'American Idol' Bids Adieu to Jorge Nunez, Jasmine Murray

We expected the double elimination since Simon dropped that bomb early Tuesday night; therefore we knew two American Idol contestants were going home Wednesday night.

The first elimination round of Season 8 was a terrific balance of mostly excited contestants, unusually subdued judges, incessant Seacrest yappiness and extraordinary performances by Kanye West and Kelly Clarkson. Early on we were informed that there was a new judges rule based on way-too-early eliminations of the likes of Jennifer Hudson and Chris Daughtry (who went on to suffer not at all by being voted off early).

Therefore, the judges were instituting a 'safe' rule whereby once (and only once) during the season would they have the ability to reconsider someone's erroneous elimination. It was quite evident from last night's show that Anoop and Jorge would be in the spotlight for elimination as their performances were really poor. Since they are far from the strongest talent of the 13, they should have tried a lot harder and chose songs, well, other than what they sang.

But it was Jasmine who went home first. Too bad it was way too early for the judges to play that safe card because if there was ever a time to use it, it was Wednesday night. Jasmine's performance was pretty close to flawless - she hit every note, her voice is phenomenal. Unfortunately for Jasmine, she has nothing besides her voice to make her stand out. She lacks Lil's energy, Allison's rocker persona and Alexis's cuteness and evidentially having only a fantastic singing voice is not enough because home she went. And we're stuck with Anoop who has far less talent but way more charisma than Jasmine. I'm betting the world hasn't heard the last of Jasmine though.

Jorge was the second to go and it was as it should be. Unfortunately for us, he got a second chance to sing and again he started off badly, was off-key almost the entire song and nearly flubbed the opening lines. Simon didn't hesitate when he emphasized "No!" Jorge would not be saved.

The first AI Ford Music video was, in a word, amazing. Kanye had a stellar performance with Heartless once you got used to the heavy breathing between each line and Kelly's performance which was a teensy bit rocky at first turned out to be phenomenal. Makes you wonder why Paula wasn't up out of her seat once during that performance.

As usual, American Idol gave the people what they came to see - tremendous talent and amazing performances. But what the people didn't come to see Wednesday night was Jasmine going home. Unfortunately, that's what they got.