The Morning After: Idolimination

SPOILER ALERT: A few thoughts on list night's American Idol elimination coming up—after the break!

I have to hand it to Jason Castro: he seemed to know what was coming and shrugged off his ousting with grace and good humor. ("Somebody told me that I shot the tambourine man yesterday.") There were dreads on his head, but no dread in his heart.

Castro, and anyone else ejected from Idol, has a good example to follow in the person of one of my all-time Idol favorites, Bo Bice, who resurfaced on last night's show. Whether it's his own character or just the unanticipated time he spent under the radar owing to his post-season-4 health problems (which he mentioned on an earlier show this season), but Bice seems to have escaped the Idol soul-extraction machine and managed to produce music that sounds like Bo Bice. "Witness," the single he performed last night, may not be an instant classic, but it was true to his Southern-rock style and had an authenticity missing from so many post-Idol debuts. He also strapped on a guitar and showed that—unlike Castro and David Cook—he can also play lead. I can't imagine he'd have beaten Carrie Underwood even if Idol contestants were allowed to play instruments in season 4, but I have to wonder what it would have been like.

So, what next? It's not original to say it, but Idol is like a political primary, especially in the closing rounds: with every ejection comes the calculus of who will benefit, who will inherit the most votes from the ejectee's base, and who will split the most votes with the singer who was spared elimination. With Jason, it's a tough call. I thought that he had more potential to siphon votes from David Archuleta, because they both fall in the nonthreateningly-cute-boy category; Mrs. Tuned In thinks that he probably drew more from David Cook, since his music leans more to rock and Syesha is stylistically closer to David A.

Your thoughts? Is there any chance Syesha can pull enough votes from either David, or are we looking forward to a battle of the Daves in the finale?