All else fails, Melinda will be starring in movies getting supporting actress roles for big musical movies and eventually win a Grammy for it.

Oh wait.

That's exactly right. Melinda is obviously a better singer than Blake & Jordin, but the AI producers probably thought she was much less marketable (due to her age, etc). I don't think AI wanted another repeat of Taylor Hicks (who's the same age as Melinda), and another failure at reaching that core audience of teeny boppers. LOL. American Idol is basically a complete joke.

Idol is definitely a joke and I feel like the voting process is rigged up to suit the business desires gearing the show along. I loved that early Robot Chicken send-up of AI where Seacrest says something like "you can text message your vote up to ten times...because cell phone companies make more money that way."

This season was the first that I tacitly followed, but I never wasted my time voting for anybody. As a creative musician, I disliked almost every single candidate for their out-of-touch-ness and their high-schoolish talent-show approach to performing. I almost barfed when that fat bluesy dude tried to sing 'Jeremy' with AI's LITE-FM backing band struggling to hash out a workable arrangement. A lot of the soulful and natural-sounding singers (not to mention the better-looking females) were ousted before the top-10. Antonella and Sanjaya only lasted as long as they did because of ridiculous notorieties.

I actually enjoyed Blake's presence, but I agree that he is not much of a singer. He's easily the most original and the beatboxing thing is a cool notch on his belt, but at the end he really was bound to get romped. It was cool to see someone busting out dank tunes by 311 and Jamaeroqui instead of the usual Whitney Houston and Celine Dion bullshit though.

I would have liked to see Melinda square off against Jordin, because vocally, Melinda was easily the most tasteful and powerful. Jordin does everything by the book and doesn't really have an ounce of originality. She certainly was cut a lot of breaks by America this season. If I had my way, she would have been history after the Bon Jovi week disaster.

Overall, this show is interesting entertainment for people of musical backgrounds, but the b.s. factors that take the reins so often can really be tiresome to deal with.