American Idol Reaction: Top 12 Results

There was a bright side to last week’s elimination episode… for me anyway. As I wasn’t thrilled with most of the eliminations, that eased some of the suspense of tonight’s first big-stage elimination. There are enough people who have underwhelmed me enough this season that seeing them go wouldn’t bother me all that much.

I’m really trying not to maintain the “meh” attitude toward Idol this season, and it doesn’t help that I’m finding myself disagreeing with the judges more and more each week, this year. Putting aside the awkward flirting between Kara and Simon, which is at least somewhat compensated by Ellen’s charming remarks, I’ve been finding myself wondering what they’re talking about. Take Siobhan’s performance of “Paint it Black” last night? Instead of commenting on how that gothy opening verse might’ve done well as a musical number in an Addams Family movie, they praised her for being amazing and if I’m not mistaken, she was told she was the best performance of the night. Seriously? I’m not saying it was bad but I couldn’t find myself mustering up the kind of enthusiasm the judges expressed toward her performance.

On the other side, I did agree with the judges that Crystal Bowersox’s performance of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” wasn’t her best performance but it was still miles better than most of the other contestants’. She’s a natural performer and being more polished than some of the other contestants definitely makes it easier to relax and enjoy watching her sing but more than that, she’s consistently great. Great singing, great arrangements, great song choices, etc. So far, only Mike Lynche seems to be bringing that level of talent to the stage. I know we’ll be seeing some improvements from some of the other contestants but most of them have a long way to go (or one amazing, breakthrough performance) to get to where those two are at this point.

Ok, enough commentary on last night and my struggle to love this season. Let’s talk about the results!

The bottom 3:

Paige Miles
Tim Urban
Lacey Brown


Tim Urban was sent back to the couches first, leaving Lacey and Paige to wait to learn their fate. That was disappointing off the bat as of the three, I really think Tim has shown the least potential for improvement thus far. Paige has had some strong performances. She just hasn’t been consistent enough. She’s someone who could really benefit from a breakthrough performance. As for Lacey, I have to agree with Doug’s comment in last night’s recap that I feel like she should be awesome but she’s just not. Maybe with some more experience she could be but I don’t think she measures up to what we’ve come to expect from Idol contestants (and she’s really not alone there).

In the end, it seems America also had a problem finding the awesome in Lacey, as she received the least amount of votes. The judges had the option to save her, which is something they’ll have to use (once) up until the top five conestants remain. Once they use it, that’s it, so it seemed unlikely that they would blow it on the first eliminated contestant. I’d like to think that if Paige were the one on the verge of elimination, they would have but it didn’t surprise me that they didn’t decide to save Lacey. She has natural talent but I think she just needs more time to work with it.

Filler included David Cook returning to the Idol stage to perform The Rolling Stone’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash. His voice is as strong as ever and based on what he told Ryan tonight, he’s working on a new album that he’s very excited about. We should also expect to see him on the American Idol charity special Idol Gives Back. Singer Orianthi also took the stage to rock the guitar and belt out her single “According to You.” And the final bit of filler was a performance by Ke$ha. See how she did that with the dollar sign for an “s”? That’s crazy right. Very internet-sheik. The performance had a Ga-Ga-esque quality to it as she clunked around on stage while people with TVs for heads danced behind her.

And that about covers it. Think the right person went home? Do you think Lacey could’ve earned her place on the big stage if given more time? Are you as blah as I am about this season or are you still holding out hope that it’s going to get better?