Tuesday, April 8, 2008

IF YOU WILL IT, DUDE, IT IS NO "DREAM ON": In a week in which every contestant was free to choose anything in his or her respective wheelhouse, you'd think someone would going to go home for choosing poorly more than anything else. But no one was that good, surprisingly, and even the top end of tonight's curve is no better than a B/B-.

All three "rockers" are at risk -- none of David Cook, Michael Johns or Carly Smithson were all that memorable. Like almost every other contestant in the show's history, Carly was outmatched by taking on Freddie Mercury. Whatever that Our Lady Peace song was, Cook's performance of it felt inert and restrained. Yawn. And Aerosmith, really, Michael? Good enough to survive, but only barely.

Most at risk, however, is Syesha, who committed the sin -- regularly noted on this blog -- of trying to perform a song that another Idol previously owned. Fantasia put so much of her emotion and personality into "I Believe"; Syesha didn't give us that.

So who's safe? Kristy Lee Cook was fine. I've got nothing much to say about that.

Clifford the Crunchy Muppet knows his zone: "Songs Popularized As Background Music In TV Shows To Express Sadness," and his take on the Dr. Mark Greene Death Theme was, indeed, rather lovely.

Young David Archuleta, as Fienberg notes, took too long to get to the good part of Robbie Williams' brilliant "Angels," and it still never quite took off. Still, he's YDA, and he's not going anywhere.

Finally, I'm not sure if Brooke White was genuinely overcome with emotion during "You've Got A Friend" or if it's the demonstration of that widely-attributed maxim that "the secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Either way, I figure, she's survived worse weeks than this.

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