The weird thing is, even if the judges had done their jobs, called out Little David's mistakes, and opined that he'd put himself at risk of a bottom-three moment, there's no freakin' way America would've given him the boot, certainly not after the Brooke White International Incident of Season 7. (I use ''international'' both to note the grandeur of her catastrophe and also to acknowledge the Argentine setting of the musical from which she drew her number.)

Let me pause here for a moment to collect my thoughts, maybe even dab the corners of my eyes with a Kleenex.

Look, I like the Brooke. I can even envision a day in the future (probably somewhere around Thanksgiving 2008) when I stroll down to the record store (all old-school-like) and pick up her CD. Because I like the timbre of her voice. And because her song selections over the past 10 weeks indicate that she may actually produce the kind of material that would fit into my iPod as easily as butter finds its way into the nooks and crannies of an English muffin. (Side note: I am totally going to cheat on my diet before I finish writing this column.)

But as far as her ''You Must Love Me'' goes, you might as well steal an o right out of the woman's name, because her Idol dreams broke right there on the stage tonight for everyone to see. It wasn't just the fact that Brooke ''lost the lyric'' (her words) only a few seconds into Madonna's Evita deathbed ballad, promptly stopped the band, and basically cried, ''Do-over!'' As Simon pointed out, the flub seemed to shake the G-rated nanny to the core, and it made the performance tense and uncomfortably tremulous. Indeed, Brooke's escalating nerves over the last few weeks — the piano blunders during ''Hero,'' the tears at the end of ''You've Got a Friend'' — seem to indicate that the Idol stage isn't the right venue for her. Perhaps an intimate club with a maximum audience of 1,500 (where no teenage girls robotically wave their arms in the front row) would be a better fit? I think at this point even Brooke's biggest fans would have to admit that a sixth-place finish should (and probably will) be her happy ending.

Still, while I think America would be doing the right thing if it sent Brooke and Little David to the bottom two, I fear the producers are probably more likely to get their way, and that's going to be bad news for Jason Castro. And it's going to make me very cranky.

Here's the crazy thing: I've spent four seasons covering American Idol for EW.com, and never before have I been more in agreement with Paula, and less in agreement with Simon, than with regard to their respective opinions of Jason's ''Memory.'' Granted, the guy probably should've Googled his song choice at some point in the last week — thereby robbing us of his ''I didn't know a cat was singing it'' sound bite — but his performance, well, I'm not even gonna try to pretend it didn't touch me in a way that never would've happened if it had been trotted out in the traditional Big Diva Number fashion. Paula's point that there was a Joe Cocker quality to the performance made perfect sense; Simon's ''miserable'' label left me aghast. I mean, there's a purity to the dreadlocked dude's voice, and an emotional connection so deep, it transcends the occasional wobble of pitch. And yeah, I know I'm veering dangerously close to a Paula-ism (''It further identifies your unique being as an artist!''), but I guess my point is either you get him or you don't. And I get him.

NEXT: Carly's ''Superstar'' turn

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