Last night, three people made it through to American Idol‘s semifinal round—Alexis Grace, Michael Sarver, and Chosen One Of Season Eight Danny Gokey. (Anoop Desai was bested by Sarver by some 20,000 votes; yes, he was robbed, but I’m hoping that narrow margin results in him being a wild-card lock.) The way the show was set up, though, seemed especially cruel to Tatiana Del Toro, who was the last one standing with Gokey at show’s end, despite the worship leader’s path to the semifinals being divined, oh, as soon as Kara DioGuardi screamed about the awesomeness of his mawkish performance of Mariah Carey’s “Hero” on Tuesday night. I’m guessing the producers were hoping for a good old-fashioned Tatiana meltdown, and guess what? They didn’t get one. (Good for her.) Click through for video.
Last night’s American Idol finally brought us to the semifinal round, with 12 hopefuls—including this season’s Officially Chosen One, the sad-backstory-filled-yet-optimistic Danny Gokey—making their way to the Idol stage. The theme was “Hot 100 songs through the years,” although most of the contestants trotted out old Idol reliables (Mariah, Whitney, Aretha) with decidedly mixed results. Rankings and reactions after the jump!
Perhaps in honor of Kansas City-area native David Cook’s grunging up all his songs, there was definitely a weird pall over last night’s audition episode of American Idol. Sure, it was great to see Jason Castro again (he was there in support of his brother, Michael, who’s pictured at left), but there was a little too much sadness: One of the contestants who made it through to Hollywood had an interview segment where he talked about his wife passing away four weeks before the audition; another singer sang “Cry-Baby”; some dude’s backup singers, dressed as cheerleaders, got teary-eyed in the wake of his rejection; and there was a montage of rejected singers freaking out in various ways. (The latter sort of had its dramatic importance undercut by the mortality-related reasons for tears.) The show itself was sort of weird, with people getting through more because they were, in the words of Paula, “not a disaster” than actually spot-on with everything, but I guess that’s in keeping with all the tears. More observations from the show after the jump!
