American Idol 9: The Best Is Yet To Come, My Foot

It's Sinatra Night on American Idol, which means all the contestants are dolled up in their Sunday best and their instruments have been taken out of their hands. Creative control has been taken out of their hands as well and put into Harry Connick, Jr.'s. Harry will be arranging everyone's songs tonight to ensure that no one tries somethin' stupid, like a ska version of "Strangers in the Night."

Nancy and Tina Sinatra are brave enough to be in the audience this evening. Tina gives Simon one of Frank's monogrammed hankies as a gift, and the cranky ol' Brit seems genuinely touched. This is one of those times everyone is probably glad that Paula Abdul is no longer on the judges' panel. She definitely would've leaked some type of fluid on that keepsake.

What is up with the audio tonight? It's, like, five seconds behind the video. I've read some other recaps tonight and no one's mentioned it, so I guess this is just a problem with the cable in my area. Wow, this is really annoying.

Aaron Kelly is up first, and tries to put a Jamie Cullum spin on "Fly Me to the Moon." Tries being the operative word. He's really not bad—in fact, he's better than I expected—but I do hear a bit of that country twang creeping in every now and then. This kid is like Ambien in human form, but I have to give him props for singing the song well. Randy gives props, too. Ellen somehow didn't hear any country in that. Perhaps she was too busy thinking up clever barbs to throw at Harry to really listen. Kara tells Aaron he lacks charisma. Hey, she's finally speaking on a topic that she knows a lot about! Simon says that Aaron is just the mouse in King Frank's jungle, but at least he's a likable mouse.

Harry thinks Casey James will turn in a great performance of "Blue Skies," because he likes the way Casey uses the song to his bluesy advantage. If Casey did kill the song in rehearsal as Harry claims, then this is the biggest choke job ever because this is NOT. GOOD. I always thought it would be good to see Casey without his guitar, but I see now why he hides behind it. Much like Ricky Bobby, he doesn't know what to do with his hands...or the rest of his body. Or his face. Or his voice. Or the bleating. MY GOD, THE BLEATING! Well, Jim Breuer isn't on SNL anymore, so if this music thing doesn't work out, Casey can always go be Lorne Michaels' new Goat Boy. No one enjoys this performance, and Kara only now recognizes the vibrato issues that have plagued Casey all season long. However, when she calls him out on it, she likens him to the much cuter and fluffier lamb. Whatever animal he was channeling, I just know that Maa isn't going to be very happy that Casey gave away the sheep's password on national TV.

My picture is going nuts during the commercial break, but it seems that the audio and video is finally synced up now.

Anthony Hopkins in da house! Don't try to test him, Ryan Seacrest. A census taker tried to test him once...

Can I jam another pointless movie or TV reference in this recap? Let's see. Crystal Bowersox is singing "Summer Wind," a song that always reminds me of naked Martin Prince. (Yes!) She makes some cryptic remarks about this song having great meaning to her (lost love? maybe the baby daddy?) and then turns in a very pretty rendition. I'm more impressed with Dreadsocks™ tonight than ever before, so of course the judges (with the exception of Ellen) aren't that thrilled. Randy gets to use his 11th favorite word, "sleepy," while Simon gets to use his 4th favorite word, "indulgent." I seriously don't think he even knows what that word means. He also proclaims that Crystal has now had "two OK weeks," which also convinces me that he's losing his hearing. Last week, sure, that was kind of "meh," but this week was fantastic. What's up with the sudden de-pimpage of Crystal? Are they afraid that too much pimping will make her the next Melinda Doolittle? Possibly.

Michael Lynche is singing "The Way You Look Tonight" and...oh, come on! The damn audio is messed up again. Sheesh. Oh, this is nice. In trying to re-sync everything, the cable gods, or whoever is responsible for this, just cut off about the first 30-45 seconds of Mike's performance. From what I could hear, it sounded pretty good. The judges go completely apeshit though, so those missing seconds must have included the greatest vocals known to man.

Getting the pimp spot tonight is Lee Dewyze, singing "That's Life" in the most awkward manner possible. His vocals sound OK, but something about this is just off. The performance seems forced. I don't know what it is; I just don't dig it. But the judges just pick up where they left off with Michael and shower Lee with praise. Damn, they're overdoing it. Lee's gonna be picking little crumbs of praise out of his goatee for the next few days.

So, as with most of this season's performance nights, this one was fairly underwhelming. Then again, I was having a hard time concentrating. I'm much too excited about seeing Olivia Newton-John on Glee to care about these kids. After all, she was my American Australian idol back in the day.

Also, it seems that Jonathan Groff actually has lines this week! Yes! But Matthew Morrison is doing another rap song. Nooooooo!

Anyway, back to Idol for a sec. I'm guessing there is only a Bottom 2 now, so I'll have to guess that Aaron and Casey will be the lowest vote-getters and Casey will be going home. He can't possibly stick around after tonight, even if he does now have the support of VFTW. (They're encouraging people to "Goat" for the Worst. Ha ha.)


Find more Idol news and recaps at SirLinksaLot.