American Idol: I Tried

I was already dreading having to sit through the season finale of "American Idol" after Haley Reinhart's departure last week.

I'm not saying she deserved to win. (I can see that Scotty McCreery has been more consistent and WILL win.) I just wanted her in the finale so that Tuesday night's episode would at least have SOME semblance of excitement or unpredictability.

The finale was just as bad as I imagined, and I stopped watching about 20 minutes in.

It's not that I hate country music (I don't), it's just that I find Scotty and Lauren Alaina to be strong but completely unexciting and predictable singers. Whatever the opposite of "dynamic" is, that's what they are.

Things got off to an eye-rolling start when Ryan informed us that Lauren had shredded a vocal chord during rehearsal and brought out some sort of doctor to confirm the news. (As if to say, "This injury IS real and is in no way an attempt to garner sympathy votes for underdog Lauren.)

The first around had the duo reprising their favorite song from the season ("Gone" for Scotty, "Flat on the Floor" for Lauren), and I still don't understand why they do this during the performance night episode of finale week. Besides the fact that they're repeating themselves and not giving us anything fresh, what's the upside of reprising their best/favorite performance since there's a strong probability that they won't do better. (That's why David Cook is still a hero for eschewing a song he'd already done and singing Collective Soul's "The World I Know.")

In the second round, Scotty and Lauren performed songs by their musical idols (George Strait and Carrie Underwood, respectively) and it was somewhere in the middle of the George Strait song that I tuned out.

Scotty was doing what he always does (non-crazy eye edition), I have no doubt that Lauren was going to do what she always does (brushing up against greatness, but never quite achieving it), and I decided to bail out before the sure-to-be-painful Coronation Song Round. ("This is My Now" or "No Boundaries", anyone?)

The only thing I hated more than bailing out on this show after suffering through an entire season of inane judging and the occasionally painful musical stylings of Naima Adedapo, Paul McDonald and (worst of all) Jacob Lusk was...well, this finale! I realize this show gets about 25 to 30 million viewers every week, so I won't exactly be missed. I wish Scotty and Lauren good luck in their future endeavors, but I just didn't want to waste another second of my time on something I cared so little about. And this is from the guy who watched (and recapped) "Heroes" down to its bitter end.

I DID like the part during the finale where the judges didn't talk.