Well Archie hit Imagine out of the park again. Sorry, but that is just gorgeous. Winner winner chicken dinner.

I usually turn the channel when the judges start to tell them what they think because I can't handle Randy "DudeBro" Jackson, Paula "I'm so ate up" Abdul, and Simon. Has Simon always been an Archuletta fan club attendee?

Not really, last night on Leno he said he wanted Cook to win. I agree with Cook for doing something different but agree with Simon that it wasn't the right choice - too bad Archuleta did a song he's already done (weak) and knocked it out of the park.

Come on, can we get someone critiquing here that actually has an ear for real music instead of high school musical crap?

I thought Cook's middle song was pretty good considering the usual songs that come from the Idol pool.

Agreed. Why are all the song choices every year fluffed-out? It's so sappy and cheesey time to shine, the chance is now, here's the moment, etc etc. No substance just generic ass lyrics

Cook is so much more entertaining it isn't even funny

I thought it was absolute BS that Cook got crap for the second song, when everyone knows the songs they choose for the competition are all trite, cliche-ridden sappy pieces of crap. In other words, out of the 10 songs they got to choose from, all 10 fit Archie's style, and probably 3 of them were able to be competently re-arranged into a pop/rock song. I thought Cook did a great job with that awful song. Please, next year, do away with the songwriting competition and hire real writers who can whip something up that fits the style of the final 2 contestants to make it a fair fight. For both of their middle songs, each judge started their comments with, "I didn't care for the song, but..." Well guess what? YOUR producers forced them to sing those songs, AND the winner is going to release their song as a single.

As far as the rest, Archie did nothing surprising. He's always had the best voice, hands down. Congratulations, you can sing songs 50 year olds love. Good for you. I thought he got shown up on the last choice when Cook explained why he didn't just do something he already had performed. I hada ton of respect for Cook at that point - Simon essentially told him he screwed his chances of winning, and Cook said he didn't care. Bravo.

I thought the U2 song was blah, and I was very happy to see that the Collective Soul song was saved from last week (he was going to do it then, but apparently pulled it back for tonight)...but honestly, I didn't think he did as much with it as I was hoping he would. It was way too low-key and needed far more bombast to end the night on a huge swell of emotion. It was good, but not as good as I thought it would be.

Wife has been a "happy with either" for the last week. After tonight's show she is now firmly Archuleta. I am definitely happy with either. I would lean towards thinking Cook is more deserving in the overall scheme of the show, but Archuleta was a little better tonight. I expect it to be a pretty close one, definitely could go either way.

This is pretty right on with what I thought. It was his best of the night, and I was happy to see him put one together since his first two were extremely meh. He could definitely have (and should have) done more with it, though. I will probably watch this episode again when I get home tomorrow. I am interested in hearing that Elton John song again since my opinion was so far from my wife's and the judges'. Might as well just hit all of the performances again.

Archuleta is so boring

The best part of tonight's show was when they showed Archie rehearsing with ALW and Webber read one of the lines of his "songwriting contest" choice and said something to the effect of, "Did Simon Cowell write these lyrics?" Awesome.

Also a great moment was when all three judges made a negative comment about one of the songs, and then I think the camera panned to the person who wrote it.

Frontier column is up:

http://www.solecismic.com/frontierblog/?p=257

Overall: A decent, but not memorable finale, featuring what should mercifully be the end of the Idol Gives Tinnitus songwriting contest. The expected winner was surprisingly bad, and the teeny-bopper surprisingly effective.

Jim, I thought you were dead-on about Cook and Archie's last songs. I meant to post earlier that Archie took way too many liberties with the melody of Imagine, and it pissed me off about 20 seconds into it. Great voice, but absolutely butchered the song.

BTW, did anyone think that odd jacket Archie was wearing that prominently featured an anchor was symbolism for his dad weighing him down?

Anyone else find it fitting that after a season where they seemed to love torturing the contestants with songs written before they were born the finale went with a theme of boxing? Talk about a perfect marriage of the out-dated.

dola: Oh, and I loved the remark Cook made about why he chose his song instead of recycling something followed by the introduction of Archuleto (sp?) and his recycled song which he has probably done about 500 times by now.


This was completely setup for the kid to win. The first song choices fell right in line with that. Cook couldn't have done too much with the U2 song to really stand while the kid gets a song tailor made for his style and this show. We knew Cook was the one getting hosed with the song written for them. In the one that counted (IMHO); Cook won that with his performance (even though the judges seemed to think differently).

It may have been set up for Archie to win, but I'm not so sure he will. It may have been more of a set up to give Archie his night, knowing that there was a very good chance tonight would be Cook's night. That's my thought.

I didn't get the symbolism, but man that was a goofy looking jacket. I'm not an Archuleta fan at all - I think he has some good moments, but overall is not that great of a singer and is getting extra praise because he's young. If he was, say, 25, I think he would have been booted weeks ago.

The accidentally caught the teleprompter on camera during Archuleta's first song - do they have one all year long?

I missed the teleprompter. That's an interesting issue, considering he's flubbed the lyrics 2 or 3 times this year. And I was just cracking a joke about the jacket. It was the first thing that came to my mind when trying to figure out why he would wear a jacket with an anchor on it.

Clearly, the jacket is a symbol for my hope that his singing voice/recording career ends up sunk to the bottom of the Great Salt Lake.

Take this all FWIW. I usually don't post second hand information, but I think some of you might be interested in it. It is in the spoiler tag because it has to do with Tonight's results.

bsak:

If that was last week, I think it has been pretty obvious for several weeks who has been in the lead and who was going to win. I'm not sure what the "fixed" answer means, but I think the winner tonight was going to win regardless of the performances last night. And if things hold true to form, that will be the case. I don't think there are enough swing votes to change the outcome, and one has had a fairly sizeable lead over the other for a while now. Despite what Randy "you could sing the phone book in anotha hot (z)one" Jackson wants you to believe.

But we'll see. I'll say this...if Dial Idol is wrong, it will take a huge credibility hit. And I don't think it's going to be wrong.

Right I agree with you Ksyrup. I haven't been following Idol that close, mainly just on the weeks they did the Beatles and Neil Diamond. It was just something I thought some of you might be interested in.

I wish you were right - I'm a big Cook fan - but I think Lil' Archie is going to win, and its probably not going to be all that close, unfortunately.

Dial Idol says otherwise. And if you've seen the estimated votes (or gaps between the two) for the past several weeks, Lil' Archie has actually been closer to being in the bottom 2/3 (or may have been, but wasn't put in there) than he was to Cook. There were a couple of weeks where I think some shenanigans were pulled and someone other than Archie was put in the bottom 2/3. Can't prove it, of course, but his support has dramatically fallen off over the course of the competition, despite what the AI Hype Machine would have you believe.

It may be close, but I will be shocked if Cook doesn't win. In fact, AI will have a credibility problem if Archie wins, because all of the leading indicators (not just DI) say Cook wins.

Agreed, considering the likely pool of songs that he had, I think David's middle song was passable to good.

I haven't even looked DialIdol today, but in previous weeks, Cook has had a significant lead. I think Archie was better last night, but I still think Cook will/should win because of his better performances over the length of the season.

I was driving home yesterday before the show, and the radio station had call ins and people give their votes/opinions/who they wanted to win...

30 people called....all for Cook...

Being from Utah I want to root for Archuleta, but I hate to see this...with his father acting like a "Pageant" Mother, it ruins my appreciation for his work, he has been trained just for this moment, thats it.

Cook on the other hand, has the charisma that is needed, and it is what has helped him all along, I truly feel and hope, he takes it tonight.

There are any things you can do help try to get a result - Song choice, withholding certain comments, giving a singer varying amounts of vocal coaching or advice. I don't know if I would call some of those fixing, but it helps. I've seen plenty of contestants get called on being old fashioned and fried when they forgot their lyrics, but David A did both this year and has been given a free pass.

Does Idol go the extent to discard votes or ignore votes? Hmm.. I doubt it, but it wouldn't shock me. (I think if that ever came out the Idol franchise would be dead)

As of this morning I am leaning more towards Cook because he has been more consistent and more dynamic as far as his range of styles. I'm pretty pleased that at least this season the finals actually contain what I thought were easily the top 2 all season. The last 2 seasons, I was pretty sure that at least one of the final 2 didn't really deserve to be there over the 3rd (or even lower, possibly, in Taylor's case) placed contestant. In that sense, this has been the best idol season in at least the last 3, for me, anyway.

I think judge manipulation has been pretty clearly there on occassion. I would guess that they wouldn't go near manipulating vote totals with a 10 mile pole (other than legitimate cases of voting fraud which they have a disclaimer for, if I remember correctly). Some might argue that opens the door, but I think they wouldn't do anything with that without a very strong case. Too big a cash cow to ruin it by making voters lose faith in the process. Reminds me of the online poker being rigged debate, actually.

I know Bucc has argued that the disclaimer at the end gives them the right to discard the vote, but honestly, I just don't think they could or would do that simply to get the "right" person to win. Just look at the furor Paula's comments about hearing the rehearsal performances started. If there was even a whisper that AI rigged the vote - especially for the finals - that would be devastating to the show.

Agreed. This is my 3rd season watching Idol and this was by far, imo, the best final 2 of those three seasons.

It will be interesting to me. I have liked Cook better by a far shot this season, but I feel like Archuletta was on-point on every song last night. The only way Cook exceed him was in showing variety in styles - but the performances were not up to par with Archuletta's.

It did seem like Cook had an off night last night, but the strength of his performances over the course of the season easily surpasses Mr. One Dimension.

YOu have to take that sort of thing with a grain of salt.

There may have been just as many people calling for Archie but the producers only let the Cook callers through.

Was the station a rock station?

Maybe he's trying to tell us he's "in the navy".

Just entering in this thread to point something curious from the Spanish version of American Idol.

This year we have the first non Spanish to enter the show, and also the first Gay (or that have admitted it) ever. He is named Chipper, and he is from USA. He felt in love with a Spanish guy when they both lived in Japan and they got married in Spain 3 months ago.

Then he decided to apply for "Operacion Triunfo" (American Idol in Spain) and he is probably going to win it as he is the public favorite after 6 weeks. his only problem are the Spanish songs as he knows little Spanish, but of course he does the English ones pretty well.

His most famous moment is when his husband came to the show by surprise and they had a long kiss:

http://beta.dailymotion.com/TonyaKer...nfo_shortfilms

And he is Chipper singing "My girl":
http://beta.dailymotion.com/TonyaKer...irl_shortfilms

I actually rewound the Tivo (I still find myself using VCR vernacular even though I've been all digital for years now...) when I also noticed the teleprompter. There were 2 or 3 occasions I picked up on when it was visible.

I can't believe they had one all year. My guess is that they didn't want either of the Final Two to flub it up on the finale.

What a weenie, singing that same song again at the end.

It pretty much defined him as the one trick pony he is.

It will be great to see his life and career go to hell once his father has full control over him.

E True Hollywood story in the making

It even felt uncomfortable when they introduced the song. It was "Uh, yeah, he's doing Imagine again. Sorry."

I bet he sings that shit every night on the tour. Barf - o - rama.

Expected results from zabasearch (correct on the finals the last 2 seasons) and dialidol (right on the finals the last 3 seasons) the winner is...

I like how Rueben was sweating before he even started signing.

We had a big lunch today with about 20 office staff, 18 who watched the final. 15 were rooting for Cook to win tonight. 2 of them actually voted, both for Cook.

Isn't that pretty much SOP, though? I know Jordan did a repeat last year, and I think Blake may have as well...

Dola-

Of course, I was really glad to see Cook sing World I Know. I was bummed that he didn't sing it last week...

We had a staff lunch, and the opinion was the opposite. They all felt for sure DA was going to win, so I had to burst their bubbles a little. Someone made a comment about DA being so young and where he'd be in five years. My answer: On a rap sheet

Holy crap, watching Amanda Overmeyer just now was awesome! Not the vocals, which were predictably horrid. No, it was her feigning the group-sing parts and walking through the steps as if she was on her way to death row.

Oh, and I have to ask...back when Castro did Hallelujah, I missed the performance. But I remember how everyone when nuts for it. Well, I just saw him perform it again...was that anywhere near how he performed it the first time? Because if it was, then the reaction was 99% to the song, not the performance. That was atrocious. That's a testament to the strength of that song that someone can sing it that badly and get that kind of unwarranted reaction. Wow.

A Bryan Adams sighting! I didn't even know he was still alive.

Strangely enough, he sounded better tonight than he did when I saw him in 1985.