American Idol recap, Megan Joy, Allison and Adam stand out

By April MacIntyre Feb 26, 2009, 16:26 GMT

From Fox, Allison Iraheta

Full disclosure time: I don't get Nick 'Norman Gentle' Mitchell.  He's certainly comfortable in his own skin, and loves to play the buffoon, but he needs to open for Criss Angel in Vegas or have a Crackle.com webisode show, not be on the singing competition.

Watching last night's two-hour broadcast had a lot of confusing moments for me, and a few breakout wows.  Very few, actually.

The second round of twelve hopefuls were lesser than the first round, and they overwhelmingly selected the wrong songs, and even the ones who did very well performed with weird facial tics, grimaces and bizarre washing-machine agitation dancing with arms akimbo (you know who I am referring to).  Then the Emo Elvis trained in musical theater ended the whole show on a high note, but I don't think he is nearly as good a singer as last week's champ, Danny Gokey.

The first bright spot of the night was neon red-haired Allison Iraheta, who gives terrible interviews (she's 16, and not a "thinks fast on her feet" type) yet doles out powerful performances on stage, judge Randy Jackson was beaming, saying that she, "just blew it out the box." Her rendition of Heart's "Alone" was great.

"You don't even know how good you are," Kara DioGuardi told Iraheta. Paula Abdul said the teen could "sing the telephone book," and thoughtful Simon Cowell called her out on her lame pre-interview and said she needed to work on her personality.

Say what you will about Simon, but he nails the issue for each one of the contestants squarely on the head. Tact be damned.

All during this commentary, Allison grimaces, and exhibited about 50 weird facial tics that she will regret when watching the playback.

The next point of interest was the tattoo-sleeved Jennifer Garner look-alike, Megan Joy Corkrey, who like last week's Alexis Grace, has a face that the angels made, and a small child at home. 

I respect people's desire to don body art; after all, there are momentous occasions and notable people in one's life that a scrapbook simply falls short of, and a nice tatt fills the sentimentality gap.

Beautiful women should never have them. Sorry, flame me if you like, but this gorgeous girl ruined her right arm with a sleeve of what looks like an oil spill on TV. 

Also troubling was the bizarre washing machine dance she did while holding her arms tight to the side and flailing her forearms as she agitated, never moving her feet.  What was that?  People are calling it the Corkrey in news items.  Bad dance trend if you ask me.

But tattoos and dancing aside, she has an Edie Brickell-ish feel to her music and that's not so bad. 

The last high note was Adam Lambert, 27, who has been doing musical theater since he was ten.

He reminds me of an Emo Elvis impersonator.  His voice is killer and he is purty. Adam performed "Satisfaction." a la the King plus a bit of Billy Idol.

All that LA theater training has paid off for Lambert, who worked the stage like a pro. He essentially made love to the camera lens, mind-melding the audience to LOVE HIM.

Paula does loves him and announces the show has turned into an "Adam Lambert concert." Simon said parts were "excruciatingly bad," but others were "brilliant." And Randy fell in line with sycophantic Paula, calling Lambert the most current artist ever on "Idol."

He compared Lambert to a blend of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, Fall Out Boy, "Twilight" star Robert Pattinson and My Chemical Romance.

This guy already bugs me.

FOX says that the top male and female vote-getters — plus the next-highest vote-getter, regardless of gender — will advance into the top 12 on Thursday (February 26) night's results show.

The final group of 12 will perform next Tuesday, followed by a results show on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, March 5, is the still-confusing wild-card round.

So, who were your top three?