There wasn’t much surprise in this week’s Idol results. Ashthon was clearly the weakest contestant remaining, couldn’t make it to the top five of the girls the first time around, and had done nothing to help her cause. It was as straightforward a boot as you can have on Idol.

Even the bottom three wasn’t all that surprising. Karen Rodriguez hadn’t done much better than Ashthon the previous night. True, she’s been harping an awful lot on her heritage to try and pull in votes – but that’s as likely to turn off people as get them to vote for you. Unless Karen shows serious improvement next week she’s in deep trouble.

Haley was something of a surprise, as country singers have done well in the past and she wasn’t all that bad. The trouble is that she’s not really helping herself build a good fanbase. If she is a country singer, why do Alicia Keys last week? Having a much better country singer in Scotty McCreery isn’t helping, either. Either way, I could see her sneaking into the tour, but not much further than that.

One more note about this week: some observers have started to put Pia Toscano as this season’s frontrunner. Me, I’m not nearly as convinced. Yes, she’s got the best performances of any contestant this season. She’s also doesn’t have the your-mileage-may-vary issues that somebody like James Durbin or Scotty could have. There’s one big question over Pia, though: we haven’t seen her sing anything that isn’t a ballad. You can’t win if all you can do well are ballads; the best recent example of that type of singer is David Archuleta. If she’s not careful, Pia could go the route of the “shocking” boot who goes around the top 7 or so.

This is where I’d normally do a power ranking, but the truth be told is that it would be premature. There’s a clear top four – Pia, James, Scotty, and Casey. There’s a somewhat less clear bottom four – I’d put Karen, Paul and Naima in there no question, with the fourth slot a coin flip between Thia or Haley. The midcard, though, is very confused right now. The likes of Jacob or Lauren have the potential to do very well, but they’re just as likely to screw up terribly. Which way they go will determine whether this season will be enjoyable or be another test in masochism.

Coming off last week’s generally well regarded semifinals, expectations were high. With a top 13 this good, surely they would do well in the finals, right?

Well… not exactly. Those that we knew from last week were good mostly did well. Those that we knew were in trouble stayed in trouble. The rest, well, that’s where it got interesting. Some obvious flops, to be sure, but more than the usual number of true head-scratchers. To quote Dennis Green: these contestants are (mostly) who we thought they were.

Best of the night – and it wasn’t particularly close – Pia Toscano. You have to give Pia a lot of credit – as far as degree of difficulty is concerned, this was not easy. This is how you sing a “big” song and not get overwhelmed – you sing the living daylights out of it, don’t turn the performance into an exhibition of excessive vocal gymnastics, and leave it all out on the stage. Well done. (Now, whether singing ballads by itself will let you win… that’s another question entirely. Let’s look at that tomorrow.)

Whether you like Scotty McCreary really depends if you like his flavor of more traditional, crossover-free country music. It is definitely an acquired taste. If you do – and I include myself in that category – Scotty did very well. His smoky voice is perfect for the genre, and he definitely knows how to use it. Unfortunately, non-country music fans will not be won over by Scotty. Still, Scotty deserves a “well done” for his song. (Not that there’s room for improvement. Scotty could improve as a performer – he’s confident enough, but he needs some finesse with his movements.)

James Durbin had an interesting take on Paul McCartney. It worked out reasonably well – while last week was still better, this was a pretty decent effort by itself. Overall, you have to like the kind of consistency that he’s been able to show so far. It’s the sort of thing that’ll keep him around for quite a while.

The good about Casey Abrams: he knows how to pick his songs. He definitely leaves it all out every week. He can put together a good performance. Now, the bad: I just don’t think his voice is all that good. The emotions of the performance were great, but the vocals were at best, decent, and you can make a decent argument it was less singing and more shouting in some places. I have a hard time putting him in the same league as the top three above, who do have good (or, at least, distinctive) vocals and can make the most out of it. It’ll be interesting to see how Casey does in the next few weeks.

Those are the top four that I’d call, without any doubt, good. Next you have the mixed performances. They all brought something to the table… but removed something as well.

Jacob Lusk can really do the power runs well most of the time. The trouble is two-fold. When he’s not doing the power notes, he’s just decent. What’s worse is that Jacob doesn’t know his limits and can turn a power note into a shoutfest. That’s sort of what happened with I Believe I Can Fly – most of it was good, but there were far too many parts that sounded like he was shouting and not singing. There was also a very extended note in the middle that sounded just out and out gratuitous. Jacob needs to find a second dimension to his singing aside from the glory noting, or else he could go home soon.

I honestly don’t know why Any Man of Mine didn’t work better for Lauren Alaina. It suited her perfectly; her vocals were good; her performance was more than reasonable. Somehow, though, this fell embarrassingly flat on its face. A “kick-ass” performance needs two to tango; the crowd more or less sat on its hands and threw poor Lauren off. It was just okay, but could have been so much better.

Haley Reinhart was not really helped by her song choice. Blue may have sounded a little boring to Randy, but some of that has to be blamed on the song. It’s not the most impressive song for something like Idol. If Haley really wanted to do LeAnn Rimes, I’d have done something like I Need You or How Do I Live. The artist choice was right, but not the song choice. I can’t fault the vocals at all – the yodel was interesting, and didn’t feel out of place – but it was really a salvage job from the onset.

Along those lines… what was that arrangement that Stefano Langome did? I’m all for “making a song your own”, but there’s a risk involved. That risk didn’t pay off for Stefano. You have to be able to sing your own version well enough to make people forget about the original. That rule is particularly applicable for situations where you change up a song to something so different, like Stefano did. Unfortunately, he fell short. The vocals were middling, and we were left wondering “what was that?”

Naima Adedapo was sort of in the same place. I sort of get what she was trying to do, but it just didn’t work. Why? She’s not a good enough singer to pull off what she tried to do. In a studio environment this might have worked, but Idol is not a studio competition. (Of course, the original is overproduced to death as well, but that’s neither here or there.)

And then, of course we had the disasters and trainwrecks. Best of the worst would be… Thia Megia. The singing wasn’t that awful, but it was amazingly mediocre. The trouble is, however, Thia just couldn’t do the emotions of the song. At all. It was an amazingly sterile, dull, boring performance.

If somebody can figure out what Paul McDonald was doing, please send us an e-mail. The arrangement was bizarre. The singing was awful, with no power or range. Paul was hopping around the stage like somebody had overdosed him on sugar. Again: what was he up to?

If Pia showed us all how to deliver a big song, Karen Rodriguez delivered a clinic in how not to. The song just ate her alive and made her look puny. The vocals were flat and rangeless. There was no heart or feeling in the performance. There was very, very, little redeeming in that song. At all.

Worst of the worst, though… Ashthon Jones. Take everything that we said about Karen and take it to the next degree. At least Karen’s singing was just mediocre. Ashthon’s, if that was possible, was even worse. We gave up Kendra Chantelle for this? Really?

Overall, it was a decent episode, if a slightly odd one. Yes, the talent is there, more than it has been in previous seasons – but we’re seeing a lot of these unforced errors that can sink promising contestants. Hopefully the finalists figure out where they went wrong this week and learn and improve.

The pick: Oh boy. The only really safe contestants are the four good performances. Anyone in the middle or bottom groups could have a decent shot at going home.

The pick to go home, however, is Ashthon Jones. Her performance of Diana Ross was wretched, the other trainwrecks like Thia and Karen have more solid voting bases, and she couldn’t even crack the top 5 of the girls the first time around. Nothing since then has made me think things have gotten any better.

The pick: Ashthon Jones to go home.

Results shows are always a mix of highs and lows, but the results for this week were even more a mix than usual. We can only take the good with the bad, but there was an awful lot of both, to be honest.

The good: I hate to make evaluations based on just one (or two) songs from each contestant, but with that caveat in mind this really is a very impressive group. If the worst in a top 12 are the likes of Asthon Jones or Stefano Langone, you’re well ahead of the curve. If Haley Reinhart is your season’s counterpart of Haley Scarnato (looks better than she can sing), you’re well ahead of the curve.

Another high: the wildcard round. They all sang much better than they did earlier, and picking the best to save there really was quite hard. The contestants deserve a lot of credit for how well they improved.

However, for all that, there were still two major lows on the night. First was a robbery of omission: no Lauren Turner in the wildcard? Really? I simply can’t understand why. Seeing her in that group of eliminated girls was just plain… wrong. I’d rather have had her in the wildcard than either Naima or Ashthon, neither of which I’m convinced has any good long-term potential on the show. They’re still cannon fodder.

Of course, that subtle crime was followed by a major one: Kendra Chantelle was out-and-out robbed. There’s no other word for it. She’d already sung well enough the night before, if a little “cold”. But she improved dramatically on the wildcard round, with a pretty good version of her song. Yet somehow it wasn’t good enough against two generic divas. Ashthon is a cookie-cutter R&B diva (who’s not even that good), while Naima is personally more colorful, I don’t think she’s got any long term future either. This was an Idol robbery in the first degree. The conspiracy-minded will note that Naima has received quite a good amount of pimping up to now. By contrast, Kendra’s exposure was minimal. Hmmm…. the conspiracy theorists may well be onto something.

Whatever the case, though, this is the most optimistic we’ve been in a while going into the finals. (Given how the Idol gods behave, though, I fully expect the top 13 episode to be a disaster.)

Isn’t there a Hollywood adage that the sequel is never as good as the original? Considering how good the guys were the night before, the girls had some big shoes to fill. How did they do?

In keeping with the “kinder, gentler” tone of the new Idol season I feel I have to say something good about Ta-Tynisa Wilson. It was a nice, energetic performance. That, however, is about as far as I can go. The vocals were off, the song choice was… unimpressive, and for some with no pre-semis publicity this was not a good introduction.

Naima Adedapo made one of the biggest mistakes when it comes to picking songs: never do a previous champ’s trademark song. Summertime definitely falls into that category. So… why did Naima do it? It definitely didn’t help her cause. As for the song itself, it’s not that it was poorly done, but it was… odd. It just didn’t come together well.

Kendra Chantelle really has a lot of the tools you need to do well on Idol. Pretty good voice, looks good, appears to know how to pick songs and “make it her own”. The only problem is… she doesn’t sound committed. This is something I’ve talked about before – the notes can be in all the right places, and Kendra’s were, but the emotional connection just wasn’t there. Good effort, but clearly a lot of work to be done.

This is a cheap joke to make, but… Rachel Zevita was criminally awful. Bad song choice, bad vocals… this just made no sense. At all. Like Ta-Tynisa: is this really how Rachel wanted to introduce herself to voters? Really?

I was hoping that we’d make it through at least one week without a pageant-y Mariah song. Unfortunately, Karen Rodriguez denied us that this week with… one of the most uninteresting versions of Hero I’ve ever heard. Maybe it’s because I can’t speak Spanish, but I found all the language switches disconcerting, but they weren’t enough to distract from some remarkably middling vocals. The song was just too big for Karen.

Lauren Turner turned in a legitimately good performance. The word, however, is good – not great. The vocals were good, but not great. The performance – J-Lo was right; she was a tad too reserved. Still, there’s a good foundation to build on for future weeks here. Well done.

Ashthon Jones will be remembered for one thing. Unfortunately, it’s not her singing. Have there ever been any more distracting hand movements on Idol ever? More seriously, though, this was a very middling performance. The vocals were nothing to write home about – not good or bad. Also, for someone with the kind of personality that Ashthon has, why did the performance feel curiously antiseptic? Mediocre is the word here.

Doing the songs of Idol winners has a lousy track record on Idol. Let me put it this way, on behalf of the entire Idolsphere. We know Kelly Clarkson – and Julie Zorrilla, you are no Kelly Clarkson. This was terrible start to finish.

First, the good when it comes to Haley Reinhart. She looks fantastic. The camera – and the wardrobe department – loves her. The bad? Well… that version of Fallin’ was nothing more than karaoke. Well done karaoke, but nothing more. This was not the ideal way to advance to the finals.

It’s awfully hard to say anything bad about Thia Megia. She was that good. Certainly, it’s the type of performance you just don’t expect this early. Now, if there is one downside, it’s the fact that the whole song was saying “precocious teen” front and center. You have to wonder if that’s sustainable. For now, though, very well done Thia.

Lauren Alaina may well be the most pimped contestant of the season. Does she deserve all of it? Most of it… but not all. Yes, she’s a good rock chick. But we already know, courtesy of Alison Iraheta, that you can have a good rock chick at this age. The vocals were good, but it’s not as if she was singing a hard song. This was relatively easy. Now, she does have impeccable command of the stage, but I don’t think her singing abilities are all that proven yet. And calling her a cross of Kelly and Carrie? That may be a bit premature.

Doing I’ll Stand By You should have been a problem for Pia Toscano. After all, it’s had very good performances on the Idol stage before – both in competition (Gina Glocksen) and out of it (Carrie Underwood). However… Pia did very, very well. To do this song well, you need to be able to convey emotion more than anything else. Having the vocals Pia has doesn’t hurt either. Best of the night.

Overall, this was a good show – another one that would have been perfectly respectable in the finals. However, it was just that bit worse than the guys – largely because the girls’s failures tended to be worse than the guys. Still, for one, saying that this group of contestants is “the best ever” may, for once, actually be right.

So who’s the pick to advance? Like the guys, I have four people who’ll advance strictly based on performance alone. Pia, Thia, and the two Laurens. After that, my fifth pick is… Haley. The camera loves her, she’s got some early publicity, and it’s not like she was bad.

The pick: Pia Toscano, Thia Magia, Lauren Turner, Lauren Alaina, and Haley Reinhart to advance.