Idol Chatter: Elimination Rounds

Express' Greg Barber recaps results night times two on "American Idol."

IT'S DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE, double your fun and double your drama on "American Idol" this week. As this twin elimination round begins, the tension is high and so are the stakes.

The contestants who make it through this evening will become the show's top five, and will continue the perilous battle up to the season finale. Those who don't will have some time to stew in their own juices until the "Idol" tour begins this summer.

Twin offings aren't unusual in the early rounds, but to see a set of contestants leave at once this late in the game — when we know them as well as we do this year's crowd — will be very strange. Luckily, we have 58 minutes of commercials and filler to dull the pain.

DANCE LIKE THERE'S NO TOMORROW
And to start us off, we have an unprecedented "Idol" moment — Paula actually does something useful!

She apparently choreographed this week's group performance. And she's apparently as intense in the dance studio as she is incoherent at the judges' table.

"I think she's going for blood," Lil says.

And who's the dude in the white shirt with the beard who joins the Idolites in their cheer at the end of Paula's session? Is there a secret eighth contestant we don't know about? An understudy who'll step in if Danny Gokey stubs his toe or something?

When we return live, Paula's handiwork is unveiled. And the dancing actually isn't bad — I mean, it's surely better than the awkward middle-school-musical bunk we're usually forced to sit through. These kids aren't dancers, and Paula whipped 'em pretty well into shape.

However, last I checked, this is a SINGING COMPETITION. Ahem. And the singing was, of course, pre-recorded. It wasn't even all that good — Matt sounded downright awful in places, actually. The Idolites' lip synching hasn't improved with time, either.

And the outfits. It's like the contestants were all forced to wear clothes from Studio 54's lost and found. After they'd been dipped in a big vat of awful.

What could "Idol" possibly do for an encore? Show us the Ford entertainmercial, of course!

The song: "I'm Good, I'm Gone" by Lykke Li. The plot: The Idolites are cruisin' in their Ford when they decide they ought to go get jobs. And unlike most places in America, they appear to be someplace where work is plentiful!

Anoop Desai and Allison Iraheta become bakers, with hilarious results! Kris Allen, Matt and Danny are construction workers — who can't build a wall, those silly gooses. Geese. Gooses. Lil. Little. And Lil Rounds and Adam Lambert try dog grooming, but the dog runs away!

In the end, they all congregate in front of a restaurant with an open mic night. It's a job that doesn't pay money, but hey, at least they don't suck at it!

So, really, the whole thing just made no sense.

THE FINAL ROUNDS
When we return live, Seacrest gets the lights to dim and launches quickly into eliminations. Lil is the first to stand. She was smacked around by the judges and has been bottom three fodder in recent weeks -- she's widely expected to be eliminated.

And she is. Right away. Like, with no fanfare or headgames or anything. I feel somehow cheated. But Lil doesn't seem surprised in the slightest.

She reprises her performance of Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman" with passion and just a little wistfulness. I'd like to say it's a shame to see her go, but I think she did as well as she could and lasted as long as her talent would prop her up — perhaps even longer. It was her time. And she bows out with style.

"What a classy way to go, singing on top of your game," Paula says.

"This is just the beginning, baby," Randy says.

SLIPPING A DISCO
It's disco week, so, of course, there must be a disco medley — it's what all the 18 to 35-year-olds are shouting for, since disco happened when the oldest of us were playing with Speak & Spells.

Starting off our jaunt back to a groovier time is Freda Payne, who uses her newish plasticine face to sing her nearly 40-year-old hit "Band of Gold." And hyperventilates a little. The song, with which I'm not familiar, appears to be an endless spiral of lyrics breathlessly sung lyrics breathlessly sung lyrics breathlessly sung — huh? Sorry. Got lost for a second there.

It's perhaps the longest two minutes we've experienced on "Idol" in quite a while.

Thelma Houston, on the other hand, sounds great as she sings her 1977 hit "Don't Leave Me This Way." Her dress, however, is cut too short for a woman of her any age. She spends the entire performance one stray gust of wind away from a wardrobe malfunction that'd make Janet Jackson blush. Luckily, her performance passes without incident. Although after I finish writing this recap, I might need to go boil my eyes for a little bit.

Holy crap. When did KC of KC and the Sunshine Band become Tony Soprano? I wanted to enjoy his performance of "Get Down Tonight" — a hit from way back in 1975, cats and kittens — but I'm too busy worrying he's gonna cap my ass.

So it's an entire break filled with grandparents singing about getting down. Sometimes, it's a mystery that this show gets any ratings at all.

RESULTS, PART DEUX
When we return to the couches, Kris is told to stand first. His performance was roundly praised, and his safeness is no surprise. Also not a shock: Adam's safe, too.

Danny — beloved, relentlessly praised Danny — is up next. This is the first night, perhaps, that Danny is even close to being in jeopardy. But he, too, is safe. And thus the untouchable three remain untouchable.

Anoop is quickly spirited to the bottom three. Allison and Matt are last up. Allison is made to babble about why she changed up the arrangement of "Hot Stuff," her song this week, while Matt is asked whether he made the most of the judges' clemency last week. "I had a great time and I hope it works out," he says.

It did. He's safe. Allison is in the bottom three. Which, because Lil has already been axed, is down to two.

Yikes. It'd be a real shame for Allison to go. Not so much with Anoop. Heady stuff.

THE LI'L PRINCE
Ah, but who can be blue when bouncing baby season seven runner-up Li'l David Archuleta is around to turn our collective frown upside down. He's a little pint-sized cocktail of aw-shucks charm and hoodie-bedecked cute-as-a-buttonness. Too bad the tweens who make up a vocal portion of his audience are too young for cocktails. (Note that I said "a vocal portion" and not "the entirety," angry forty-something who's preparing to fire off a heated comment.)

He sings "Touch My Hand" from his self-titled album. And for the first half of the song, he sounds waaaaay off his game. Maybe it's the strain of touring? Or perhaps he's been gargling with razor blades again?

His voice always has a frogginess to it — that's a part of his sound that's very familiar to those of us who watched "Idol" last season — but tonight that guttural quirkiness seems amplified to an almost painful degree.

He begins to recover by the middle of the song, and near the end, he sounds like the Li'l David we all know and that some folks love a little more than most people would consider normal. (Maybe they live in Archie bunkers. Ha! Sorry.)

Seacrest asks him for some words of wisdom for Anoop and Allison, who stand in the valley of the shadow of elimination. Quoth Li'l D:

You know what, I just want to say to you guys — you know, you both have awesome voices by the way. But, um, it's just — there's so many opportunities even after this, it's amazing just to see where you can go after this. I mean, this show gives you so many opportunities. And, um, just know that it's not over even after this. And, um, I've been having such a great time. I mean, there are a lot of people who haven't — you know, they didn't have to go all the way to really live their dream.

"After this" count: 3
"Opportunities" count: 2

"Well said," Seacrest says. Indeed.

DAWG POUNDED
After a commercial break, the light brightness of David Archuleta is gone and all that remain are Anoop, Allison, Seacrest and destiny. (That almost sounds like something Seacrest would say, doesn't it?)

The person eliminated: Anoop.

*Whew*

He gives his final performance, another swing at "Dim All the Lights" that sounds slightly more trite the second time around. We get another look at both Anoop and Lil's "Idol" journeys. And then, they're gone.

As has been the theme so far this season, the results seem to make sense. Both Lil and Anoop came into the show as stars — they'd been hyped in the early episodes and wowed 'em in Hollywood Week. But then, neither of them seemed to progress past that.

While folks like Adam, Kris and Allison evolved their sound, Lil and Anoop seemed stunted in their musical growth. Despite a blockbuster voice, Anoop's R&B sound hasn't matured past adolescence. And Lil's scattershot approach to her soulful repertoire left the judges scratching their heads at first — and then they just started lashing out at her in frustration every week. She must be happy that her weeks as Simon's human pinata are over.

I'm not sure what the future might hold for them. As it stands, neither would seem to have the kind of musical chops one needs to succeed as a solo artist. But who knows what time, distance, a tour and access to producers, writers and other musicians will bring.

We viewers, however, are left with a contestant slate nearly devoid of fat to trim — from here, we start cutting into bone. Matt would appear to be an obvious target for next week, although Allison has actually had more trips to the stools of doom than he has. Most interesting next week will be seeing which of the untouchables — Adam, Kris and Danny — will sink for the first time into the bottom three, since one of them must.

The endgame, my friends, has begun.

» NEXT WEEK: The final five face worsening odds as they sing the songs of The Rat Pack. I'll have a preview in your Express print editions on Tuesday, then recaps on Wednesday and Thursday mornings here at ExpressNightOut.com/idol.

Between then and now, boy do we have a lot to talk about. Anoop's gone. Lil's gone. And Matt, snapped from the jaws of unemployment, wasn't even in the bottom three. Do you think the voters got it right this week? And who's in the most danger next week? Could Allison be on the chopping block? Don't hold back — give your take in the comments section below.

Photos courtesy Fox

Posted By Greg Barber at 12:00 AM on April 23, 2009 Tagged in Arts & Events , Idol Chatter , Television

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