Fantasy Idol Results- 20 Minutes Past My DVR

Somewhere in what I imagine is a glorious office with numerous tvs and dvrs surrounding him, Alan Sepinwall is cursing out the director of American Idol to no end. If there's one person out there that can't stand when Idol goes over its allotted time more than me, its Sepinwall. I set my dvr to record five minutes after 10:00 just in case these people had major mistakes that would go longer than they're usual one to two minute overage. You really could have colored me surprised when my dvr ran out and they still had 21 minutes to go, a whole performance, and then the results left!

Screw you Idol director for making me fast forward through almost the entirety of this pointless episode, and then you took away the joy of seeing another sad sap contestant go home. There were six guest performances that I got to see, because the DVR ran out before Sir Elton John got on stage. The only ones I didn't fast forward through? Carrie Underwood and the second half of Alicia Keys.

Black Eyed Peas are really really bad.

@HitFixDaniel tweeted that "Joss Stone would probably be able to win "American Idol." Just sayin'" so I watched the first 20 seconds before fast forwarding through that terrible rendition of I Put a Spell On You.

Once I heard that Alicia Keys was doing Empire State of Mind I got excited. After the first 10 seconds of garbage I fast forwarded to the NYC anthem and enjoyed.

Carrie Underwood was good and very attractive.

I was actually laughing at Wanda Sykes' take on the Idol results show. There are some inherent comedic qualities to the episode week in and week out. She hit them all. I never thought I'd find a single thing she said funny, but she was given great material here..."Let's take a look back at happier times when you thought you were goin' somewhere."

Some blonde lady started singing with a montage going on behind her. I think it might have been either Carol or Brandy from the team of lesbians on The Amazing Race.

And just before my DVR ran out Mary J Blige, with her blonde bowl cut tried to do Stairway to Heaven with her "all-star band". After failing for the first 30 seconds, I fast forwarded through the rest.

Oh yeah and Tim Urban left us tonight.

Fantasy Scores

The Rock Bodega
Casey James- Bottom 3 (-9), Safe (37)= 28
Janell Wheeler
Tim Urban- Bottom 3 (-9), Eliminated (-18)= -27
Lee DeWyze- Safe (37)= 37
Week 9= 38 Total= 289

You're Coming With Me Leather
Andrew Garcia
Paige Miles
Aaron Kelly- Bottom 3 (-9), Safe (37)= 28
John Park
Week 9= 28 Total= 137

The Curlgar
Ashley Rodriguez
Joe Muñoz
Haley Vaughn
Siobhan Magnus- Safe (37)= 37
Week 9= 37 Total= 122

Splash Downs All Around
Todrick Hall
Crystal Bowersox- Safe (37)= 37
Tyler Grady
Michelle Delamor
Week 9= 37 Total= 121

Diabolical Haters
Didi Benami
Lilly Scott
Lacey Brown
Michael Lynch- Safe (37)= 37
Week 9= 37 Total= 113

HashTag Katie Stevens Is Only 16
Katie Stevens
Jermaine Sellers
Katelyn Epperly
Alex Lambert
Total= 19

American Idol- No Tim! Good Performance

Randy Jackson- "It was a good Tim performance."

While Simon is one of the meanest people in television history, Randy's treatment of Tim Urban last night might have been more cruel than anything the cranky Brit has ever done. At least Simon makes sense with his criticism. Randy saying that he is not judging Tim in a comparison to any other contestant is just wrong and unfair to the contestants and the audience. Figure it out dawg and learn how to judge or I'm gonna be forced to fast forward through you.

Speaking of this "good Tim performance" I actually agreed with Simon that it was decent. The thing about Urban is that half of the time he's a pleasant listen. You know he's never going to try to hard with the vocals, so it never sounds strained (unlike his young teenybopping partner). I'd rather listen to this performance by Urban any day of the week than sit through another Aaron Kelly hatchet job.

Aaron is always straining and it just gets worse and worse every week I have to sit through his performance. Whichever judge said it last night was right on the money with the fact that it was "a long and winding song." It was both annoying and boring. When is this youngster going to realize you can't just put a country voice on any song without rearranging it to give it a country feel. It's just felt like a mutant cousin of The Long and Winding Road.

While we're on the topic of performances I really couldn't stand...Andrew Garcia aka President Omar Hassan went back to his other identity this week as he just butchered Can't Buy Me Love. I was bored throughout and it is a very upbeat song. Not usually the combination you think of.

My favorite this week was once again Crystal Bowersox. MamaSox has proven she can do anything, even smile while hugging a didgeridoo player. I really don't like Come Together, but like Adam Lambert used to do last year, she made me a fan of it with her performance.

I also really liked Siobhan Magnus and Katie Stevens last night. The Glass Blower really stepped with a Lambert/Tracks of My Tears moment in her rendition of Across the Universe. Now it wasn't as enjoyable as Michael Johns's rock out a couple years ago, but it was so tender and controlled that it was a pleasant change from her normal garbage. Ms. Stevens just flat out sang and performed well. I know Rizzo thinks she's the best every single week, but for me this is different. She made Let It Be seem real current.

Casey James, Le DeWyze and Michael Lynche were all subpar for me this week. I think Big Mike was my favorite of the group because he didn't something interesting that fit his style. I wanted to write that his Eleanor Rigby didn't even compare to Larry's Eleanor and CJ version but I think he was okay here. Casey, on the other hand, was not good at all. He was loving the vibrato this week as every time he went into a long note I thought I was getting shot at by a machine gun "eheheheheheheh". Oh Lee DeWyze. I wanted to really like you this week, but you brought a crazy bagpipe player on stage in the middle of your performance and I just couldn't concentrate. It was like Lee was the opening act and the Bagpipe Guy was the main attraction.

My prediction is the Tim Urban finally leaves us tonight.

Performance Rankings

1. Crystal Bowersox
2. Siobhan Magnus
3. Katie Stevens
4. Michael Lynche
5. Lee DeWyze
6. Tim Urban
7. Casey James
8. Andrew Garcia
9. Aaron Kelly

Fantasy Idol Results- Take All the Chips Away

Al Pacino's character, Walter Abrams in Two For the Money, is a gambling addict. He kept on making bets because he said that there's no better feeling in the world than when they dragged your chips away from you. That, in a nutshell, is the same reason I keep coming back to American Idol every season.

I know that a couple times per season that America is going to do something completely ridiculous, like eliminate the fantastic Didi Benami in 10th place, and it will make me so very unhappy. It's that knot in the pit of my stomach that makes the results show so exciting. If it were a forgone conclusion that the worst contestant (Tim Urban) was going to leave every week, what would be the point of watching?

Now I know the judges haven't been as high on her as most of the critics and viewers have, but if you're gonna have the judges save why not use it now? Didi has shown a ton of talent. The judges loved her Rhiannon. They loved her Play With Fire. Are they just gonna hold out until the final week it can be used and waste it on someone who will only make it one more week further in the game? If Didi was saved this week she might have been propelled to a top 5 or 6 spot. The same could have been said for Alexis Grace last season. The top nine to 11 is the time to use it, not at the very end.

What a night for R&B/Soul Music. Probably three of the worst performances of the season (and yes I'm including all of Tim Urban's and Paige Miles's Smile). Ruben was a great contestant, singing famous songs of old, but he is no original artist. Usher is a great dancer so it was nice to watch him combine the styles of Michael Jackson and Russian folk dance up on stage, but he can't sing a lick. And then there was Diddy. Or the 45 seconds of Diddy I put up with before fast forwarding through that garbage.

Your bottom three from last night. Didi Benami, Tim Urban and Katie Stevens. That's two weeks in a row for the latter pair. Didi made her first appearance in the group but ended up being the one to leave after doing another great rendition of Rhiannon. Oh well. Another week of Tim Urban awaits us.

Fantasy Scores

The Rock Bodega
Casey James- Safe (16)= 16
Janell Wheeler
Tim Urban- Bottom 3 (-6), Safe (16)= 10
Lee DeWyze- Safe (16)= 16
Week 6= 42 Total= 106

You're Coming With Me Leather
Andrew Garcia- Safe (16)= 16
Paige Miles
Aaron Kelly- Safe (16)= 16
John Park
Week 6= 32 Total= 74

Diabolical Haters
Didi Benami- Bottom 3 (-6), Eliminated (-12)= -18
Lilly Scott
Lacey Brown
Michael Lynch- Safe (16)= 16
Week 6= -2 Total= 40

The Curlgar
Ashley Rodriguez
Joe Muñoz
Haley Vaughn
Siobhan Magnus- Safe (16)= 16
Week 6= 16 Total= 34

Splash Downs All Around
Todrick Hall
Crystal Bowersox- Safe (16)= 16
Tyler Grady
Michelle Delamor
Week 6= 16 Total= 33

HashTag Katie Stevens Is Only 16
Katie Stevens- Bottom 3 (-6), Safe (16)= 10
Jermaine Sellers
Katelyn Epperly
Alex Lambert
Week 6= 10 Total= 21

American Idol- Sabotaging the Guys

If the girls night was underwhelming, last night's top 12 guys was brutally awful. I really could care less if any of eight dudes went home tonight. That brings me to the worst conspiracy idea the Idol producers have had yet. So it's pretty obvious that they want a girl to win this year, and that they want at least three girls in the top four. I'm assuming this is because the guys have been so dominant recently with Lambert, Allen, Cook and Archuleta all being in the past two finals.

Even if Simon hadn't said that it's the year of the girls we all would have seen the writing on the wall. What did they do? They booted out a number of very talented guys before America gets to do the voting so that there is no way for them to outshine the females. Most notably it was Jeremy Purifory and Thaddeus Brown, but I'm sure there were plenty of others. I knew that these two were a couple of the best before they were cut and after watching last night's group of misfits it was even more obvious that it was a good move by the producers. Who knows how many other great voices were out there that the editing cut out because they didn't want us to even know about them. Now I'm going to have to listen to Aaron Kelly and Joe Muñoz for multiple weeks? Bootleg!

As for last night's judging, I think they all took another step backwards. Hey guys just a head's up, you can't tell people it wasn't good because you didn't change anything and then tell them it wasn't good because you changed the song. You can't have it both ways. If you want to just go on feeling that's fine. A song can just not have sounded good. If you reasoning for why it was bad doesn't make sense then don't come up with one. Just say it was bad. That would have a lot more substance.

And now we get to my newest gripe with the show. I'm sick of all these people who bring guitars with them on stage for absolutely no reason other than to look like you have a guitar with you. At least Lee DeWyze and Casey James attempted to play, but the background music was so loud that it makes their little strumming moot. Michael Lynch, on the other hand, didn't even touch the strings on his guitar while on stage and that is just like slapping Jason Castro in the face. Andrew Garcia, like Castro and others from the past two seasons, used his guitar with a purpose. One out of four ain't bad I guess.

And so we get to the performances.

There are seven contestants I could care less about. Before we get to them, I have to mention the one that needs to go home tonight. Tim Urban may have put forth the worst performance in live American Idol history. As JJ said to me last night, I just felt so bad for him while he was up there destroying Apologize. Like Katie Stevens last night, Urban attempted a song done by one of last season's greats. The current champion killed the One Republic song less than a year ago and instead of killing it, Urban butchered it last night (such a different slang meaning for such similar words). Every time he attempted to go into the falsetto part I wanted to kill myself. I really want to know who was watching him during rehearsal and said "yeah this is a good idea." Somebody with a sick sense of humor that's who.

Now to those I could care less if they left or moved on...

Aaron Kelly- uninspiring performance with a weird country twang
Jermaine Sellers- though showed some potential he screamed through most of this
Joe Muñoz- very boring, but would've been good at a karaoke bar
Tyler Grady- sounded like a big voice but couldn't tell with that horrid song
John Park- I might have fallen asleep during this one
Michael Lynch- again the non-guitar playing did him in for me
Alex Lambert- he sounded like me trying to copy someone's voice while I sing in the car. Like me, he failed.

There were three contestants that I enjoyed but were less than impressed with. Todrick Hall's take on Kelly Clarkson's Since You Been Gone was interesting. He seems to be a fantastic performer (with his dancing background) and he showed that he definitely has some ability with his voice. I liked the sound of Lee DeWyze's voice even if it seemed to just be a homeless man's David Cook. And Casey James was very copy cat of Brian Adams in his performance and not really that powerful, but I still really enjoyed it (especially as he laughed through the first two lines because of whatever shenanigans Kara and Randy were up to).

And there was the moment that the judges were drunk, because I don't know what they were thinking with their assessment of Andrew Garcia's fantastic performance of Sugar We're Goin' Down. They didn't like it because it wasn't like what he did with Straight Up at Hollywood Week. Wait, what? He did the exact same thing! And it was fantastic! In my opinion he booked his ticket to the top four with that one performance. He changed up the song while showcasing his guitar playing and his vocals, just killing the whole thing. Unlike Simon I was absolutely not one bit disappointed with that.