The obligatory joke about Sanjaya’s hair was dispensed with on the top of last night’s American Idol results episode, as Ryan Seacrest walked out on the stage wearing a wig modeled after the pony mane fauxhawk that generated the most buzz after Tuesday night’s tepid performance show.
Before the night’s drama, there’s the weekly Ford commercial, featuring the final 10 in cowboy drag singing the Bobby Fuller Four’s I Fought The Law.
It’s the most insipid Ford spot so far, compared with the swaggering original, never mind the Clash cover. Swagger isn’t something we’re seeing much of in this season of Idol.
Commercial break over, Seacrest goes through the semifinalists to net the final three; Phil Stacey is the first one called, Hayley Scarnato is the second, and Sanjaya is safe for another week, which either validates some gnomic strategy, chalks up another pyrrhic victory for votefortheworst.com, or testifies to the text-messaging skills of soccer moms.
Gwen Stefani performs one of her utterly forgettable solo numbers, which features a lot of cute but dreary choreography, a small but sturdy chorus repeated incessantly, and chants of “oh” and “ah” that are supposed to fill in the bits in the middle.
A fellow named Akon runs around the stage a lot in the role of what the industry calls “street.”
Chris Sligh joins Phil and Hayley in the center of the stage, but Ryan gives Phil a reprieve and sends him back to join the rest of the pack.
Simon predicts that “it’s bye-bye Curly” tonight, and he’s right, proving that fat and funny goes about as far in Idol as it does getting dates in college.
He exits singing and telling Phil Stacey that “you owe me 50 bucks.”
