'American Idol': The Upside-Down Show

Share this article

• Tweet

All About

American Idol

Get the latest photos, news, and more

3. Rejected contestants scored laughs, without getting bleeped Seriously, I want to go to the restaurant where DeAnna Prevatte works as a waitress. Preferably on all-you-can-eat Sunday. I mean, with blunt, lethargically delivered zingers like hers — ''If I don't sound any better than Kellie Pickler, I really don't want to be here'' — who needs the writers' strike to end? And while she didn't deserve a golden ticket, in all honesty, her down-on-her-knees, shoulder-straps-in-peril rendition of ''Fancy'' wasn't dreadful. Raysharde ''the Black Clay Aiken'' Henderson was similarly acrobatic on his audition, prompting Simon's best comment of the night: ''I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd done a magic trick in the middle of that.''

4. The judges kept beating up on their own Hollywood selections Not that I'm disagreeing, but how odd of Simon and Randy to tell London Weidberg that her ''Good Morning Heartache'' was ''not the best audition'' and was no better or worse than ''thousands of singers,'' then send her to Hollywood anyway? Is it because she's got a great pop-star name? Likewise, Simon told the aforementioned Amy Flynn that half the audience would find her annoying, and Michelle Lampkin that she needed work, before advancing them to the next round as well.

Of course, no matter how many fast ones Idol pulls in a given audition episode, there's one constant you can count on: There'll be at least a couple blessedly unskilled vocalists who won't be able to take no for an answer. I had to chuckle when Ryan's voice-over noted that ''the big guns'' were coming out as the camera cut to busty Aretha Codner. And while you've got to question the taste level of any woman who'd squeeze into that baby-blue monstrosity, her segment wouldn't have been so painful if she'd taken her rejection slip and gone back to Buffalo, especially since we've heard equally bad versions of ''I Have Nothing'' from actual Idol finalists (I'm looking at you, Leah LaBelle!). Sadly, though, Aretha had sprayed on the Eau de Incredulity before her trip south, resulting in howlers about her perceived vocal prowess.

Lucky for the Not Queen of Soul, she was followed by something far worse — Joshua Boson's wretchedly off-key ''And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going,'' a performance you just know the kid had practiced and blocked hundreds of times in front of his bedroom mirror, safely drowned out by Jennifer Hudson turned up to 10. While Joshua responded to his rejection with standard outrage, Simon noted that ''it wasn't a great audition'' with dramatic understatement. Hey, at least somebody got the memo that Charleston was all about zigging when you were expected to zag.

Speaking of the unexpected, were you alarmed by Randy's plunging neckline on day 2 of the Charleston auditions? Did any of the successes or failures catch you off guard? And after two weeks of auditions, do you have a contestant you're most looking forward to hearing in Hollywood?