Tuesday

What happened: last week Ryan and Paula looked each other in the eyes and they both said, "I wish you knew what it was like to be me!" and there was a loud BOOM! So now Paula is cool and professional and makes at least two intelligent comments, while Ryan does most of his work from the laps of various dudes, including: Clay Aiken, Anthony Fedorov, the memory of Anwar, and some guy in the audience. It's bizarre. Also bizarre, though, is how they all sound like crap. What an unenjoyable evening. The theme is -- get this -- "the last five years." Not a thing!

There's a "Carrie's town has one stoplight" segment, and it's adorable, and her mom loses it talking about how great Carrie is, and then I lose it with how terrible Carrie is. She sings Martina McBride's "When God Fearin' Women Get the Blues," and, like, I am none of those things, but I can get the blues too, and you just gave them to me. It's awful, and then she coughs kind of pointedly, like she needs to worry, but it sounds kind of gross and real. Randy enjoyed the other musicians, Paula backhands her with how it's great she has so many fans, and Simon tells her none of this matters. Ryan asks if she's at least attempting to learn the lyrics of her songs these days, and they both giggle like dorks because she already knew this one. I like her with Ryan. The blondening of them.

"The man who wouldn't make the choice," okay, is wearing a stupid dashiki and sunglasses and looks like a Halloween "hippie" costume, which is essentially what Bo is, but whatever, I'm ready to love it, because he's awesome. Then the pre-song is all about how he's got this realistical real reality that surpasses normal reality in a really real way. And I agree, insofar as he wouldn't know the difference, and that's what I can't stand about Bo. Disingenuously to the fucking extreme, he'll be singing Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Want to Be," and what he doesn't want to be? Is anything other than what he's been trying to be lately. Barf. But the real problem is how bad he sucks tonight. It's his worst ever, and one of the worst non-Constantine songs in the last six weeks. I'm not hating, and I'm not happy about it, but it's honestly that bad. His voice is shot, he's off-key, he duffs the last note crazy bad. The judges "love" the "coincidental" song "choice."

Tonight is not going well. Vonzell's package is adorable -- Daddy, karate, Daddy, cute, Daddy, mail truck -- but we note that her cuteness is genetic: her whole family is like that. She sings the Christina Aguilera song "I Turn to You," and…I love her, you guys, but damn. This is turning into a bloodbath. Like, I don't even want to watch it again to tell you exactly why. One part just before the ending is pretty good, although there are some fucked-up faces, and she dedicates the song to Daddy. Getting over that, actually. Randy welcomes her to the Dawg Pound because he wants an all-white Final Five even less than I, and Paula notes that America is falling in love with her. Still. Simon has a "horrible" feeling that Randy and Paula are totally wrong, and he's right, and Ryan tells her she's awesome, and he's right too.

A-Fed's parents cannot, like, handle how great he is, to the point where even the sensitive finger-picked guitar score gets bored. He'll be singing "I Surrender," by Celine Dion, and he will be rocking it, even though it's the most boring song in the universe, and I don't remember ever having heard it, even though I just heard it not five minutes ago, but he's great. It's not a chick song, when he sings it, just a song, and awesome. And yeah, everything is relative, and everybody else is sucking, but still, he does that thing I've been talking about. Randy and Paula give him unabashed praise, Simon hyperfocuses on the awful song, and Ryan hyperfocuses on A-Fed's bod.

Ready to meet Constantine's family? Let's. Are they totally creepy? Why, yes. Does all of this make more sense now? Absolutely. Was he cute once? Wicked hot, actually. Will he be great tonight? Not at all. Not at all. He'll be singing Nickelback's "How You Remind Me," and even he will not enjoy it. His staging, his vocals, his karate kicks, all are lazy. This song sucks, and he's making it worse by singing it. Does he have the flu? He makes the 2Cats sound again, even. It's like we're in a time machine. All the goodwill he's built up is gone. Gone! The hate is back. With disinterest. Randy points out the sucky voice; Paula allows as how the performance and song and vocals were for shit, but feels that that is really cool; and Simon calls it a "bad imitation," and yeah, that's what me and Randy think too.

Scott's home life is going to be depressing, I think. I have no idea what his parents are saying, just like I have no idea what he is saying. They thought he would end up a priest, which was dumb of them. He feels he represents people who "get up in the morning." Thanks? Then he insults Cleveland on a massive scale: "You'd see a million of me walking around." I want you to close your eyes for a second and imagine that, please. And then understand that Cleveland is not like that at all.

Scott looks very nice tonight, and he sings Luther Vandross's "Dance With My Father," which leads to a whole host of confusion, because his dad hates him, but there's also a stepfather, or he wants to dance with his beautiful child (the kid is gorgeous, y'all), or I don't know what. I don't care for this song, and his voice is better than it has been, but that makes the bad bits stick out more. I couldn't care less about this. Randy calls it his "weakest performance in weeks," Paula calls it unemotional, and Simon tells him to pack his suitcase. I don't want to jinx myself by offering him anything other than total support, but I will say that I had a feeling about Nadia, if you'll recall, and the same feeling about Anwar, and I was right, and that's the feeling I'm having now. Fingers crossed.

Wednesday

”Songs of the New Millenium” is a much better title for a stupid phony theme than “The Last Five Years,” even if it doesn’t improve the concept. Last night, Constantine did not give his all, while Bo gave us a heaping helping of nothing special. The judges loved Bo and hated Constantine, who additionally may have become a Sith or whatever. Carrie kind of sucked, Vonzell did half of a really great job, and A-Fed was weirdly compelling. Scott was bad and gave us feelings, but Simon jinxed it. That’s my story.

Group sing: “Emotions,” Carrie and Bo mostly taking the lead, except for a lovely and terribly off-key set of runs and ranging around that made me sure Vonzell would be going home. Also, Scott rubs our faces in our future with some bullshit fucked-up falsetto. Why can’t these kids sing with each other? What’s the problem? Then there’s the dorkiest but also best pimpomercial ever, with A-Fed Eurovisioning it up around a house in different costumes. It’s weird.

Tonight’s loser got 35 million votes in the season’s entirety. That’s a lot of dialing, y’all. Vonzell is our Number One Goat because even though she made Randy feel proud and Paula magical, Simon’s right. Similarly, Carrie is the obvious first Sheep, even though she made Randy feel “off” and made Paula feel: nothing. You know what I feel? Unsurprised by this whole paragraph. Bo was a “true rock star” and “incredible,” and A-Fed was “impressive and “did his best job yet,” and Simon opted out basically on both, and you know where they go. This is so non-suspenseful. …For now! Scott and Constantine are left on the couch for the break. Man. That’s like my least favorite couch ever. I want to beat it up!

Scott and Constantine get fake Huffed, and it’s radically revealing of stuff we already know: Constantine joins the Sheep, but is dorky and self-conscious about it, Scott lumbers over to the Sheep with his cosmic-sized entitlement in hand, and Vonzell and Anthony bust out, because this sucks for them hilariously. And because they are cool. Everybody in America laughs because Scott is stupid and deluded and they want to see his brains extruded. Carrie doesn’t know what the hell to do with her face, because she can’t be happy right now, but everybody’s laughing, so it’s confusing.

Ryan leads the group to make fun of Scott for being retarded and discarded, but it’s a fast one indeed that he is pulling, because Constantine’s mistaken, and is in reality a Goat. He gives the hair quite a workout as he makes his way over across, and his co-Goats continue to giggle about the rich pageantry of it all. Say what you like, but I can’t imagine either of them doing a pathetic stunt-bitch about this show later. You know? Eliminate them -- or even Carrie, in the world of make-believe -- and they’d be like, “What a fun time I have had in LA. I will bring home t-shirts for my family.” The end. None of this half-naked Jim Verraros makeover hissing and spitting.

Carrie now looks like somebody killed her dog and then dumped her and then burned her copy of Dirty Dancing, all on her birthday. She will look this way for the remainder: lost and confused and bummed and quiet and hurt. Randy doesn’t know why the hell this is happening, Ryan spells the word “wow” for us, and then Simon mentions something interesting: Scott’s getting 6-8 million votes a night, and that’s good enough to keep him in. This week, he did better than three other people, and that freaks me out. The top three all have fan bases that would vote insanely for them if they went up there and sang Pootie Tang’s smash hit single, “_____,” and I thought Constantine had that same fan base, but not so much. But like, Scott does, though. You know?

Vonzell’s safe, so it’s Constantine and A-Fed on the Seal. They both look freaked, and I’m sad, because I hate Constantine and little A-Fed, I don’t know why the hell he’s here, but I’m sad he’s clearly leaving. But then, you see, suddenly he’s not, and Constantine has been eliminated.

Everyone is freaked out. Like, Bo’s band is freaked out. Paula ages, seriously, eight years in the moment this occurs. She blabbers, and not the usual, but an honestly shocked and freaked out and hurt kind. He’s pretty gracious about it, as I expected. Although his Video Journey is a point-by-point mnemonic device for why this turn of events should be celebrated, I’m not…happy. I am not anything. I am shocked. It’s like whoa.

Paula’s in total meltdown, the Idols keep noticing the cameras catching their total freak out and trying to get it together, and then Ryan steps all over the beginning of the singout, because of how the song works. Carrie sings along with him like a little kid and it’s sad, and Scott is just openly laughing about his good fucking fortune. This song still sucks, but then we have a problem, because in the audience, Paula has climbed up on the table and is yelling encouragement and support at his mom, and the two do that thing with the foreheads touching and tears everywhere, and like, that’s his mom, you know?

It’s all very dramatic and you know what it’s like, it’s like when Kelly won, the first year, and it was mind-blowing and a large-scale occurrence and the glitter and the tickertape and the lights going crazy and everybody going crazy and you cried because some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this? Only this is the complete inverse. It’s not the fact that he’ll be gone, I’m fine with that. It’s the event of his leaving. History does not record my reaction to this event, dear reader. But it is not at all what I expected.