American Idol – Top 3 Week

American Idol is down to the final three so they’re going to haul out the judge/contestant/producers choice of songs format again where each of the three sings one song pick for them by one of the judges, one of their own choosing, and one the show producers pick for them. As the suspense of the show has completely worn on my I’m going to attempt to give my impressions of the show without the benefit of actually having watched the show, nor reading anything about the performances.

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If you’re thinking. “hey that’s not right,” you are correct, but really the wheels are coming off Idol in a hurry. The problem for Idol is that the format is so ridged and, frankly, dull they’re going to have to burn down the house to fix what ails the show. Because the contestants are more and more robotic there’s less and less interesting storyline apart from what Paula’s drug of choice is for the week or whether Randy can add another critique to his very small collection of cliche critiques.

What’s so interesting about the aging of Idol is that the much older Survivor is coming off one of its best seasons ever. The formula of the game gets minor tweaks every season, but the real reason the season was such a joy was that the contestants (half all-stars, half fans) were interesting, dynamic, controversial, and engineered several of the greatest blindsides the game had ever seen. Idol, especially this season, traded interesting if occasionally wildly inconsistent contestants for a collection of boring ringers and the resulting monotony has ratings sinking like the real estate market.

Anyway, here’s my assessment of the performances I haven’t yet seen.

The Top Two
1. David Cook
2. David Archuleta

The Soon To Be Departed

3. Syesha Mercado

That order lines up with my overall season order as well. What I’m imagining happened on the show was that David Cook had two really good songs and one not so great tune; little David had one really good song, on really weird song, and one so-so song; and that Syesha had several decent, if entirely unmemorable performances. Syesha, I’m imagining, really showed that her future isn’t on a concert stage, but on the Broadway stage. She’s earned her way into the final three, but it’s really going to be a two man show for the finale.

So how close (or far off) was I?