Shock and Awe

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
[aloud]
Captain Renault: Everybody out at once!

OK, so after this past Thursday's "shocking" result with Jessica Sanchez having to sing for her life until J-Lo angrily took the mic away from her, I feel the need to break my silence and comment on the events just past.

I am not at all surprised by what happened, and not because I buy into the conspiracy theory floating around that this was all a set up to justify using the judges' save to get the season back on schedule because of Jermaine Jones' disqualification. Despite the fact that Miss Sanchez is one of the better singers in the competition the odds are stacked against her winning this competition, particularly this week. Why? Glad you asked...

About half of the voters left on this show are preteen girls who are voting for the cutest guy, which right now is still a contest between Colton Tebow/Dixon and Mr. One Trick Pony Phillip Phillips. This is why Phillip was safe even though popular opinion was that he was one of the worst performers Wednesday night.

Another quarter of the voters are country fans who are sending all their love to Skyler Laine, the only contestant with any semblance of country in her.

That leaves only a quarter of the remaining votes for the remaining contestants, and most of them are over 35 cougars who were likely turned off by this week's theme of songs from this decade. Since no one chose an Adele or Foo Fighters song I didn't recognize any of the songs the contestants sung this week, and I'm sure many of the cougars didn't either and thus didn't bother to vote. On top of that, there is the other teenage girl in the competition, Hollie Cavanagh and her strange English/Texan accent, who was treated as Dead Girl Singing by the judges and the silent audience and thus generating sympathy votes from this relatively small group of voters, votes that were taken away from Jessica.

Given all that it should come as little surprise that Jessica had the lowest votes this week and that the other two remaining contestants, Joshua and Elise, joined her in the Bottom 3 even though all three of them were among the better performers this week.

This illustrates what I ranted about last season, that the audience for Idol has dwindled down to pre-teen girls and their mothers, and now even the pre-teen girls seem to be leaving Idol for The Voice. I suppose it could be worse, they could be leaving for Captain Jack's X-Factor instead. The producers are so desperate for a female winner this season but it doesn't appear that the audience that these same producers have been catering the show to the last few years will allow that to happen. As a result, we get dull but good looking male winners like Scotty McDreary and good singers like Jessica Sanchez are left standing on stage in shock.

And to think, I was really tempted to resume my recaps this season...