Oh brother. Our expectations for this week were… low. The original theme of Teen Idols gave us little room for optimism. News of the mentor – Miley Cyrus – left us wondering if The Onion had somehow managed to put out an official Fox/19E press release. I knew that this week, the Unintentional Comedy Scale was likely to be far, far, far higher than the Good Singing Scale.

And yet, despite the rock-low expectations, somehow, it was even worse. It wasn’t just bad; it was so bad it’s a worthy candidate for Worst Idol Episode Ever. Good grief. The only persons who seems to have liked it: the Worsters. Everyone else was cringing at utter horror, and trying to find moments to laugh at.

In any other week, Lee DeWyze would have been somewhere in sort-of-good-but-not-great territory. Decent vocals, good command of the stage and charisma, but somewhat forgettable. The fact that something like this was one of the night’s better performances, well…

Few songs have as wretched a history on Idol as Against All Odds. So why in the world did Paige Miles decide to do it? I don’t know. I’m better off not knowing, in all likelihood, given how utterly bad it was. Here’s some unsolicited advice to all future Idol contestants: never, ever, ever sing that song on the Idol stage. The Idol gods do not look kindly on contestants tempting fate with such a song title. And they have punished all seven contestants who have done it with bad performances. (Shockingly, however, no one has ever gone home singing Against All Odds. Even if they richly deserved it.)

As expected, Tim Urban sang quite poorly. His range of notes can be counted on one hand. We also discovered, however, that he can’t perform either. When he “slid” on the stage, it looked like he had slipped on a wet spot. It was all ridiculous, fake… and awful. Sanjaya Malakar, you now have some competition for the title of worst singer to make the tour.

While I’m on the topic of overused songs… I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing has tripped up a lot of good singers. It needs a lot of charisma, a powerful voice, and being able to project a huge stage presence. Steven Tyler is very hard to top. David Cook tried, and all he got was an “okay” performance. Allison Iraheta tried it last year, and it didn’t work for her either. Both DC and Allison are better singers than Aaron Kelly. The song has an epic, larger-than-life feel to it, and Aaron is not capable of performing on that level.

Crystal Bowersox‘s consistency is amazing. At her worst, she’s good; when she turns it up she’s unbeatable. She was great this week, and absolutely head and shoulders above everyone else. The song choice was (as usual) excellent, the vocals were good, the whole performance made sense. Well done.

I’m not quite sure how to rank Michael Lynch. It was well sung, sure, but something of a snoozer. Even after watching his song multiple times, it’s hard to remember any part of it. In short: it wasn’t good enough to spark good memories, not bad enough to have us cringing, and dull enough to be forgotten just minutes later. Mediocre.

As for Andrew Garcia… he was an even less competent version of Tim Urban tonight. The vocal range was just as nonexistent, and the performance was even more awkward than Tim’s. When you’re being compared to Tim Urban and coming out second best… you stink. You really, really, stink.

Here’s how bad the night was: Katie Stevens turned in another beauty-queen level performance and it was right about average. Really. This was a fairly inspired song choice: fairly recent, suitable for Katie’s style, and within her capabilities. Great? No. Good? Eh, maybe. Slightly above average is the best I’ve give it, but compared to too many of this week’s results… I’ll take it.

For Casey James it was a mixed bag. The song choice was good, the vocals were good, but it didn’t have that one defining moment that takes it from good to great. It would be respectable in any night, but maybe not much more than that. This week, though… one of the better ones.

Didi Benami wasn’t as bad as the judges said, but I can see where the criticism came from. The theatrics promised a vicious tiger, but the vocals were those of a meek newborn kitten. It wasn’t poorly sung by any means, but it was middling at best. Had Didi shown the edginess she had last week… this would have been a perfect chance to shine. As it was, it wasn’t particularly good.

Siobhan Magnus has a serious case of Glory Note-itis. It’s a fairly common condition among Idol contestants with good voices. Glory Note-itis is, essentially, when a singer forgets everything else about singing in favor of hitting the glory note, period. Siobhan had a serious case with Superstition. The rest of the vocals was actually good, but the glory note was an unmitigated screechfest. Easily, easily, the worst she’s done so far. It’s a pity; she could do so much better, but the feedback from the enablers of Glory Note-itis, the judges, is not helping.

Here’s how the night stood for us:

1. Crystal Bowersox
2. Casey James
3. Lee DeWyze
4. Siobhan Magnus
5. Michael Lynche
6. Katie Stevens
7. Didi Benami
8. Aaron Kelly
9. Tim Urban
10. Andrew Garcia
11. Paige Miles

TIG picks: Oh boy. Frankly, only the top four in our rankings thoroughly deserve to stay one week. The rest, well… they didn’t do their respective causes any good.

If it were just on merit, Paige would be a sure thing. Against All Odds should be an unforgivable offense, resulting in an immediate boot. And yet, however… I can’t completely discount her staying. She’s still not splitting votes with anyone else. As we’ve all learned in the past, a bottom three stint can actually help the following week.

That brings us to the next in line. Andrew Garcia. He was almost as bad as Paige was. He won’t have the dead cat bottom three bounce. He has consistently gotten worse since the season has started. This is not a formula for success.

I haven’t checked what the Idolsphere consensus is, but I’m guessing it’s calling for a Paige boot. I’ll call this week an “upset” and say Andrew is gone. He peaked in Hollywood, for crying out loud.

TIG pick: Andrew Garcia to go home.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Season Nine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.