What appears to be six thousand people stand at the center of the Idol stage, awaiting the first four eliminations. Okay, so I'm told it's substantially fewer than six thousand, but I don't quite buy it. There are at least fifty of that Amy Krebs girl anyway. Ryan's dressed like an undertaker tonight, which is what I recall him dressing like quite a bit last season. Dude, they're not dying. Well, okay, Alaina might actually die if she's eliminated, but the rest of them? Unlikely. Ryan tells us "our" votes were the deciding factor, but "Were [we] influenced by our judges?" Well...probably. Though I remain unsold on the whole Lakisha thing. Randy tonight is wearing a blue shirt, of the color of which I greatly approve.

Ryan gets right down to the hammered-home truth of the week, that the guys were majorly shown up by the girls. He asks Randy if he thinks there's still a chance that a guy can win this season. Which is so weird, because before semifinals began, I thought the general crop of guys was so much stronger than the girls. Of course, I didn't count on the fact that Stephanie and Sabrina were stealth awesome, for one thing. I do still think a guy could win, even though Randy disagrees with me. He says the flak the guys took was justified and that it's "a girl's race to lose." Simon says right now he sees about three guys with "potential." Huh. Blake, Brandon, and Phil? Probably, since he's not letting Sligh off the hook so easily and he can see Richardson's vocal limitations. Paula's asked for her advice, and she gets glassy-eyed for a minute before slurring, "Bring it! The only way you can go is [points up]." Oh, Paula, you were doing so well. The other three react like, "Um, not," and move on.

Next, Ryan announces the guest mentors/performers/theme generators the show has lined up for this season. They are as follows: Diana Ross (awesome! You couldn't find a crazier person to unleash on these kids), Jon Bon Jovi (who is, like, halfway towards franchising a fleet of look-alike Jon Bon Jovis who he can dispatch to mall-openings and morning talk shows around the country), Jennifer Lopez (WOO! I maintain an odd affinity for J-Lo, for reasons I can't recall, and even though she did just show up at the Oscars in what I can only describe as Greek goddess drag, her drag-king husband in tow), Gwen Stefani (who's been slipping, so I hope she's really cool in person), Tony Bennett (looking strangely Elliott-like in his photo), Martina McBride (two seasons too late and, hello, no country singers this year!), a couple Ryan describes as "'60s legends Lulu and Peter Noone" (yeah, yeah, "Herman's Hermits," don't email me), and finally Barry Gibb (who is such an obvious choice for this show, it's scary). You figure from that group, Diana Ross and Barry Gibb could have theme weeks devoted to their own music, Martina will do country night, Tony will do...whatever, crooner's night, Gwen and/or J-Lo will cover actual recent music and/or dance music, and Herman's Hermits will do whatever the hell involving Britain and the 1960s. Those of you waiting for Bjork to show up for Icelandic Electronic Ambient Pop week will have to wait another year. Also: no Sir Paul McCartney? No Mariah? After weeks and weeks of speculation and wink-wink "can't say for sure" statements from the producers? That's depressing. Though if they can somehow finagle Mariah to horn in on Diana Ross week, I may not be able to handle it and would probably revert to poisoning Jacob so I could recap it.