Post before. During. After. Not at all.

Yes, Nigel, you are in fact losing your audience. And five million paper cuts equals a lot of blood...

• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 09:08 PM, 03-01-12
• Skids sideways into thresd,Snidget, 09:16 PM, 03-01-12
• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 09:22 PM, 03-01-12
  • RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,qwertypie, 09:38 PM, 03-01-12
    • RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Snidget, 09:44 PM, 03-01-12
    • RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 09:45 PM, 03-01-12
• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 09:43 PM, 03-01-12
  • RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Snidget, 09:46 PM, 03-01-12
• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 10:00 PM, 03-01-12
• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 10:12 PM, 03-01-12
• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 10:22 PM, 03-01-12
• psst,moonbaby, 10:26 PM, 03-01-12
  • RE: psst,Estee, 10:32 PM, 03-01-12
    • RE: psst,moonbaby, 10:37 PM, 03-01-12
      • RE: psst,Snidget, 10:53 PM, 03-01-12
• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 10:32 PM, 03-01-12
• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 10:43 PM, 03-01-12
• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 10:51 PM, 03-01-12
  • RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Snidget, 10:54 PM, 03-01-12
• I just heard Adele!,moonbaby, 10:54 PM, 03-01-12
  • RE: I just heard Adele!,frodis, 10:58 PM, 03-01-12
  • RE: I just heard Adele!,HesDanTheMan, 11:04 PM, 03-01-12
    • RE: I just heard Adele!,qwertypie, 00:17 AM, 03-02-12
• Watching the judges to see,Snidget, 10:57 PM, 03-01-12
• RE: AI #11 Top 25 Results ECST.,Estee, 11:00 PM, 03-01-12

The numbers drop tonight.

The audience boos the most basic fact of reality show existence. Because they are exactly that stupid. And wouldn't have gotten into the theater without it. 'Your IQ must be this low to occupy a seat. And most of your brains will be in contact with the cushion'.

Ryan claims it isn't his fault. Also that it's going to be dramatic. So he's oh-for-two and we're only four minutes in.

Vote total: around thirty-three million. Remember how many votes X-Factor got for their finale? So does Simon. That's why he's taking a comfort bath in his money. There's quite a lot of it, so he keeps going under.

People going home -- after the break. Which technically could mean any future time until The Big Crunch. Ryan will not be pinned down to specifics.

He gets paid for this. A lot.

Was on a call with a friend but I'm here now.

Just in time to hear J.Lo's Doo Doo comment from last night.

Males first. Chase, PSquared, Jeremy. Gosh, guess which one of them is gonna go through.

Ryan attempts to make pointless banter fill some airtime. Suspense is dead. This may also apply to Ryan.

Some footage from last night. Jennifer says something stupid. That part may be live. Then Randy says something stupid. That part is computer-programmed and triggered by remote. Steven says something truly stupid. Actually, it's not Steven, it's a vaguely man-shaped heap of drug residue. But really, how intelligent would you expect a stack of pill casings to be?

Jimmy speaks. Since Jimmy is a tool of the producers and helped to arrange every bit of sabotage, we will ignore him for the rest of the thread.

More filler. The pill casings collapse inward by a tenth of an inch. The resulting fumes take out the front row.

Jeremy out.
Chase out.
PSquared through.

The world's stupidest audience can't even pretend surprise at this. But then, they're stupid. Imagination requires brains.

We go to the females.

Jessica, Holly, Brielle, and Hallie. So the Worsters are up earlier than usual.

Overpaid idiots make babbling sounds no one can be bothered with listening to.

Reminders that most of these people were brought in to fill out the episode count. Also reminders that if The Voice went head-to-head, this show might die. Hey, NBC, wanna play chicken? But looking at your schedule, you've been doing that for years...

Brielle is asked to pretend she made her own song choice. She does, because she had enough brains to read her contract. So naturally the audience hates her.

Brielle out.
Two of the remaining three in.
Nigel really shouldn't torment his potentially-last loyalists like this.
Hallie out.
Jessica and Holly in.

So we've filled out three of the thirteen and determined the first two eliminations. Next?

Brielle and her mommy are gone? . Of course, there is always the wild card.

Poor Brielle, I hate to think of dealing with stage Mom melt-down.

No, the mother's still backstage. They can't get her to leave until they manage to disarm her.

We are about sixth of the way through the show. I am about 100% through with the season.

Judges pretend to be arguing about the wild cards. As if they don't already know who drew the black queens. No, that's not an Adam reference. Look it up.

Joshua, Heejun, and Adam.

More blabbering and recap intertwined in each other like two parasite plants mistakenly engaged in mutual targeting and waiting to see who dies first. Meanwhile, this is a tricky trio. Does Adam have what the Worsters are probably calling at this very moment the Fat Gokey factor? (His inner passenger bulges a bit.) Does the audience hate Asians as much as the show does? Did anyone remember to program Joshua's line? This could be two of the three, one, or conceivably even none if Ryan's been briefed on at least one wild card emerging from this group.

I wrote all that and the stupid recap is still running.

Joshua in. I'm honestly shocked. He's one of the better ones, but I didn't expect America to vote that way.
Heejun in. And now I'm waiting for the Toilet Papers to demand a recount.
Adam out.

This is now officially a very weird night. (What did the vote breakdown look like? Does PSquared already have ninety percent with everyone else just fighting over scraps?)

Bring out -- Baylie, Chelsea, Skylar, and Shannon.

Who will have the honor of being cannon fodder?
Shannon through. Some people will be surprised by this: parts of the media felt she'd get enough tween hate to keep her out.
Skylar in. No surprise: Lauren's voters come back to blast her through.
Chelsea and Baylie out.

Ryan states that people will in fact be singing for the wild cards. So we've got to look forward to muting.

Heejun has voters. I wonder if I'll ever meet one.

Thanks for recrapping all this!

More males. Three total spots still open before wild cards. Aaron, Creighton, and Reed. Recrappage plays.

Now this really is a potential horse collar gathering. Or a giant donut, which incidentally is what their combined vote total might resemble when put next to PSquared. I can easily see none of them getting through, and Ryan's got to have the giant time waster somewhere, right?

The judges love everyone. But only if they're male. Santorum could be watching this -- no, they're safe, this kind of music was invented after 50 A.D. and thus has no place in his world. So it's purely their own bias. Their own incredibly consistent bias.

Aaron out. The audience is not happy.
Creighton out. Audience indifferent.
Reed out. Audience not enjoying the fakeout. Moderate amount of booing. Ryan does what he does best and ignores reality. Or Reality. And possibly the vote count.

Elise, Erica, Haley, and Jen.

We are not looking at that rarest of baseball creations, the four-out inning. (They mostly exist in theory. The potential for one comes along every half-century or so.) Somewhere in this group is going to sing next week. Mostly because if Ryan goes oh-for-seven in this segment, Security is going to crushed under the sheer weight of rushing bodies, even after you account for the helium in the skulls. And besides, despite the demand to hand it over to the guys, there's still one female spot left, sayeth the Seacrest, so one of them has to be part of the first five eliminations (Three male wild cards? Place your bets!)

Ryan claims anything can happen. Except for a female winning. Because that's just crazy talk.

It's not Haley.
It's not Erica.
It's not Jen.
You can do the math.

And now, with no break, we get Deandre, Eben, Colton, and Jermaine, who keeps getting his height referenced in a desperate attempt for Ryan to feel better about himself.

Ryan remembers about the whole break thing. Also that he hasn't tortured anyone with it yet.

Off we go. Halfway mark. And that's just the ratings drop.

It has come to my attention that I may have type-confused Hallie and Haley. Imagine how the voters felt. I should probably correct this, except that I don't care. Which is exactly how the voters felt.

Okay -- while we ignore yet more recrap, let's look at the remaining males. And look quickly, because two of them are going bye-bye for a few minutes. Anyone in this group could conceivably be through. Jermaine is their attempt to replicate Melanie, Eben has taste-free tweens plus Worsters, Colton's got the frau vote, and Deandre has both every male who's ever been kicked in the crotch plus every woman who's ever kicked one. Hard call.

Meanwhile, Jennifer agrees with every pick America has made so far. Because if Jennifer can't bear to say something bad about a contestant, then how could she ever criticize the producers America?

Worster caricatures are up, BTW. The Worsters are part of America. And they made their picks. Would Jennifer care to comment?

Oh, and the Worsters are reporting that we have our first performer theme week scheduled for Top 11. And it's Whitney. Well, that should be early enough to still have a few females left... (The males will be doing Stevie Wonder. In Deandre's case, that would be in the style of Whitney.)

And now a short film by Albert Brooks, Defending The Song Choice You Never Actually Made.

Deandre out. Gee, that must have felt like a kick to the crotch.
Colton gets the fakeout. He will not -- be disappointed. Because he's the other story they're desperate to make work. He's in.
Jermaine in. And Melanie sues for copyright infringement.
Which puts Eben out and gives the Worsters their traditional bad night. But stay tuned -- people are singing next!

Where are you all going?

Why am I bothering with picturing a number which would require an 'all'?

And now six people will desperately try to get a second chance at finding the votes they couldn't get the first time. Three of them are time filler. The other three are episode filler.

Jen.

When they told her they didn't need her any more, she nearly broke down and cried. Imagine how she's going to feel in five minutes.

The judges insist on commenting. Because there is currently no way to stop them. The Grantland writers recently tried to rank them on a scale of useless. It turned out the scale didn't go high enough.

Break. Everyone review your scripts.

Are you all being held at gunpoint? Type three dashes if you are and I will phone for help.

I can't watch again tonight. I commend you.

I have no- idea what you'-re talking a-bout.

the lighting crew from X factor is on their way with the strobes of death. Put on your sunglasses!!!!

*snort*

Jeremy will sing again.

And so he does.

Look, why should I bother reviewing this when none of the performances matter? The judges knew who they'd want as wild cards. The producers had people picked. The contestants may have even been handed a tiny fragment of clue. All we're doing is killing time until the announcement. Go grab a book.

Jeremy has made himself cry. But not the Baby Jesus. That you know of.

Brielle will sing. Because her mother was carrying more guns than anyone thought possible and it was the first thing on her demand list.

I won't fully review this (because I'm out of range), but I will point out that she's doing Adele. Adele is the new Whitney. And possibly the new Heart, because I'm not sure anyone can do this either. What's going to happen when she gets a major catalog together? She could take out the entire genre. (Hurry!)

Sometimes it hurts. Like, say, right now.

Pitchy! Let's all watch Harry twitch!

Deandre. For the sake of his encore, let's hope he's not wearing a cup.

I'm almost certain I recognized the word 'Georgia' somewhere in that.

The audience is giving this a standing ovation. Well, now we know where they're filming.

Erica. Edge Of Glory. She wishes.

...did you hear that last 'edge'? I think her vocal cords were trying to get away from each other and the right one made it.

This is praised. It must be Tuesday.

Last up: Reed. (Everybody else, get out.)

...well, it was short.

You gotta praise what you can.

Okay, I laughed a little too hard at that.

>

That's hysterical. Got to share that on FB...

Hey! Welcome!

If I can see the shocks to remind them to pick the right people, oh shoot, they cut away to the contestants for the picks.

And the wild cards are:

Erica
Jeremy (mid-stage breakdown)
Deandre (tries for the deliberate faint and doesn't quite make it)

So. Yeah.

*shrug*

G'night.