SWING AND A PRAYER The Top 5 endured two group performances, but at least they got to wear nifty tuxes.
PUT YOUR DREAMS AWAY Michael Lynche and Aaron Kelly await the sting of Ryan Seacrest's axe.
GAGA OH LA LA Lady Gaga brought her standard-operating raciness/wackiness to the Idol stage.
With just three weeks and six episodes remaining, American Idol's ninth season is sputtering to its conclusion like a wind-up toy running out of juice. Is there any way to inject some electricity back into this machine? Let's turn to our panel of experts!
Harry Connick Jr.? Nope, domestic violence jokes and vaguely creepy tales of elevator encounters with Frank Sinatra aren't gonna cut it.
Randy Jackson? Dude, I'm sorry, but wearing a fluorescent orange V-neck isn't the answer, either.
Ken Warwick? You got anything? Nah, we weren't looking for gratuitous butt shots of Casey James or a double dose of group performances, for that matter.
Crystal Bowersox in fetching man-drag? Better � but not enough to hang a season on.
All right, Seacrest, let's just get on with it. Go ahead and dim the lights and tell us the name of the person whose Idol ''journey'' is coming to an end...
Yes folks, let's put our hands together (though not raised above our heads like a Swaybot) and bid adieu to The Artist Frequently Introduced as ''High School Student Aaron Kelly,'' a polite kid who rode his cuddly teen charm, his country-twang appeal, and a single usage of the ''I'm Dedicating This to My Mom'' card (turned in during Shania Twain Week) all the way to a surprising fifth-place finish. Yeah, okay, so conventional wisdom would've had us believe Aaron's ho-hum ''Fly Me to the Moon'' on Tuesday night was enough to crack the top four, given how Casey James' goat-bleat ''Blue Skies'' was a performance only his adorably enthusiastic but always classy mother could defend. But think about it this way: Aaron made it remarkably far into the season � chugging along through 10 consecutive results-show telecasts � without once looking like a legitimate threat to take a confetti shower at the Nokia.
Didi Benami had ''Rhiannon'' and ''Play With Fire.'' Siobhan Magnus had ''Paint It Black'' and ''House of the Rising Sun.'' Casey, bless his volumizing mousse and wicked inconsistency, has at least managed to have a couple Idol Moments (TM) in ''Jealous Guy'' and ''Don't.'' But Aaron was a singer who spent his Idol run at the intersection of Too Young and Just Ai'ight � solid but certainly not devastating takes on ''Angie,'' ''I Don't Want to Miss a Thing,'' and ''You've Got a Way'' as his legacy � and thus, as Ol' Blue Eyes might've phrased it, he faced the final curtain.
Unfortunately for Aaron, his sing-out occurred while mentor Harry Connick Jr. was on stage with the band, which limited his choice of songs to ''Fly Me to the Moon'' and, well, not really anything else. (You'd have to think the kid would've given an encore of his Shania Twain Week cover, had he really had the option.) That said, my ice-cold heart defrosted at microwave speed when Aaron's mom tearfully declared ''God didn't give you that gift to sing in the shower.''
To keep that ''awww, how bittersweet" vibe in tact, let's just skip Ryan's very random question to Aaron (''How old do you think you are now?''), which seemed to propose the theory that enduring a painful reality-show elimination automatically results in a five-year flash-forward. At least that would explain Ryan's declaration to the kid that ''you truly are an inspiration.'' Alrighty then!
[Quick and shameless brag: While I�ve been wrong predicting the weekly ouster almost every week this season, on Sinatra Night, I was the only member of the L.A. Times Idol Buzzmeter panel to correctly predict Aaron's eviction. Oh shnapzzz!]
If anything constituted a surprise for me, it was the fact that Casey avoided the bottom two altogether � at the expense of Ol' Ham Sandwich (AKA Big Mike) himself. Honestly, when one judge compares your singing voice to a lamb, and another suggests you'll be playing gigs for $50 and a free meal, you've got to consider yourself pretty lucky (or pretty sympathetic) to avoid a flirtation with disaster. (I liked, though, how Casey enthusiastically declared ''thank you, thank you'' to Kara when Ryan reiterated her barnyard-comparison critique.)
But my apologies, Idoloonies, because I'm even managing to bore myself with all this talk of Aaron and Casey and Big Mike. Let's cut to some important factoids from the telecast: It's Cinco de Mayo! Lee refused to choose which duo (Casey/Crystal or Michael/Aaron) was safe! Over 32 million Idol votes were cast on Tuesday! (Um, does that last sentence really deserve an exclamation point?)
We also got a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage that was far too generic to be interesting. The contestants all explained how dramatically their Tuesday nights have changed since advancing to the Top 24, which seemed like an excuse to show us adorable contestant babehs, a motley band of judges' stand-ins, and Wee Aaron waking up in a wife-beater. (Insert uncomfortable pause here.) Oh, and yeah, we got a shot of Casey's backside going up a flight of stairs. Just wondering: Would the show's producers have made the same choice if the footage involved Katie Stevens or Siobhan Magnus?
We also got an awful lot of Harry Connick Jr. First there was a ''wacky'' rehearsal reel of him yelling at HSSAK, joking about Crystal's insulin pump and birdtail earring, and insisting Big Mike dial back on mentions of his baby. Then we got a rambling interview with Ryan during which Harry exclaimed he doesn't hit his wife (nice to know!), then shared a story of Sinatra kissing his wife on an elevator on the occasion of his 75th birthday. This prompted Ryan, never really the smoothest with nuance and/or human relations, to squeal: ''He's still with his wife!''
And finally, we had the further front-runner-ization of Lee DeWyze. Simon, sounding like Tyra Banks trying to create a contestant story arc, babbled about Lee's ''That's Life'' cover representing the first time the Chicago rocker started believing in himself. (Cue Siobhan Magnus, covered in butterflies, singing an inspirational Whitney/Mariah ballad.) Rated HP...for Honey, Please. Lee, for his part, spent 23 minutes of the one-hour telecast telling us a) he believes he can fly; b) he's his own toughest critic; and c) he looks good in an undone bowtie. Also ''I coulda done better'' and ''I drive myself'' and OH MY GOD SOMEONE GET THE PAINT SALESMAN SOME MEDIA TRAINING.
And now, let's grade the evening's performances:
Ford Music ''Video'' Is it a Lee/Crystal romance? Or a Casey/Crystal romance? Or a Lee/Ford romance? (If he wants to win Idol, he'd better be convincing when he makes puppy eyes at the vehicle, yo!) And why do Michael and Aaron barely have anything to do? Not the worst of the product-shilling segments, but considering I'd have to check my notes to remember what the kids were singing, certainly not the best. C
The Season 9 Top 5: Sinatra medley Wait a sec. Are they lipsynching as usual? Or do I detect some singing-like activitaaaay from Crystal, and maybe Aaron? Or maybe it's just one of those backing track thingies Ashley Simpson is so fond of using. I'm confused about so many things here, especially the wretched arrangement of ''Night and Day,'' a track I thought it was impossible not to enjoy. And yet...here I sit loathing it. Crystal looking extra hot in a tuxedo upgrades this one tick. C-
The Season 9 Top 5: Connick medley If this were The Vampire Diaries and the top 5 were all blood-suckers, they'd have consumed even the marrow of ''We Are in Love'' and ''Hear Me in the Harmony.'' That's my way of saying the kids are sucking the life out of these ditties. And while at least they're cutting back on the strained choreography, I'm dismayed by the fact that I can no longer tell the difference between live performance and pre-recorded vocals. Either Aaron, Casey, and Lee are more in tune than usual, or these kids have really raised their lip-synch games. D+
Lady Gaga and a Pack of Writhing Manflesh: ''Alejandro'' Next stop: The Dante's Inferno Gym, where male dancers in high-waisted undies frolic and aerobicize for your viewing pleasure. Gaga, meanwhile, a tortured forest landscape atop her piano, a giant ballon-ish tree in the foreround, wrapped herself in a head-to-toe fishnet stocking and gives us a spectacle-over-vocal kind of performance. Has she been better than this? Sure. Am I still totally entertained? You betcha. B+
Harry Connick Jr.: ''And I Love Her'' What's with all modern-day crooners needing to sound a little tipsaaaay when they're waxing romantic? This is kinda sexy-sleepy with a couple moments of pitchy. Also: Why is Harry snarling? I assume it's because someone activated the Swaybots? In that case, he gets a slight uptick, too. B+
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