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: Althouse

Was it fair to introduce duets when there were 4 contestants left and 3 were males?

It meant ? on "American Idol" last night ? that one of the male contestants would have the advantage of singing with the lone female and the other 2 males would have to sing with each other. An added complexity is that one of the males is perceived as gay.

Is Adam Lambert openly gay? It's never talked about or alluded to on the show. And ? the theme was rock ? when he sang "Whole Lotta Love" for his solo last night the line "Way down inside, woman, you need me" was utterly convincing ? thrilling, even.

But the perceived gayness of Adam made it a special disadvantage ? or should I say a special problem ? for him to be paired with one of the other males, and I think that was what determined that Kris Allen and Danny Gokey would need to be the male pair, and that Adam would go with Allison Iraheta.

Or do you think that the producers put Allison with Adam to hurt Kris/Danny? The theory is: Either Danny/Kris must go this week, because you want to keep the only female and you can't lose the truly exciting Adam. (Is Adam in danger? He was in the bottom 2 last week in a shocker, but he probably wasn't anywhere near the actual last-place finisher, Matt Giraud. And the seeming close call lit a fire under his fans, so they'd call like mad this week.)

So, put Danny and Kris side by side and let people judge who is better. In the duet, it was clear that Danny was better. Unfortunately for Danny, he subsequently performed solo, attempted to sing "Dream On," and was perfectly awful. Painful, really. What happened?

The whole point of "Dream On" are the screams Steven Tyler pulls off at the end, the ones that Adam Lambert could have pulled off at the end ... and as Gokey was going through this song, it seemed like he was just going to rearrange the song to avoid them. Jen and I kept looking at each other -- now will he? -- and then, when he did, it missed as much as Scott Macintyre missed everything on "The Search Is Over," as much as Corey Clark on "Against All Odds." It was brutal. Both on his cumulative downwards slide and especially on tonight, he deserves to go home now.

Spooked by Adam's superiority, then?

Speaking of "Dream On," I dreamed I was watching the results show ? yes, lame of me to dream I'm watching "American Idol" ? and Danny lost ? not only lost, but they ran out of time and deprived him of the farewell video montage.

Here, now be careful:

AND: It's viral!

Full post as published by Althouse on May 06, 2009 (boomark / email).