The American Idolater

Well, tonight we learned that

1. Simon Cowell likes puppies.
2. Chris Sligh and Nick Pedro have hot girlfriends/wives
3. Antonella Barba seems to be still around, sitting there looking confused and not kicked off of the show for her pictures.

Oh, and the guys definitely improved a whole lot over last week. Thank god, I don’t know if I would have been able to sit through a repeat of last week.

Phil Stacy: Well, actually, I don’t think Phil improved. He was good last week, and not quite as good this week. Pretty much right in the average range tonight.

Jared Cotter: Huge improvement over last week (when he sucked) although there were still some moments of sucking tonight. Paula might have a new contestant to put the moves on. Is it just me, or was “Let’s Get It On” a really weird song to dedicate to his parents? Anyway, good performance, great compared to what he did last week.

A. J. Tabaldo: He’s also improved a lot over last week. Not a perfect performance, but definitely a strong one.

Sanjaya Malakar: Oh, poor kid. He looked all dressed up to do Michael Jackson, but then bored the crap out of everyone watching — the audience, the other contestants, the judges, America, remote villagers in Africa who have never even heard of American Idol, etc. I don’t think he’ll be sticking around much longer.

Chris Sligh: Another good one from him. He seems pretty consistent so far. Nothing that’s really blowing me away, but definitely in the top 2 or 3 every week.

Nick Pedro: Eh. Kind of boring. And you did your “vote for Pedro” shtick last week already, it’s just going to get annoying if you try to do that every week.

Blake Lewis: My favorite of the night. This was one of the few times that the beatbox/scatting/vocal turntablism (by the way, vocal entendre? wtf?) seemed like it would work for him in the show, and it did. I remember thinking during his performance that he reminded me a lot of Jason Mraz.

Brandon Rogers: Yeah, the grandmother thing was sweet and all, but he totally bored me. Simon was right, you can’t just feel it inside you and then not wow the audience. If he had gotten some more emotion into it, it might have worked, but as it was it was the most boring performance of the night. Or at least he gave Sanjaya a run for that title.

Chris Richardson: After Blake sounding like Jason Mraz, here we have Chris R. actually doing a Jason Mraz song. I disagree with Randy that it was better than the original. Actually, I disagree with all of the judges that this was something amazing. I thought it was good, and better than what he did last week, but definitely not as good as, say, what Blake did tonight.

Sundance Head: I liked him better already early in the show when he said that his friends urged him to be less crappy. Good idea, and saying that on national television earned him some points. Then he did Mustang Sally, which was the best I’ve heard him since his audition, thought that’s not saying a whole lot. It wasn’t nearly as good as the judges were making it out to be, but it was solid. Of course, it’s Mustang Sally. It’s a hard song to screw up, and I’ve heard so many better versions of it than his over the years.

I really liked the judges tonight for the most part, they all seemed happy and cheerful and there was much less bickering than last week. That makes for a much happier television viewing experience.