I’ll be blunt: so far, this season has been something of a hot, wet, mess. Still, though, this was a potentially intruiging final four. There was an interesting mix of genres, they were all pretty good vocally… this could have been a good night.

However, this being American Idol, what could have been rarely is. Such was rock night. It was a very mixed bag, to say the least: it had high points, to be fair – but when it hit the low points, boy were they low.

Unlike previous theme nights where the Idols wandered far and wide from the theme, this week they largely stayed within the confines of rock – which was friendly to Adam and Allison, but dangerous for Kris and Danny.

Adam Lambert had a good night, and that shouldn’t really be much of a surprise. Whole Lotta Love was the typical wild, frenetic, high-energy performance Adam Lambert delivers. With the usual Your Mileage May Vary warnings, Adam did exactly what he set out to do.

However, the Led Zeppelin song wasn’t groundbreaking in any way for Adam. We’ve all seen him with a similar over-the-top performance. However, Slow Ride was an even better performance in our book. Adam has something of a tendency to let the over-the-top theatrics overshadow the music – but that wasn’t the case at all for his duet with Allison.

The same was true with the vocals – without the need to be over the top, I thought it lacked the screechy tendencies Adam can have sometimes. Allison, too, held up her end of the bargain supremely well – if anything, she might have been even better than Adam. Whatever the division of credit, their duet was, by far, the best performance of the night.

As for Allison’s solo performance… I don’t know if it was a good song choice by itself, but considered in context of the duet… it was brilliant. It was a telling contrast from everyone else: she got to show two quite different, but not clashing, faces of herself artistically. It’s a useful – and difficult – trick to pull off on two-song nights, and particularly with a restricted theme as this week seemed to be in practice. The performance itself was pretty good as well – it wasn’t quite the refined perfection Adam delivered earlier, but Allison wanted to show off her more… sensitive, emotional side. And in that, she did admirably well.

From those three good-to-great performances, though, it went sour. Fast. Kris Allen picked a hard song to sing – especially one that called for vocals more powerful than he could actually deliver. It was a good effort, but… no. It didn’t exactly help, either, that Carly Smithson had done this song just last year – and much better.

However, it was better than his duet with Danny. Not only was the song choice bad – it just didn’t fit for either man – they also absolutely zero chemistry with each other on stage. Vocally, Simon was nuts – Danny was his usual shrieky self, and at least Kris kept some control. However, it wasn’t exactly something to be particularly proud of.

Worst of all – by a large margin – was the hot, wet, pile of cow manure that was Dream On. It was more of a nightmare than a dream. Congratulations, Danny Gokey: you’re giving Jasmine Trias a run for her money in the category of Worst Final Four performances ever. That was an outright disaster, one of the worst ones I’ve seen in many years of Idol-watching.

We want to get off this bus: Our friends over What Not to Sing put out their editorial this weekend that talked about how certain contestants at this stage of the show get run over by the 19E bus. They hoped that the bus would stay in the garage this week, but… it was not to be.

The bus came out in full force for Kris. TPTB kicked up the difficulty level so high, Kris stood no chance. I personally find it more than a little suspcious how everyone suddenly decided to hew so closely to rock – a genre Kris normally has no business being in. Putting in duets and saddling Kris with Danny? Saying that Danny was actually better in the duet? Maybe it’s just us, but Kris seemed well aware last night that the bus was going to get him – at most of it was preordained beforehand.

Of course, the bus wasn’t out to get just Kris, but being the biggest roadblock to the producers’ dream of a Gokey-Lambert finale he had to go right away. Kris definitely left the night with tire treads on his jacket.

However, Allison got side-swiped a fair bit as well. She was every bit as good as Adam was – but you wouldn’t know that from the judges. The purpose was clear: pimp Adam, and downplay Allison’s success – preparatory to the bus backing over her next week. They couldn’t slam her too hard, because they want her to get through this week, but not strong enough to interfere with the Lambert-Gokey faceoff.

While the 19E bus was ramming Kris down and side-swiping Allison, it was carrying both Adam and Danny in luxurious comfort. Adam’s praise was mostly well-deserved, but rarely have I seen such kind comments for some of the worst performances of the season to date. Audition rejects would have sung better than Danny Gokey did last night. Danny said something along the lines of his solo being “Not as bad as they thought”. It’s hard to say now who was more divorced from reality – Danny, or the judges.

Sadly, though, despite all the savviness of the Idolsphere, the bus is sadly effective. Kris’s fanbase has been spotty of late, and he didn’t have the performances last night to really save him. He needed a good, standout performance to be safe – and he didn’t get that. Which means, sadly, that…

The Idol Guy pick: Kris Allen to go home.