Phillip had one big piece of good luck, which was winning the coin flip. There’s a lot of incentive to end any Idol episode with a “big finish,” and that goes especially for the last performance of a whole season. The production for Home sent a united message: this is what a winner looks like. And for a change, the song was decent enough that the judges didn’t look ridiculous in praising it. It was Phillip’s only really interesting performance of the night, but it was all he needed.

As for Jessica, I can’t fault her for going with The Prayer, because she’s obviously dialed in with that song. Her big problem was being saddled with I Have Nothing, which I am convinced it’s impossible to impress with at this point. (The less said about Fuller’s lazy song picks for both singers, the better.)

I don’t think the show set out to sabotage Jessica on purpose, a common complaint I am seeing today. But. The failure to give her a standing O for The Prayer was glaringly biased, given how often those have been doled out all season; ditto for Jennifer Lopez’s bizarre opinion that Phillip bested her in the second round because she wasn’t original enough–neither of these singers has done much that’s original all season long. My guess is that the propping up of Phillip and the dissing of Jessica was an effort to get the judges’ opinions in line with how they know the votes are going to line up. They need to make a case for their eventual winner, since goodness knows they’re going to have enough trouble selling his music in 6 months.

It’s better to win than not win, but I think this may be another year like Season 8, where the powers that be treat both finalists as essentially co-winners. Jessica is basically a more consistent version of Jordin Sparks, so she can definitely be relevant in the marketplace. Phillip’s chances, in the long run, will depend on his ability to write his own material. Needless to say, the track record of the Idol contestants most similar to him hasn’t been very good.

The only thing she really needs to work on is life-experience so that she can give way better interviews and make far more intriguing and competent choices in her artistic career. That’s really all I have left to say about idol this year. That Philip made it this far is still such a huge draw to the debate over the voting system again but we’ll see.

Cheers everyone :]