasmine Murray or Jorge Núñez, the cast’s resident “J” singers who unceremoniously were sent packing on last night’s results show.
Neither elimination was terribly surprising. Jasmine wasn’t that bad on Tuesday night, but her performance suffered from being unmemorable (I couldn’t even remember the song when I was writing the recap). She completely disregarded the judges advice for the third time in a row, opting to be old fashioned instead of living up to her mini-Brandy / Rihanna / urban pop R&B potential. Oh well. You can only get so many chances.
Meanwhile, Jorge, who appeared to be dressed like a waiter, was slain by a dreary, adult-contemporary performance and received no reprieve from the judges. When asked if the judges would be saving the emotive skeleton (as Gawker calls him), Simon responded with a succinct and beautiful “No”. Awesome. I thought the kid would burst into tears, but somehow he kept it together â€â€Ã‚ perhaps wrapping his emotions in a tight metaphorical scarf around his head. Okay, that made no sense. I just wanted to make fun of his scarf one more time.
I gotta admit that I was glad to see Jorge go because he always annoyed me. His reprise of “Never Can Say Goodbye” was strained and awful, thus reassuring me that it wasn’t so terrible that he went home before Scott. That being said, the pity party has to end soon. Scott is pretty horrendous. I did, however, enjoy watching the subtle ways in which he adapted to the choreography in the group song. For each big move, either Alexis or Megan seemed to quietly guide him around the stage, which I thought was pretty awesome. Of course, this fulfilled whatever curiosity I had left about him (ie. “How’s he gonna do the group numbers?”); so really he’s useless to me now, and since he can’t sing, there’s no reason to keep him around unless I were to suddenly develop an Art Garfunkel hair fetish. And I assure you, I haven’t.
But alas, Scott stayed, while Jasmine and Jorge (a.k.a. Jazz and Whore) went home. Looks like it was the wrong night to sing songs about permanence (“I’ll Be There” and “Never Can Say Goodbye”).
Other notable elements of the show? Nothing really. The kids moved into a big mansion for the first time since season two or three. I don’t know why we saw this â€â€Ã‚ unless we’re to be treated with glimpses into their Disney lifestyle every week. The Toyota commercial, meanwhile, was one of the more lazy productions as the producers merely slapped images of the singers onto city buildings. Lame. We expect more cheese and costumes.
At one point, Anoop Dawg’s idol Kanye West emerged to sing “Heartless,” which was a great way to characterize the performance. He still sounded as bad as he did on SNL and MTV’s Youth Ball at the inauguration, but at least this time he had a backing track which seemed to overpower him whenever his voice croaked and cracked, which was often. Must admit: I fast-forwarded over half the song.
Also taking the stage was Kelly Clarkson, who sang “My Life Would Suck Without You,” a song that may or may not have been dedicated to the hotel buffet. Oh I KEED. But seriously, Kelly is looking like quite the healthy woman these days. I thought she was gonna punch Ryan when he tried to sing like her. Heck, I would have punched him. But she remained poised, and I’m glad to see she’s more or less out of her moody artiste phase.
So that was it. What did you think about the results? Do you like Carrie Underwood’s “Home Sweet Home” goodbye song? Should Jazz or Whore have been saved?