American Idol Season 8 Recap: The Top 7 Performances, with Guest Mentor Quentin Tarantino

Tonight's show opens with Ryan walking past a line of Idolettes, as usual, but ending up beside the last guy in line, who turns out to be this week's guest mentor, director Quentin Tarantino! Ryan says, "THIS...is Quentin Tarantino!" and Quentin says, "And THIS...is American Idol!!"

You know he begged Ryan to do that bit, because although Quentin seems way too cool for this show, he is actually a giant fan. When he guest-judged in season three, it was clear he was already a regular viewer and quite familiar with the show, whereas most of the "music legends" they've had are obviously phoning in the bare minimum just to flog their latest project after their agents and publicists got it through their doddering old skulls that American Idol is the biggest vehicle of mass entertainment since they stopped having public executions. Also, Quentin was the one and only guest judge who offered actual, honest criticism instead of the usual meaningless pablum that typically came out of Paula's mouth at the time (she's much more cogent these days, to my delight).

The judges are introduced. Randy is wearing some sort of semaphore flag as a sweater, Kara is very blown-out (that's a reference to hairstyling, gentlemen; please calm down) and is dubbed "provocative" by Ryan; Paula impresses Ryan with her bejeweled dog collar and the way it has fetchingly barfed rhinestones down the front of her dress that he is now dying to borrow; and Simon Cowell is not and will never be a knight, although these days they are knighting people for really dumb stuff, like singing while dressed as Donald Duck (take that, Sir Elton)!

"The girls" are blamed for pushing Adam's performance out of regular DVR territory (and into the Fringe, ba-dump bum!), so the judges will be giving their feedback in pairs. Too bad it's the same pairs (Paula and Simon, Randy and Kara) each time. So, it's the fault of the girls, is it? And not of the stupid baby pictures, the family videos, shallow banter, and other completely unnecessary filler and crap? The real problem is that there are still a couple of singers too many to go down to an hour this quickly. There was only one 90-minute show between the two-hour version and the one-hour version. Why not just have a couple more 90-minute shows? Too late for that now, I suppose.

Ryan has the Idolettes prance onto the stage, and Little Steven is in the audience. Man, that dude has got to be Simon Cowell's fashion icon, not so much for the pirate look but for the fact that he's rocked the exact same duds for 30 years. Get a haircut, man; you're like, 80 or something! I see that Anoop has torn the sleeves off of a perfectly good black blazer and replaced them with the sleeves from a white one. I can't believe the wardrobe department lets these people out of the mansion looking like they do, sometimes! Oh, well, it's all good for me: more fashion disasters, more snark. Sometimes this stuff just writes itself!

We get an awesome video montage that allows us to revisit the few scenes in Tarantino's oeuvre that do not feature ear-sawing, forcible anal rape or buckets of gore in general. Family show, folks! Along these lines, "Natural Born Killers" doesn't even get a title card, not that it was that great a movie. His newest film, which features the naughty word "bastards" in the title, just gets billed as his newest film. On to the singing!

Allison Iraheta is up first, singing "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith, from the movie Armageddon. It starts off kinda breathy and doesn't ever get nearly as good as I was expecting it to. Of course her outfit is atrocious, but that's a given; I never expected the vocals to be wack, too. Well, it's not really bad, but it's noticeably not great. Nevertheless, Paula says Allison has the same "special sauce" as Adam Lambert, which: um, uh, never mind. Simon also over-praises Allison, saying she's "the girls' only hope" in the competition. Damn! He just cut Lil Rounds off COLD on live television. What a rat bastard move, because she hasn't even sung yet! P.S.: Katie Couric in da house!

Seriously, I thought they'd give the first spot to Anoop Desai to really drive the last nail in the coffin, but I guess "up second" is bad enough, except that you don't get to deal with Simon (and now you just know everyone backstage is going, "Okay, Simon is going on odd numbers-what 'up' am I?" And OF COURSE he's going on odd numbers-with seven people singing, he'll get to talk more than anyone, as usual. And who's he going to blame if the show runs over this week?) Anyway, 'Noop is singing "Everything I Do, I Do it For You" (Yes, I know there are parentheses in the title, not a comma, but I refuse to use parentheses for a title that only needs a comma. Parentheticals are for alternate titles.) Okay, so this is that sappy, crappy Bryan Adams song from Robin Hood that I have always hated. Quentin tells Anoop to "rough it up", which we already know he is incapable of doing, so this is kind of over before it starts, no? And yet it does start, with kind of an odd retching sound. Despite my feelings of malice toward the song, the singing is actually pretty good, and yet he doesn't really transcend the song's inherent cheesiness. Randy and Kara both loved it, as did Mr. Canary, but although I will stipulate that the vocals were well within acceptable parameters, I am still pretty much over the guy. Sorry!

Adam Lambert gives us Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" from Easy Rider. Attired in Biker Chic, Adam once again transfixes the Canary household by wailing an awesome version of an already pretty awesome song. I can't even look away from the screen to take notes, so I'm doing this from a re-visit. His backup singers sound like ass compared to him, but the band keeps up pretty well, and there is much screaming following the performance. I was afraid Paula would revisit the special sauce place, but instead she gives us "you dare to dance in the path of greatness". Hm, is it too late too take back what I said about "cogent"? Simon says the song sounded like it came from Rocky Horror, which musical Glambert of course loves, and the implication is "so, it's not really a rock song". Yes, it was theatrical, he's theatrical, but the best real rock stars-Mick Jagger, Robert Plant, Freddie Mercury-are, after all. Quote of the Night from the Canary household: Mr. C: "He's not a REAL rocker." Bat: "But he plays one in a musical!"

Arrgghh!! Matt Giraud is singing the other crappy/sappy Bryan Adams movie song that I hate, "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman", from Don Juan de Marco. Well, at least that one doesn't have improper punctuation. I'll just think about Johnny Depp. Mmmmm... Uh, okay. Quentin, appalled upon hearing Matt's high praise for the song, tries to convince us he doesn't despise it as much as I do. Matt sings this pretty much as I would expect Justin Timberlake to sing it, except that I think Justin would manage to sing the whole thing in key. This is not a real good showing, Matty G. Randy doesn't like it, and Kara talks some talk while Simon makes crazy faces. Apparently, he has a different opinion, and my guess is that they won't do this "Simon doesn't get to talk every time" thing, ever again.

Danny Gokey reveals in his StoolChat (ew!) that he bought a guitar, even though he doesn't know how to play, but he's going to spend all summer on tour with people who can, so that strikes me as a REALLY smart way to kill time and to get guitar lessons for free. You go, Harry Potter! He is singing "Endless Love" from the movie of the same name. Although this is a Diana Ross / Lionel Richie duet, it's not hard to sing by yourself (Diana Ross even recorded a version that way). It's very good, actually! I like the arrangement with the harp, and the vocals were spot on. The scruff in his voice adds extra emotion when he gets to the wailing part. Paula loves it, of course, and Simon thinks the straightforward vocals and arrangement were boring in comparison with David Cook's take on "Hello", but he appreciates the "emotional" aspect (uh-oh...dead wife subtext, here).

Kris Allen is singing "Falling Slowly" from the movie Once, and I don't remember the guy's name, but it's the guy in the movie. Guess he didn't hit it so big after the winning the Oscar after all, huh. Kris dithers with Quentin Tarantino over whether to play an instrument, but decides to just cling to the mic stand instead. Now, this is a gorgeous song, and Kris plays it pretty close to the movie version. It sounds really good, but he certainly doesn't "make it his own". Randy uses the old "for me, for you", so we know he wasn't feelin' it, but Kara breaks away from her critiquing partner, praising it as one of Kris's best moments. That could be true, as most of Kris's best moments have been coming more recently as his vocals improve, especially in the upper range. This wasn't quite as good as Danny and nowhere near Adam, but a very acceptable showing.

Lil Rounds is in the pimp spot, rather improbably. Are they trying to push her past the DVR hour? Well, I wouldn't have been surprised about her placement earlier, but then Simon threw her under the bus (and yikes-I realize that he is going to critique her, too). She is singing Bette Midler's "The Rose" from the eponymous movie. This is a very repetitious song that is supposed to build slowly, so it is a good song to embroider. On my first listen of the performance, my impression is (from notes) "she does fine, but there is no sense of 'wow' when it is over". Now, after a second listen, it is much more sensitive and pretty than I'd thought initially, so I don't know whether I was distracted by my notes, my conversation with Mr. Canary, or my predisposition toward Lil.

Paula liked it, but she seems to end up talking more about the song's lyrics than the actual performance, which seems like a bad sign. Simon rolls his eyes like an asshole during Paula's critique, then launches into Lil with some overly harsh criticism and my DVR cuts off in protest. By the time Fringe starts, Lil is defending herself, as well she should. First of all, he built up his OWN damn expectations about what a brilliant vocalist she was, and secondly, she didn't suck, she sounded FINE. Is this some sort of tough love / reverse psychology to seem like he's not playing favorites, but to get the audience voting in her defense, or what?

Sigh. The video recap shows Allison sounding better in retrospect; Anoop making facial expressions that go with a much more interesting song; Glambert wailing the rafters down; Matt sounding really boring in comparison; Danny being sensitive and widowed; Kris making lovely noises and painful facial expressions; and Lil, looking and sounding lovely and low-key. Tomorrow, we will get Miley Cyrus and Jennifer Hudson, so I'm going to give that a big "whatever". Why do we have to put up with people like Kellie Pickler and Michael Johns when Elliott Yamin and Melinda Doolittle have new albums out, I would like to know?

So, how to rank? I'm going to have to start at the ends and work toward the middle tonight. Adam goes at the top because he blew my mind again. Matt goes at the bottom, because even though no one clearly tanked, he was the only one who actually sang any really bad notes. Danny's just below Adam for doing quite well, even if Simon wasn't feeling it, and Allison is just above Matt because the singing really seemed quite labored and not up to her standards, once again despite Simon and his overzealous praise. Anoop's performance was technically good but left me very cold, so he's in 5^th place, just above Allison. Lil Rounds infused her song with a lot of emotion and sounded pretty, regardless of whether she blew me away, so Kris, who sang perfectly well but did nothing special or original seems appropriately in the middle.

My projected bottom three is frequently different from my three lowest-ranked performances, because I am aware of how the audience feels about some contestants despite how well or badly they do, but I'm going to say this week, it will actually be the same. I believe Lil was criticized too harshly and people will vote to save her. Conversely, Allison did not live up to her normal standard, and I think Simon's lavish praise is likely to alienate folks from supporting her this week. I don't believe she did anything to deserve being booted entirely, though. I am going to leave that between Anoop, who did okay, but probably not enough to stop his obvious downhill trajectory, and Matt, another possible to go home because he is really inconsistent-we all know he has talent, but every third week or so, he just hides it under a barrel. I'm looking for him in the bottom three, definitely, although I am going to predict it will actually be Anoop going home and not getting the judges' save. Either of the other two would get it. Lil had better hope she doesn't end up as the cellar dweller, because she's clearly off Simon's Christmas list!

Bat Rankings (tonight's performances)

1. Adam Lambert

2. Danny Gokey

3. Lil Rounds

4. Kris Allen

5. Anoop Desai

6. Allison Iraheta

7. Matt Giraud