The Idol Eliminations: I'm "Shocked" Too...

Last night's American Idol was supposed to feature "shocking" eliminations. Indeed, a couple of the eliminations were shocking to me...just not the ones that were supposed to be.

I waffled back and forth in my two Idol blogs this week (and even more in my head) between Luke and Robbie and Amanda and Alaina. I actually changed my predictions in print a couple times. However, after re-watching all of the performances and reviewing what I knew of Idol, I figured that Kady, Alaina, Robbie and Jason would go.

Jason was a foregone conclusion. They threw him in there to be decent, unmemorable filler in the semifinals.

Amanda was the most god-awful of all the bad female performances from Wednesday. All the Idol fans I know say that all it takes is one bad performance and you're likely to be done. However, Amanda is the one girl who is genuinely "different." Here uniqueness hasn't proved that impressive as of yet, but ultimately I figured she was still novel enough to stay in the competition...though just barely.

I was overly kind to Alaina last week because I figured that there must be something I was missing: every single other blog I read was nearly over-the-moon for the "potential" she showed. I didn't really see it: I had trouble distinguishing her from the other pretty little blond things in the competition (Kristy, Kady) . Then this week, though she didn't give the worst performance, she did made the poorest song choice. Whereas Brooke and Kristy stepped up and distinguished themselves from the Barbie crowd in Week 2, she was just plain bad. I couldn't even tell her and Kady apart when they stepped up together for the third elimination.

The debate between Luke and Robbie came down to this: Luke is more attractive and is still sort of hiding in the protection that mediocrity provides at this stage, whereas Robbie got a lot more crap from the judges about his performance, his looks, his authenticity...you name it. There seems to be room for only one rocker in the competition, buddy, and you sure aren't it (Oh, David Cook).

The biggest shock, for me, was that Kady didn't get eliminated. I didn't see Alexandrea's dismissal coming at all. After getting criticized twice in two weeks for essentially the same failings (and being marginally worse this week than last) I didn't think there was any way Kady would stick around for Week 3. Color me stunned.

Your grandma's proud of you, yo.

The dismissal of Alexandrea is my first disappointment of the season. I really liked her performance of "Spinnin' Wheel" last week, and while her song choice this week was poor (but really, with two exceptions, whose wasn't?) she was far from the worst performer this week. I'm sad that I won't get to see her on the stage anymore.

I cannot wait for 80s week. I have a slightly unhealthy love of 80s music, and I'm excited to hear the which songs the Top 16 choose.