It's actually becoming painful watching them try to fill an hour. Just make it half an hour and accept it. This week we have Sierra sing, whoever that is, which is just insulting because there's not even a ballroom demo that goes with it.

Then we get Survivor doing a version of Eye Of The Tiger that would have had them booed off of American Idol. Some folks don't age well.

And Josh Groban? Man, he's not getting the bookings he used to.

And then came the psychics. Wow, that is hard to watch when you consider that people actually believe that stuff. We go through a whole bunch of the psychics saying generic things like "Laila likes to be in control" and then the producers cut in a clip of Laila taking charge, as if that's supposed to prove anything. At least they go so far as to get predictions – the numerologist says Laila, and the guy who sees auras says Ian. Two reasonable choices. I wonder if they actually interviewed half a dozen psychics and then only showed the ones who picked the potential winners?

Anyway, as predicted a mile away, Shandi goes home. Next week should be Leeza, then Clyde, then John. Apolo, Ian, Joey and Laila should easily be the finalists. The real wildcard is Heather, whether she'll be good enough to knock one of those four out of their spot.

Really, Heather looks sad; John is stiff, Clyde is bad, and Billy Ray
is not much better.
Cheryl is fab; Joey is a good contender.Apollo is pretty interesting.
I really like Edyte, but she does not get the partners.

If Chris Daughtry had this song during American Idol he EASILY would have won.

Am I the only one who is finding these early weeks sort of boring?  Maybe it's just because they're pushing 2 hours (thanks to moving it down to 1:45 this week, guys) or maybe because there's really no real stars this time around.  Anyway, Kerry and I find ourselves Tivoing it just so that we can fast forward to the good parts.  Skip last week's recap, Do training segment, dance, get judges reactions, skip interview backstage, get scores, move on to next couple.  I find the results show on Tuesday more interesting, pretty much entirely for the demonstrations by the professionals.

Shandi and Brian, Jive, 21 – Shandi is almost guaranteed to be the next one to go no matter how well she does, strictly on the "you have no fanbase rule" that Paulina so clearly observed last week.

John and Edyta, Tango, 20 –  I do like John, although he is a bit more stiff than some of the older guys they've had on.  He does put on his game face when he dances, though.  Thought their song choice was horrible for a tango.

Clyde and Elena, Jive, 16 – The judges were not kind to Clyde this week.  Well what can you expect, a jive from a man that tall?  He can't move his legs that fast!

Laila and Max, Tango, 21 Now, see, "Goldfinger" is an awesome tango song.  James Bond, for pete's sake!  I thought they did exceptionally well, excellent long leg strides, well matched.  But then they pulled a Mario Lopez and broke the hold in the middle, which pissed off the judges enough to take off a good couple of points.  They easily should have been getting 9s.

Apolo and Julianne, Jive, 23 Doing a tribute to Pulp Fiction and dancing to that "C'est La Vie" song (is that the name?  C'est La Vie say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell….), Apolo and Julianne were popular with the crowd but not the judges.

Joey and Kym, Tango, 24 Personally I thought Star Wars was a horrible song to dance a tango to, but the visual (complete with light sabre) was great.  At first, given that Kym was in her Princess Leia outfit, I thought they'd go for the easy Joey "fat one" as Jabba the Hutt, but I guess he was playing Obi Wan.  I think the judges liked this one the best of the night.

Ian and Cheryl, Jive, 24  Apparently Ian screwed up a step so bad that the judges took away a point, but I'll have to go back on Tivo and look for it because I didn't see it.  Rumor on the net is that there may have been some sort of flash involved, which is why the camera briefly hit the ceiling.  I was wondering about that, I thought it was just bad direction.

Leeza and Tony, Tango, 24  I think Leeza is probably getting some "over 50" vote since they made such a big deal about hyping her age and how all of her criticism seems to be about acting younger and looser.

Heather and Jonathan, Jive, 24  Heather can't jive on her fake foot – either she can't kick and balance, or she can't balance and kick.  And she certainly can't hop up and down.  Solution?  Go to the prosthetician and get a new, bouncier foot.  She still doesn't have nearly the footwork that you'd expect, but they keep adding difficulty to make up for it by putting in all kinds of jumps and flips.  The sneakers looked funny, but they were necessary to go with the leg.  The judges said that she doesn't have to put in the level of difficulty she does, but I think that's incorrect, I think if you just told her to go out and do a simple dance where they watched for technical detail, she wouldn't be able to do it.

Billy Ray and Karina, Tango, 21 All my wife cares about is whether Karina is still dating Mario Lopez.  We looked on Google and could only find stories from Thanksgiving, so we're not sure.  He's getting better each week, but really, unless he's got some Sanjaya type support on his side, he's not going to go any sort of distance.