The third of the four semi-finalist groups performed tonight, and it was definitely a mixed bag. Overall, this episode fell somewhere between the fierce competition of Group 1 and the sheer awfulness of Group 2. There was a least one great performance, a few good ones, and a few stinkers.
Going into tonight's show, without having seen or heard the performances, I had predicted that Amy Adams and Jon Peter Lewis would move on from this group. We'll know tomorrow for sure, but we have a much better idea of what could happen after tonight's episode.
The show has been running over its allotted time slot, so Seacrest wasted no time getting into it with Elizabeth LeTendre. I'm not sure what the judges saw or heard, but they were incredibly generous with their comments on a performance that wasn't much better than the rejects from last week. Elizabeth sure can belt it out, but if you're going to sing Whitney Houston ("I Wanna Dance With Somebody"), you've got to have a killer voice. She doesn't.
Eric Yoder was up next. We were reminded that in an earlier show, Simon had compared him to last year's co-winner Clay Aiken. Eric seems to have taken that comment and run with it, but he exuded an almost Broadway-like shtick. All that was missing from his version of "In the Still of the Night" was a leisure suit and a stand-up microphone.
One of my picks, Amy Adams, performed next. As much as I can't stand Celine Dion's overwrought love ballads ("The Power of Love"), Amy made this one good. Very, very good. After a shaky a capella start, she found her footing and pulled it off to an amazing finish. The judges loved her, too, though Simon did get a quick dig in before she retreated to the Red Room. In my opinion, she and her pink hair are definitely through.
After the break, pen salesman Jon Peter Lewis, my second pick, took the stage. His rendition of Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" was amazingly uneven, but the audience seemed to like it. Plenty of men have been voted through on their looks before, and from the volume and number of the girlish shrieks in the crowd, he could be the next.
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