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.