American Idol: Half Decent

I’ll make the case for why Norman Gentle earned a spot in the semifinals in a few paragraphs.

After last week’s suckfest, Tuesday night’s episode was good enough to inspire votes for five out of the 12 contestants from our household. Of course, the flip side is that we’re going to see exactly how brutal the new semifinal format for “Idol” is, since only three of those singers are guaranteed a spot in the next round.

It wasn’t just the singing that received a major upgrade. After a disastrous episode last week from a production standpoint, the people behind the scenes apparently listened and scrapped the painful parent interviews after each performance (I’m more ok with the camera merely cutting to the emotional parents after each song, instead of having them awkwardly try to pick up the pieces of their kids’ shattered dreams.)

More importantly, I REALLY liked having the order of the judges’ comments switched around. Randy never says anything important, so it was good not to have him always go first, and Paula was forced to form her own opinion a couple of times instead of mimicking what Kara and Randy said. It’s nice to see the most-watched show on TV not be afraid to play around with its format to try to get better.

Like last week, I’ll break down the contestants in categories rating the likelihood they’ll advance to the top 12 Thursday night.

DONE
Jasmine Murray seems like a really nice girl, and the judges certainly met their quota in using the word “commercial” to describe her, but the girl — in what would become a recurring theme — just did NOT pick the right song. Her “Love Song” started too low, became redundant and was not helped by her embellishing to make it interesting. I know she’s scored a decent amount of screen time up to this point, but the female competition last night was too strong for her to advance.

At least Jasmine had some screen time behind her. I don’t believe we’d ever heard Jeanine Vailes sing until she opened her mouth to over sing “This Love.” I certainly understood the girl’s rationale for coming out and overcompensating for her lack of face time, but EVERYTHING about her performance (including the short shorts) screamed “trying too hard.”

Finally, the things I remember about Kai Kalama’s performance were his slightly queasy facial expressions and his weird haircut (neither too long nor too short). Notice I didn’t mention his rendition of “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted.” It’s a nice song, and Kai sang it competently, but it was the first time I actually totally agreed with and was able to visualize Simon’s vintage “cruise ship/hotel singer” critique. That performance SO belonged in a lobby somewhere.

I SHOULDN’T SAY THEY’RE DONE, BUT THEY ARE
Matt Giraud was one of the stars of Hollywood Week, but his “soulful” rendition of “Viva La Vida” was the worst performance of the evening (yes, even worse than Mr. Gentle) and an insult to the word “soulful.” The only reason he’s not in the “Done” category is because of that great Hollywood Week performance of “Georgia, On my Mind”, the fact that the judges like him and that he’s, arguably, the second most popular male singer from last night.

I’m bummed that Matt choked, but I’m even more bummed to put Jesse Langseth here because, as the judges said, she’s pretty cool (but not “too cool for school” in my opinion). She gets major props for taking a song I don’t really care for (“Bette Davis Eyes”) and making it sound fresh and interesting. However, I see her losing votes to Mishavonna “Drops of Jupiter” Henson (both were very good, but not super exciting or memorable) and missing out on the top 12. I really hope she grabs one of those wild card spots.

I SHOULD SAY THEY’RE DONE, BUT THEY’RE NOT
Ok, so the only reason I’m putting Matt Breitzke in here is because I got burned last week by putting Michael Sarver in the “I Shouldn’t Say They’re Done, But They Are” category and underestimating the country’s affection for hard-scrabble working fathers.

Sure, his “If You Could Only See” was good, but if you saw the first five seconds, you saw the entire performance. I literally thought I was watching those five seconds on a (sweaty) loop. I want to say that he’s done because I don’t believe that America has room in its heart for Matt AND Michael Sarver (who Matt outsang), but after last week I can’t.

Then there’s Norman Gentle (pictured, left), rapidly becoming my girlfriend Erica’s favorite. Why would I defend a guy who, in this column, I’ve called a one-joke coward who doesn’t have the guts to perform as himself because he knows he’s not interesting enough? Also, why would I defend him when he essentially did the exact same thing he’s done (same song, same shirt) his entire “Idol” run?

Well, I’m doing it because he brought last night’s show to life! Call it fortunate timing, but Norman performed fourth after three uninspiring screechy performances, and his brand of crazy was exactly what Tuesday’s broadcast needed. In addition, though he whiffed on a big note, he didn’t sound too bad at all. I’m just saying that if he makes it to the top 12, I’d be a lot less outraged than I would’ve been last week. Finally, I have to give Kara a high five for her nice dig about how Norman wears the same shirt every week – like Simon.

THE CONTENDERS
Let’s just give Adam Lambert his spot right away. Not only did the producers put him in the cushy “Danny Gokey Last Performer” slot, but he certainly delivered the goods. It appears that no other singer in this year’s competition can match his vocal range. I’d only advice him to dial it down a bit. I know Adam said he was scaling back last night, but his performance of “Satisfaction” was WAY over the top (but in a fun way). He’s an amazing singer, but I’d like to see him just sing amazingly and not so much clown around with the howling. (Then again, if he’s got it going on like that, I can’t be too mad at him.)

Adam’s lock on the guy’s spot doesn’t bode well for Kris Allen, who favethe most appealing performance of the evening, making the thoroughly cheesy “Man in the Mirror” palatable. He started out a bit shaky, but eventually settled in very nicely. More importantly, he won the Erica “Cutie Award” and might just get enough votes from the ladies’ to advance.

However, I see a woman winning the third spot, which would leave Megan Corkrey, Mishavonna Henson and Allison Iraheta (pictured, right) fighting for two spots.

I’m going to assume that fairness wins as it did last week with Alexis Grace and that Allison will win the woman’s slot for delivering the night’s best and fiercest performance. She literally had two strikes going against her after her terrible interview with Seacrest (making “Idol School” sound like a dungeon) and picking the uber-challenging “Alone.” Of course, singing “Alone” is only a bad idea if you’re not good enough to hit it out of the par, and it turns out Allison is.

So the wild card will come down to Mishavonna and Megan, and I’m actually picking Megan to take it. As I said before, Mishavonna’s “Drops of Jupiter” was a VERY good and interesting take on a very familiar song. However, the judges were oddly cold to it and harped on how old it made her sound. Very strange.

It was almost as strange as Megan’s “dancing.” Megan absolutely made a brilliant choice by singing “Put Your Records On”, and delivered an interesting, quirky performance, but the “dancing” has got to stop. It’s actually so bad that it’s vert off-putting and distracting. The director needs to do they thing they did with Elvis on the “Ed Sullivan Show” where they were only allowed to show him from the waist up because his dancing was deemed obscene. That’s actually the word for Megan’s “dancing” — obscene.

So what’d you think of this episode? Did you like the changes to the judging format? Did you love or hate Norman Gentle last night? Finally, which three do you seem going to the top 12?