American Idol cuts to top 11

Idol starts with what's basically an extended commercial for Horton Hears a Who, then Ryan gets screamed at by the audience. He tells us we control the action; 29 million votes.

Jim Carey's hanging out in the audience, dressed up as Horton. The commercial goes on, and on, and on. Ryan claims they're changing next week's themes cause of all the calls and emails, to more from Lennon/McCartney. Okay....

Medley is more songs from the duo; it'll either be Syesha or Kristy leaving, I hope it's not Kristy but likely to be given she was horrible and already at risk last week. David Cook sounds like a man singing with boys. Chikezie is just exploding with confidence, he's discovered he can sing with these guys. This is kind of boring for some reason; maybe cause it's all the B songs.

Sanjaya's in the house! And his sis. Back, I zip through all the recaps, and then they're all sitting in the two rows. Carly, Michael, Jason and Syesha--well, one of them, it'll be Syesha. Carly's safe, Michael too, Jason as well.

Syesha comes down--wait, they're asking each of the bottom three to sing; that's crazy. Guess they have to fill the hour somehow. She's about as bad as yesterday, just a weak song and bad choice.

Let's see, say you program a music show--would you give the audience encores of the worst performances, or the best?

The dumb car ad has a political theme, it's shot much more slickly than in years past which defeats the whole point. Song's bad, ad's bad.

Waste more time, they're talking about how Idol's changed their lives--ha, like they go to a Horton premiere event. Some of the clips are recycled from the interviews they used yesterday, it's really boring.

Chikezie, Amanda, Kristy and Cook up next, obviously it'll be Kristy. Ryan pretends to call Chikezie down, everyone knows it's a fake out. Kristy's funny, she asks Ryan where's her microphone, she's ready to sing. And she does, it's no better than yesterday.

Ryan claims they're going to take our calls. Some 12-year-old girl, they already have her question up on the screen, asks an embarrassed Castro if he could be any judge which one would he be, he says Paula, he's the least like her, she's a girl.

Next, some guy asks the judges for advice on auditioning. Then some guy asks when Ryan and Simon are gonna fight for real. Funny, 2 of the 3 questions are about the judges. Now, 3 of the 4, some Brit asks Simon who has more singing talent, America or England. Obviously he says America--well, we have 5 times as many people, it'd be weird if we didn't.

Now back to more music by Brits, with David Foster and Katharine McPhee. She's all dolled up; like her much better now as a singer than I did as a competitor, she's not kissing up to anyone or trying to manipulate the voters. God, it does go on forever, these full-length guest performances are killer.

Well, they've wasted away 43 minutes. Back with group three, one of them could be going home says Ryan. Well, I'd say one of them definitely will be going home. Jim Carey pretends to be a contestant, it's pretty funny actually. David Hernandez will be the third even though Ramielle stands fourth, they're just doing that to mess with people. David Archuleta is obviously safe, to big screams; Brooke is next, she's safe too. Ramielle goes next, then Ryan reviews David, and it's indeed David.

Well, my bottom three matches America's. He makes all the same mistakes as last night in terms of being super cheesy. I fast-forward, and now the three of them hug all around. I'd be happiest if David goes home....

After the break, Randy says it's the right bottom three; Paula says something about this being a really strong bottom three, claims the whole country is talking about how superior this season's been; Simon says it's spot on. Syesha is safe--yaaay.

Maybe it really will be David? Kristy is safe, and wow, it really is sayonara to the stripper! Wow, what a great outcome. There's some weird moment on the goodbye video where the camera is just shakily pointing at the studio ceiling, it's very weird.

Totally looking forward to next week... maybe Carly will go.