We're all somewhat shocked by James Durbin's Thursday Night elimination but something I initially picked up on live on Wednesday Night didn't truly ring true to me or raise a red flag of any sorts until I did my weekly encore viewing of each night's broadcasts late night Friday. It should have, and it started to for a few brief seconds, but they ended up being very fleeting ones and my failure to trust my instincts was the reason why I didn't make a bigger stink about it at the time. Now granted, it was already all hindsight at that point during my second viewing of it but I did feel that even at the time that I found it tellingly interesting how Seacrest felt inclined to remind viewers that this was the point of the competition in which they lost the now established rock star Chris Daughtry of his namesake band Daughtry. As if that wasn't too subtle, a nod (both figuratively and literally) aimed at James Durbin himself (fellow rocker + 4th Place!) was enough of a tip off that we all should have recognized at the time as foreshadowing of things to come and/or at least enough of a heeding that it was no time for complacency to become en vogue if a James Durbin booster.
It stands to reason that the roughing up of Hayley Reinhart by Randy Jackson and Jennifer Lopez, although primarily Jackson, is a huge reason that it was not Hayley (once again) packing her bags to go home, and not just for the quite over the top but very in-style American Idol homecoming they reserve for the Top 3 finalists every season. It's quite possible that Hayley's now presumed sympathy vote tally elevated her enough to propel her into the Top 3 whereas it would have normally been her going home, or even Lauren Alaina. Hayley's first performance indeed wasn't anything short of disaster and had the now re-sensitized American Idol viewing audience not been initially volatile in reaction to Randy Jackson's actual critique of Hayley Reinhart's first song tanking, things very well might have taken a different turn and thereby sustaining James Durbin's spot on the show instead of Hayley's.
And that might not have even been the point of disintegration for Durbin's Idol stint at that point. It's very plausible that the audience really didn't turn on Jackson (and even Lopez for that matter) until Randy rather rudely and even unprofessionally answered Seacrest's question of who was singing the best after Round 1 with his obnoxious quip about it being a three-way tie (sans Hayley of course) - when we were down to the Top 4. And I am a huge Randy Jackson fan; make no mistake about it. I love the Dawg but his piling onto Hayley instead of shortening his critique to more concise, summarized points was nothing short of emotional abuse of a frequently criticized contestant while others have gone unscathed due to blatantly vicious double standards of judging week in and week out. So every week Hayley has surprised us by outlasting someone, she has perhaps gained the support of the previous contestant's voting block for the next week. Now I would venture to guess that James' voting block will be that much more all in or all out with her now because they might not want to go country but they might not want to reward the very person they might (again, rather unfairly) scapegoat as the reason why James Durbin is home with Heidi and Hunter right now minus the ticker-tape parade and key to the city. Or they could surprise us again and either divide right down the middle or just sit on the sidelines out of sheer protest.
And it could also be that while a good portion of viewers turned on Hayley for giving what was really some much needed and even more deserved sass right back at Jackson and Lopez (where was the criticism of Scotty McCreery for hardly ever mixing it up or not showing off his admittedly underrated range?), it also endeared her to just as many others, if not many more. She might have also earned a lot of respect and admiration - and more importantly, votes - from people who actually realized that Hayley Reinhart is not the "Queen B" type her detractors are wrongly vilifying her for being but rather the America's Sweetheart type singer who has morphed into the Rocky contestant of the season and would probably become the greatest upset winner ever on the show with the possible exception of Taylor Hicks.
Hayley Reinhart is an attractive 20 year-old with range, personality, charisma, and a knack for chopping block survival and outside of back-to-back off first performances the past two weeks, has peaked at the right time in the home stretch of the competition. The combination of this and the quite possible taking for granted voting contingency of James Durbin helped form the perfect storm for Durbin to be unceremoniously discarded too early.
Casey Abrams was eliminated twice with the most interesting range of the competition. James Durbin had the craziest range of all the competition. And Pia Toscano had the most beautiful range of all the competition this year. They were all voted off prematurely (Casey twice - although he had some growling issues each time at least) and when executive producer Nigel Lythgoe immediately pounced on the boisterous backlash over Pia's ousting, it was with the news that Ms. Toscano never had the traction and polling we had all led ourselves to believe she had. It's still Cougar Country and the words cougar and country are very much relevant to the competition these days. America screwed it up royally last year when the very affable and nice but ultimately bland Lee DeWyze outlasted the more perceived aloof but vastly superiorly talented Crystal Bowersox (for any doubt, please consult the Tuesday Night broadcast of last year's season finale in which Ms. Bowersox wiped the floor with Mr. DeWyze).
Lee's a good guy. And Crystal's not the distant personality she's made out to be. However, the voting patterns on American Idol in recent years have definitely been trending towards the personality and preferred personal genre tastes of the voting viewers rather than who actually deserves to win the show and James Durbin's ousting is a harsh reminder of this disturbing trend. I will be writing soon about why the show needs to be very worried about The Voice and this trend is another reason. Of course, those same cougars and teenage girls could very well be depriving talented young acts like Casey Weston and Casey Diamond on NBC in the weeks to come. (Casey Weston by the way is my new personal favorite; she's already very social media savoy, she is extremely gracious with Facebook postings and Twitter messages - and yes, I already speak from experience. And make no mistake about it - the mature and social media savoy 18 year-old high school senior is playing the game quite shrewdly already just like Scotty McCreery is every week on FOX.)
And all this leads back to the end of Wednesday Night's broadcast. Ryan Seacrest will never cop to it, whether by free will or by pressure of those who pay him his staggering annual salary, but it's also quite possible he subconsciously hinted towards the one man who really did deserve to win the show from the very beginning when the measuring stick is what it's supposed to be: talent, range, artistry, and consistency, consistency, and more consistency. (And his back story! Where's the overly emotional Idol audience on that one?!!)
Ryan's seen this movie before a million times - and he's privy to the results before they air them and he probably sees the trends of voters. Many people already felt that the producers wanted the Scotty-James showdown everyone felt was going to happen (especially with Casey and Pia out of the way to help pave the way that much more) and instead, barring complacency on Scotty's fans' part and/or a split in the country vote with Lauren Alaina, we now have the clear runaway winner waiting in the wings in two weeks in Scotty McCreery.
The slamming of Hayley, although deserved, and although the same audience critical of the judges for not being just that - more critical this season - performed their own double standard and overcorrected Jackson's initially dead on and perfectly civil critiquing of Hayley Reinhart and instead lumped that into his more obnoxious follow up comment and probably helped Hayley get enough support to live another day - again.
Of course, it probably would have stood to reason that it still was her time to go and yet we are bidding adieu to James - and hopefully just for the show because he actually has much better than most post-Idol viability if developed correctly - and fast - i.e. Pia Toscano. And as James sang "Maybe I'm Amazed" one more time on the stage, the song title finally rang true the first time around and perhaps we were all amazed that he was the one going home but perhaps Ryan Seacrest was amazed too and that he saw a writing on the wall that had nothing to do with voter backlash, judges' comments of a competing contestant, hurt feelings, hyper-sensitive oriented viewers, self-contradictorily natured voters becoming as schizophrenic in their voting patterns as the judges are with their judging standards for all the contestants, and the whole nine yards before any of us did and that he was amazed that we didn't heed his warning in the guise of subtle but powerfully direct verbal cues and a physical gesture lost upon an increasingly less music-sophisticated voting audience and American music listener.
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