Amy’s Final 12

Okie dokie …

I’m scrambling to get this posted before the Results show airs,

So here’s the scoop:

I’ve always marvelled at how incredibly efficient the production engineers were for American Idol,

Being able to take live cuts from each contestants’ performance during the show,

And assembling it in time for the recap at the end of the show.

Quite impressive I’ve always thought.

I don’t know how they do it,

Especially the later contestants.

They have like 2 minutes during a commercial break to pick, edit and insert that last performance segment,

With the chyron finished,

Making sure they have the correct numbers and all for the right people.

Logistically speaking,

I thought it was impressive,

Until Tuesday night,

When I figured out how they do it.

I noticed during the recap of the contestants’ performances a couple of things:

First with Mandisa,

Who I thought kicked some serious butt that night,

Bringing in the best of all the performances,

Seemed a little off in the recap they had for her …

And I didn’t remember her being off at all in her performance.

Then I noticed with Kellie Picklers’ recap:

Her hair was in her face at a spot in the song where I didn’t remember it being in her face;

During her final lyrics, I was thinking she needed to do the “tap her chest” move when singing “I’m the only one”,

But she didn’t during her performance;

However,

During the recap,

She did.

Odd I say,

But I let it slide,

Because in doing the proper “tap her chest” move,

She tapped the left side of her chest with her left hand,

(Drunk girl singing karaoke tip: When singing, never, ever do the “tap your chest” move by crossing your chest, it makes you appear defensive. Always tap the side of the chest with the same arm, it’s much more inviting.)

But since Kellie did it correctly in the recap,

I wrote it off again to maybe just being at a different camera angle when she sang the song during her performance.

However,

My suspicions were clearly heightened at this point.

Which is when I noticed something that answered it all,

The people behind Kellie in the recap,

Were different than the people behind Kellie during her performance.

Apparently,

They do a phreaking complete dress rehearsal with all the contestants, all the contestants seeing each other perform, and having a full crowd there,

Before they do the live show.

It’s during the dress rehearsal they cut out some of the edits for the recap at the end of the show.

For what’s it worth,

I also noticed that during the show itself,

They change the people sitting in the audience.

Not everyone,

But some,

Especially the seats, front row, stage left, looking at the butt of the contestants as they approach the judges,

Usually family members or friends of the contestant performing sit there.

They roll them out during the commercial breaks.

Now I can’t say for certain they use recaps from the dress rehearsal for all of the contestants,

Though I did analyse the beejeebers out of it once I got wind of what was going on,

Gawd luv TiVo and TiVo-like devices !!!

The contestants earlier in the show didn’t have good crowd shots in the recaps,

But they definitely did use dress rehearsal edits for Mandisa and Kellie,

And in this case,

Mandisa got shafted,

And Kellie got an edge.

Cause ya see,

Mandisa’s show performance was better than her dress rehearsal performance,

And Kellie’s dress rehearsal closing was much stronger than her show closing.

Yeah,

I know,

I’m phreaking weird,

Who notices that krap !!!

Anyways,

Now that you’ve been totally bored to death,

Here’s my show summary:

As a whole,

Both the boys and the girls were lackluster.

The good ones not necessarily bad,

But not really creating any spark,

Except for:

Boys: I wasn’t a Gedeon fan at first, in fact, I really didn’t like him at all. But I’ll admit, he’s definitely growing on me. I really enjoyed him Wednesday night. And Taylor is still a total nut. Not only don’t I get him, but he’s starting to annoy me, and you don’t want to annoy me. Nonetheless, he had the best performance of the night for the boys. Actually, his was the only one I remembered this morning. That means something.

Girls: It wasn’t even close … Mandisa wasted the competition. She kicks ass. Though speaking of ass, seriously people, a girl that large should never wear jeans on stage. A lot of denim had to die for that visual. In second place though was my girl Kellie. She’s still a nervous wreck on-stage and her moves aren’t that quite natural, but let’s be real, the girl is smart enough to know that dropping to her knees while on-stage is good enough for an easy million votes. Don’t count her out quite yet, just on her street smarts skills alone.

I’m not going to predict who is going to get kicked off this week ,

Instead,

I’m going to share who I want to make the final twelve,

In no particular order,

Yeah right:

Boys: Chris, Elliott, Gedeon, Taylor, Ace, Kevin

Girls: Mandisa, Kellie, Katharine, Lisa, Paris, Melissa

That means I’d send home Bucky, Will, Ayla and Kinnik.

I know,

That’s sort of controversial …

Not with Will and Kinnik of course,

Those are easy toss-aways.

But one would think Bucky should stay longer than Kevin,

I mean,

There’s no way Kevin is going to win it,

But neither can Bucky,

And Kevin has a better voice.

Then with Ayla,

Though she has a better voice than Melissa,

And Melissa was really sharp in spots of her performance,

In fact,

That’s probably an understatement,

At least Melissa was fun to watch and went all out,

While Ayla played it safe and boring,

Not to mention,

Ayla phreaking wore parachute capris with the ugliest pair of high wedge sandals ever !!!

For kripes sake,

That’s just not right !!!