American Idol This Week

Things got a little weird last night as I saw human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, and Sanjaya giving one of the best performances of the week.

It was a pretty lackluster week overall -- Jennifer Lopez acted as mentor, revelling in her latina bona fides, teaching Chris the proper pronunciation of "muñequita," trying to show Jordan how to move sultrily, and having all of the performers sit at her feet while she tossed out pearls of wisdom from her barstool perch -- but the one thing it taught me is that if you don't have the Latin heat, you can't fake it.


Among American Idol's "Latin" Performers

Melinda, "Sway" -- The first of many singers trying, and failing, to go outside of their comfort zones. Her attempts at feeling the Latin heat were stilted and she came nowhere close to the sexiness Paula claimed she embodied, and she shouldn't try. I really think she should be going for classy sophistication instead of sex appeal. Still, she looked great (tm Paula), her voice was excellent, and even in an off week she was among the top performers.

LaKisha, "Conga" -- Mis-step number two. It must be extremely difficult to sing and negotiate one's way through the crowd, and LaKisha showed she doesn't have the ability to do both at the same time. Trying to remember her choreography left her vocals flat and rote, two things that are bad when the song you're singing doesn't have much going for it. In order to do well with this song she needed to sing the hell out of it, and she didn't. Both top contenders faltered, leaving the door open for someone else to join the party.

Chris, "Smooth" -- I'm not very musically intelligent (in fact I'm nearly tone deaf) so I can't tell for sure, but it seemed like Chris completely ignored the one piece of advice we saw J-Lo give him, which was to do the song one step higher than he originally planned to. In the rehearsal clip we saw him sing the last line ("give me your heart/make it real/or else forget about it") and it sounded good, but when he started his performance I thought, "geez, how low would this have been if he hadn't gone up a step?" And then he got to the end and it sounded nothing like it had before.

Someone with some music experience, tell me -- did he actually take the song up a step, or not? Whatever he did, he managed to give us a decent, but by no means stellar, performance of one of the best songs of the last decade.

Haley, "Turn The Beat Around" -- Awful. Just terrible. Nothing else to say.

Phil, "Maria Maria" -- I had high hopes for Phil when I heard he was doing this song. I thought it would work well in his high register. But his voice cracked a couple of times and that sort of overshadowed anything positive about the performance.

Jordin, "The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You" -- The third front-runner who tried (and failed) to break out of her comfort zone, or so she said. The thing is, she's been doing very well singing light, fun songs and bopping around the stage, so she should have nailed this one, and she didn't. I'm not sure exactly what happened other than, as Keith Chaffee points out, she didn't enunciate crisply enough to let the rhythm of the lyrics come through.

Blake, "I Need To Know" -- Best performance of the night. Excellent song choice, good charisma, no beatboxing, and a solid vocal. For the first time, someone other than LaKisha or Melinda took the prize.

Sanjaya, "Besame Mucho" -- So help me, this didn't suck. Actually, I'll go further and say that, in a week that saw most of the other contestants falter, Sanjaya gave one of the best performances of the night. It wasn't enough to lift him out of the cellar, but for one night he was something other than the biggest joke in the history of American Idol.

For the night: Blake, Melinda, Jordin, Chris, Sanjaya, LaKisha, Phil, Haley

For the season: Melinda, LaKisha, Jordin, Blake, Chris, Phil, Haley, Sanjaya

Who should go home: Haley, of course.

Who will go home: Phil, probably, though I'm worried about LaKisha and The Mandisa Effect; I hope America won't take her first stumble as the opportunity to vote off the large African-American woman.