It’s taken a very long time, but finally it seems like this season has really begun. We saw people actually going out of their comfort zones, taking risks, and looking like they actually want to win this season. It looks like weeks of unrelenting fire from the Idolsphere has whipped this season into shape.

First, the duets: I’m generally a fan of contestants using the duet to cut back, have some fun, play to the crowd, and ham it up. Jokes about Casey and Haley choosing, of all songs, I Feel The Earth Move – I could make so many bad jokes about it – but I won’t. It was the most fun performance to watch, they both sang pretty well (Haley was better than Casey), and clearly (and unsurprisingly) had tons of chemistry together. The two remaining acts were basically polar opposites – Lauren/Scotty had the better vocals, but the chemistry wasn’t there and everything felt awkward and boring. Jacob and James – perhaps the Oddest Couple in Idol history – sang about as well as two drunks in a karaoke bar, but it was fun.

Alright, the solos. Worst to best. Jacob was, the worst of the night. (And I’m not just talking about the outfit.) It’s not that it was a bad performance, but it wasn’t too dissimilar from what he’d done before. The vocals were good, but more or less in line with what we’ve seen from Jacob before. It was an okay performance, but forgettable. It was just there, with no real high or low points. Most nights, this would have been good enough – but not tonight. And no one will forget the suit Jacob wore – which has to be one of the ugliest outfits in the history of television. Mirrors must not exist in the Idol mansion.

I’m normally all in favor of risk-taking, but I’m honest to point out when it doesn’t work. Lauren’s choice of Where You Lead, I Will Follow was… not a particularly good one. Or it might have worked, but it needed a more aggressive, upbeat arrangement. I’m still not a fan of this suddenly timid and restrained Lauren, but I can see that she took some risk with the song choice. Again, like Jacob, it’s not that she sang it poorly, it’s just that there was no special appeal to it.

Casey was entertaining, but not particularly good with Hi-De-Ho. He went back to his roots, figured out what he was really about, and amped everything up to 11. Is it going to win him any new fans? No, but people like me who like The Growl (at least in limited doses) will like it. There was nothing subtle or particularly refined about it; Casey basically manhandled that song into submission. Was it a vocal masterpiece? No, but it had the merit of being entertaining as heck, even if Casey was being an unbelievably Large Ham on the Idol stage. You could do a heck of a lot worse.

From here on, though, I think things got much better. Last week’s barrage of criticism had a lot of effect on Scotty; you’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger one-week change from one week to the next. This was a good song choice: it was well within his capabilities, and for his fangirls it was gold. That said, Scotty did very well: it was a side of him we hadn’t really seen before, he sang very well, and proved that he’s not just a one-trick pony. I think it was, by far, his best performance to date. Most nights, it would have been the best. But it wasn’t.

Haley has to sing lights outs just to stay in, and he did that once again. Haley may be making the best song choices out of anyone this season (though I suspect Casey’s helping out quite a bit). She’s really figured out her strength and is good at finding these songs where she can use her unique vocals to the best advantage. Very polished, very professional, and frankly that live performance wouldn’t have been out of place on the radio. It’s rare to see someone get better so drastically over the span of a season.

Still, everyone had to take a backseat to James. Finally, we got that one special moment we’ve been looking for. It wasn’t just the best song of the night; it was the best performance of the entire season. Good song choice, great vocals, it felt emotionally connected… this was a top-notch Idol performance, period. The a capella was good (though I wish there was more of it), the rock part was good, James got to show off a bit… well done overall. Well done.

By a healthy margin, this was the best episode we’ve had since the beginning of the season.

The pick: The two people in the most danger are Casey and Jacob. Jacob didn’t improve much this week, and while Casey may have pleased his fanbase it may have alienated other voters. Don’t forget that the strength of Casey’s fanbase is still suspect – he had to be saved by the judges, after all. Haley doesn’t deserve to be in this discussion, but given her frequent bottom three stays she will be.

My pick to depart is Jacob. He was the worst of the night, has struggled of late, and has been in the bottom three a fair bit of late. It’s his time to go. Unfortunately, though, Haley will be right there beside him. She spent too much time early not singing particularly well, and that is usually fatal to long-term success. Even if she stays this week her survival next week – whatever the theme – will be hard.

The pick: Jacob Lusk to go home.

Maybe it’s just me, but this Idol season seems to have gone by remarkably quickly. With only six people left, the finale is only about a month off. This is when the competition really gets serious, and everyone should bring their A-game – if they haven’t. (Let’s just say this group has some room for improvement.)

Before I go into what the top six should do to win, a few quick thoughts about this week’s results. Stefano was the right person to go home. The bottom three wasn’t much of a surprise either; Jacob deserved to be there and Haley spent too much time floundering in the earlier stages to build a good fanbase. Haley shouldn’t have been there, but Idol voting is rarely the result of just one night’s singing.

So, to the meat of this piece: what does the top six need to do to get into the finale? Let’s do it from most likely to least likely.

1. Scotty McCreery

Scotty is the owner of two solid fanbases: country voters and tweens. Both of which are remarkably powerful fanbases in the world of Idol. Unless he turns into a reincarnation of Sanjaya Malakar he’s going into the finals. (Even that might not be enough.)

Scotty’s real problem is whether he can win in the finale. He’s not like other people who’ve never ended up in the final two that could basically blow everyone else out of the water vocally like Carrie Underwood or David Cook. Instead, he’s more like Taylor Hicks (similarly polarizing and would probably have lost against anyone else except Katharine McPhee) or Crystal Bowersox (lost in the finale). He really needs to give people other than his fans a reason to at least sit on their hands, and not vote for whoever he’s competing against in the finale. To do that, he’ll need… to sing something that doesn’t use the same darn arrangement every time. Who knows, miracles might happen.

2. James Durbin

Assuming Murphy doesn’t rear his head, James has the smoothest path to the finale. He’s established his “style”, sang quite well week-to-week, and changes enough every week not to sound so one-dimensional. James’s biggest problem is I’m not sure he commands much support from the strongest fanbases that (supposedly) dominate voting nowadays: cougars and teens/tweens. Whether they do or not is something that I’m not 100% convinced of yet.

However, whether James could actually do anything to help himself with those fans is doubtful. All he can do is sing well and let that build his own fanbase organically. It’s a classic case of “keep doing what you’re doing, but only better.”

3. Lauren Alaina

If you believe the pre-show hype, Lauren’s one of the most talented contestants in this field. So far, we’ve seen glimpses of that talent, but just that: glimpses. More than anyone else in this season, there’s a lot of untapped potential with Lauren. She needs to get her confidence back: of late she’s looked and sounded intimidated. It doesn’t help that she’s gone away from what it looked like her strength was uptempo material that showed off her ability to perform. Lately she’s trying to turn into a more “traditional” slow singer, which is a huge mistake. She’s got a lively personality, can perform like heck, so why isn’t she playing to her strengths?

Lauren has the talent, but hasn’t quite managed to figure out what direction she wants to go. Given how young she is, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Still, she needs to figure out what kind of artist she really wants to be, pick songs that fit that mold and she can do well, and do consistently well. Whatever she does, though, with Scotty stealing so much of the country fanbase, it will be a hard climb.

4. Casey Abrams

There’s one question that any good artist needs to be able to answer with no hesitation and hedging. What kind of artist am I? So far, the answer is… quirky. That’s not exactly the right answer. Casey’s gone from being a rocker to a slow ballad singer to the guy with an oversized violin. Right now most of us have no idea just what to expect from Casey. This is good on some level, but it makes it downright hard to build a fanbase. The trick is for Casey to be… consistently quirky. Fundamentally, Casey doesn’t want to be pigeonholed so easily. I respect that kind of artistry, but it doesn’t exactly help someone on Idol. Casey’s gotten this far by singing reasonably well, but consistently has not been his strong suit.

5. Jacob Lusk

Strategically, Jacob is pretty similar to Scotty. They’re both doing “safe” songs in their respective genres, neither is straying from the artistic tone they set from Day One… and neither is attracting much fans outside of their original fanbase. The trouble is that Jacob never enjoyed the stable fanbase that Scotty’s had from the start. He’s had a decent-sized fanbase that’s kept him largely safe, but by the time you reach the top six you need to have some sort of solid fanbase if you want to get any further. Jacob… doesn’t. Realistically, baring major failures from the rest of the field, he’s not going to make it.

6. Haley Reinhart

Under better circumstances Haley would not be this low. The sad fact is, however, her early stumbles did hurt her badly. Fanbases are built early, when people haven’t yet made up their mind. By the top six, too many people – particularly power voters – have, and unless she’s capturing the fans of departed contestants, Haley is in trouble. She’s done well to get this far – her namesake Haley Scarnato, who she draw comparisons to as Designated Eye Candy, only finished eighth.

She really has only one choice. She needs to sing lights out – think Rolling In The Deep or Bennie And The Jets good – every single week just to stay. That may be too much to ask of her – she hasn’t managed that kind of consistency at all. She’s had her moments, but in between she turns in mediocre numbers. It’s all about song choice for her, and to a large degree that’s dependent on theme. Which is why, in all likelihood, she’ll be leaving the Idol stage next week.

I’ll admit: coming into this week, I was prepared for a major trainwreck. I knew (thanks to my friends at What Not to Sing) that songs from this century have usually not turned out particularly well. What did we get? A mixed bag, but plenty of doses of what on earth was he/she thinking? Then again, it was April 20. Maybe we should have expected some oddities. Idol shoots in Los Angeles, after all.

Frankly, the first person I’d ask that question of would be the producers. Why bring back the losers on the Idol stage before the finale? Did we really need this sort of useless filler on a performance night? If anything, though, it was a perfect way to start the evening: it was a mess, and so were most of tonight’s performances.

Here’s a phrase I thought I’d never use: Haley Reinhart, best of the night. Really. On the other hand, she may well be the contestant with the most motivation to improve. It was an inspired song choice that suited all of Haley’s strengths and weaknesses perfectly. She took what she learned from Bennie and the Jets a while back and turned in an excellent performance that I find very little to complain with. Vocals were good, emotions were absolutely dead on, very confident on stage. It wasn’t quite a blow-me-away performance, that elusive Idol moment I’ve been looking for, but still, well done Haley.  (Don’t be surprised if she turns out to have a reasonably successful post-Idol career. Given the right material she can shine. Think a Kellie Pickler-level career, which is nothing to laugh at.)

Lauren Alaina was okay, but not much higher than that. It was another good song choice – it’s the sort of uptempo country material that suits Lauren – and Lauren did it reasonably well. The trouble is that it all seemed too easy. She stood on stage, sang well, did the right arm movements… but you never got the impression she was doing everything she could. Jennifer Lopez, shockingly, was exactly on point with her comments. I don’t know where this all-of-a-sudden cautious Lauren came from; give me back the full-of-confidence Lauren we saw earlier in the season.

One of my Idol pet peeves is when the theatrics of a performance overwhelm the singing and story. So how do I rate James Durbin? Not particularly well. The drummers were ridiculous, the outfit was something out of a dystopian science fiction film, and overall it lent a surreal quality to the performance. It covered up what were, to be honest, mediocre vocals. The falsetto was ridiculous – and not in a good way – while the rest of the vocals, well, we’ve heard better from James. If he’s being compared to Adam Lambert, that’s not a good thing – his performances are getting as silly as Adam’s were, but he doesn’t have comparable vocal chops. Fundamentally, this is a singing competition – not a who-can-create-the-most-”creative”-choreography competition.

I’ll give Jacob Lusk some credit: he recovered very nicely from his early technical difficulty. It’s not always easy to bounce back from something like that and not affect the rest of the performance. Even if it had gone all to plan, though, it all felt “safe”. It was supposed to be emotional, but it sure as heck didn’t feel that way. Jacob’s a reasonably good singer, but he’s sort of like Scotty: he can only do one thing well. After a while, that gets boring. It’s a competent, reasonably good-sounding sort of boring, but not anything that’ll make Jacob win.

Casey Abrams may be more at home with older material as opposed to what he did this week, but that doesn’t excuse his performance. More than ten years of music to choose from, and the result was a rock song that sounded like it could have been done by someone out of their garage. Sure, there were a few of Casey’s vocal trademarks, but there was nothing here that one wouldn’t see better out of your neighborhood amateur rock band. This might have cut it in the semifinals, but in the Top 7? Seriously?

One word describes Stefano Langome’s performance: awkward. He’s just not a good performer; his trying to look “confident” looks as believable as AstroTurf. The staring-at-the-camera bits? Creepy. It was almost like Stefano was a former boy band member (more known for looks) who had gone solo (with correspondingly awful material). We’re finding out where Stefano’s limits are; he’s capable of singing reasonably well. Unfortunately, he’s absolutely incapable of singing with any emotion and can’t “sell” the story. Unfortunately, good looks and some singing ability – not even a lot - are all youneed to get tweens to vote for you.

Way to go, Scotty McCreery! You get one chance to prove you’re a contemporary country artist, and what do you do? You pick a song that was originally from the 1980s. Well done! *sarcasm* Seriously, though, this was unimpressive. The arrangements he’s used since the beginning are all fundamentally the same. Surely he has to be capable of something else. While I’d like to see something else in the interest of better music and television, however, Scotty is unlikely to change his strategy until he gets a bottom three stint. That may not happen any time soon.

All in all, aside from Scotty’s trainwreck and Haley’s top-flight performance, there were so many questionable decisions that one can only conclude April 20 was being celebrated early in the world of Idol.

The MVP of the night, though, was not any of the contestants. It was whoever was on the bleep button that kept Steven Tyler’s profanity from slipping through. Give that guy a pay raise, Nigel.

The Pick: If it were just up to performance last night, it would be either Stefano or Scotty going home. However, Scotty’s fanbase can be described with one word: bulletproof. As Lauren summed up so accurately after his performance, he’s got plenty of fangirls voting for him. He’ll be safe.

That leaves… Stefano. This season has been a little… rough on my predictions, but surely a medicore Ne-Yo song and repeated appearances in the bottom three is enough to get him out of the competition. Especially when it’s clear that he’s hit the proverbial wall, isn’t getting any better, and is worse than just about everyone else. It’s time.

Stefano Langome to go home.

Two weeks ago we were having an okay Idol season. It wasn’t the best season we’ve ever had, but it was an improvement over the disaster that was Season Nine. Somewhere in between, though, we ran into serious trouble.

Pia’s boot last week was one giant disappointment, but by itself it would have been broadly in line with the “early favorite who stumbled”. That narrative wouldn’t have been 100% perfect, Pia didn’t exactly quite stumble so visibly the way others have. She may not have caught the imaginations of audiences the way true front-runners have, but there was no denying that Idol was losing a pretty talented singer.

And then we got this week’s disaster. There was no other way to describe it. It’s not just that it was a poor episode – which it was – it showed us all in gory detail the problems we’re dealing with so far.

First, the judges. I know that they’re being nice in contrast to Simon, who by the end of his Idol tenure was gratuitously cruel all too often. However… we’ve gone from one extreme to the other. This sort of useless, generic praise helps no one. The fact is that no one who comes on Idol as a contestant is really genuinely prepared for the challenges of the stage; the smart contestants just learn more quickly. How do you learn, however, if the comments are always “oh, you’re so good, you’re the bomb,” etcetera, etcetera? The cliche that “you learn from your mistakes” is an accurate one.

This directly leads to the second issue I have with this season: I’m not seeing an awful lot of improvement from the contestants this season. The best Idol contestants grow and mature as a season progresses. They grow more confident on stage, they become smarter about picking songs and arrangements, and so on. Are we seeing that sort of growth this year? I’m not convinced that we are. This year’s contestants seem to have started strong, but not figured out how to improve themselves as the season goes on. Scotty still does plenty of strange hand gestures on stage, Stefano still can’t sing with emotion… I could go on, but I won’t.

The two problems are reinforced in an exceedingly perverse manner because this bunch doesn’t seem to have many good artists. When I talk about “good artists”, I mean the types who are good at maximizing what they have, presenting complete ideas of what kinds of artist they were… the likes of David Cook, Kris Allen, and Adam Lambert. It seems that the producers, picking this season, picked natural talent and forgot all about experience. Too much of either is a bad thing. Think of Idol as a pizza. You can have the best meat, the best toppings, the best crust, all prepared by a chef from the finest Italian pizzeria. If the oven is not working – if there isn’t enough heat – the pizza turns into a runny, watery, unedible piece of crap. That’s where we are right now. The previous years we had poor ingredients (not enough talent) and an uneven oven. One problem was fixed, but not the other.

This year of Idol had, first and foremost, to show that the show was viable in the post-Simon era. Never mind that the past two years could be blamed to large degrees on Simon; if Season Ten failed in any way because it was because the British One was gone. I am less optimistic about this season turning out well than I was when this season started.