One thing we’ve learned this season is to keep expectations… low. It’s more than halfway through the season, and I haven’t really been blown away by any of the performances to date. Right now, I (and, I’d guess, more than a few of you) have a tough time caring.

Adam Lambert might as well have chosen his theme song with Born To Be Wild. Translation: it was more than a bit indulgent. It was decently done, but it didn’t have the polish Mad World have. It was, if anything, his worst performance since Ring of Fire. It reminded me of a not-as-good version of Play That Funky Music – same frenetic pace, same kind of a crowd-pleasing, same vocals that were just okay. Not his best, but not his worst by a decent distance either.

Shockingly, though, Adam didn’t have the strongest Your Mileage May Vary factor last night. It was the likable – and, in the past, uncontroversial Kris Allen. Falling Slowly was not the vocal masterpiece of the night, but it didn’t have to be. Kris’s strength has never been his vocals, but his ability to connect emotionally with his songs. He did well in that category last night, but… I think he gave up too much of the vocals last night. Objectively, the vocals were fair to middling. If the vocals had been just that much better, he would have owned the night. (Not that it would have taken much.) As it is, though, he did well for the night – but he missed out on a golden opportunity.

Anoop Desai singing another power ballad is not the most original thing in the world, but at least he’s reasonably competent at it. As it tends to be, the vocals are always pretty decent… if somewhat paint-by-numbers. To his credit, the emotion was there in spots, but not consistently there. He was fine in the “glory” spots, but there was room for improvement in between. Guess which one has more time.

After those three, it goes downhill. Everyone else was, at the very least, flawed – to downright bad. Allison Iraheta’s song choice was, to be honest, a little predictable. Rock song, check. Needs a big voice, check. From a movie, check. Good choice? Uh, no. David Cook tried this last year, and even he couldn’t make a really good performance out of it. (To be fair, that wasn’t because he chose the song – it was assigned to him.) It’s a big song, and it was too big for Allison. It just didn’t work. The vocals weren’t bad, but it’d be a stretch to call it good either. So-so at best. Note to future Idol would-be rockers: avoid I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing. This is not something you want to sing on the stage.

Give Danny Gokey an A for effort on Endless Love. The vocals, though, not so much. The song, as Danny did it, needs subtlety, finesse, and Danny had… none of it. He took a bulldozer to the song. Danny worked hard this week, but maybe he should have stopped to consider if his goal was the right one. It wasn’t, not by a long shot.

Matt Giraud made a decent effort to win the Golden Trainwreck of the night. The vocals were not impressive – it was kind of dull and boring all night long. More than that, though, if you’re going to pick a song like Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman, you need to connect with the emotions of the song. Matt didn’t come close to that at all.

The Golden Trainwreck, however, goes to Lil Rounds. For a singer whose supposed specialty is in the power runs, glory notes, etcetera that Idol loves to drop on its R&B contestants, she was surprisingly mediocre. It was unbelievably dull. By itself, though, that would not have enough to get her the Golden Trainwreck – but teeing off on Simon did. “Putting her own bit in it”? So is her specialty putting people to sleep? Foot, meet mouth. That was not her finest moment on the stage.

Overall, though, the results were pretty dismal. After this week, there are only five weeks left. Yet the overall caliber of the performances was something I’d expect in February or March, when the season was starting – not in mid-April, when the season is getting “down to the wire”.

Not thinking things through: Lately it seems to be Amateur Night is reigning over at 19E – and rarely was this more obvious than last night.

Everyone knew that adding Kara to the judging panel would cause timing issues. Either more time would have to be spent on the judges, or Paula, Randy, and Simon would all have to learn to talk less – an unlikely proposition. Either way, the show’s producers and director would have to compensate.

However, it took widespread outrage after Adam Lambert’s Mad World was cut off after Idol ran long last week before the Idol PTB decided to act. And their response? Why, let’s make our judges do even less work! Did anyone really like the alternating-judges act? As it is, it sounds like a last-minute kludge that was cooked up at the last minute. Any one who’s watched the show closely at all knew what would happen, but apparently the Well-Paid Professionals at 19E didn’t figured that out. American Idol is in the best of hands.

Of course, the biggest Amateurism of the night was picking Quentin Tarantino to mentor. I don’t doubt that he’s a colorful guy, and he understands the dramatic impact of music, but… he knows absolutely nothing about producing music. That, fundamentally, is the role of the mentor. It’s no coincidence that the better mentors tend to be those that are involved in music production (Barry Manilow, David Foster) or those who have been in the industry long enough to learn at least some material by osmosis.

Quentin Tarantino was neither. For all his enthusiasm, it was clear that there wasn’t much “operational”, detailed advise he could offer. He’s a movie director, not a music producer. Step aside, Gwen Stefani – there is a new “champion” for the worst Idol mentor ever. This was something that many, many people could have guessed – but, apparently, 19E missed the boat on this again. Is anyone with a brain cell running things over there?

A wide-open field: With so many bad performances, it’s hard to really call anyone perfectly safe. Adam is almost certainly safe, but Danny was so disappointing him showing up in the bottom three would not be a shock.

The likeliest boot candidates here are Matt Giraud and Lil Rounds. For both of them, it comes down to fanbase strength. They were both sufficiently bad that casual voters aren’t going to give either of them any meaningful boost in the votes. It ultimately comes down whose fans hit the phones harder last night.

Lil’s tirade against the judges will certainly hurt her in the long term (if she lasts that long), but this week it probably spurred on her (limited) fan base to vote like mad. Given how week Matt was, the needed boost to escape survival isn’t that large. That could very well have put Lil over the edge to survive.

So…

The Idol Guy pick: Matt Giraud to go home.