Idol is nearing the moment when it turns into a competition with serious emotional stakes for the audience. But on Wednesday, Scott MacIntyre, the show’s first blind contestant, was a fairly obvious choice to be sent home. A capable but unexciting singer, he’d never quite established himself as a performer since the auditions. Not a week went by that Simon and Paula didn’t debate whether he should stop accompanying himself on the piano. This was not a good omen.
In the end, weighing whether Scott deserved to be saved, the judges were split, Simon said. But “Someone’s gotta make a decision here,” he continued. And so Scott exited from the competition, with Paula’s farewell and blessing: “You’ve been an inspiraiton to the world.”

The startling thing was that Anoop Desai also fell into the bottom two, and a slender margin of only some 30,000 votes separated him from Scott. Anoop has had his ups and downs, mostly ups, but he seems to be waning as fellow pop-crooner Matt Giraud gains in audience popularity. Both Matt and Allison Iraheta were spared a trip to the bottom this week.
Lil Rounds, who’d disappointed the judges with a “What’s Love Got to Do With It” that hewed too closely to Tina Turner’s original, joined them in the bottom three. Next week she’ll have to figure out how to be inventive without being faulted for trying too hard. Good luck with that.

As for the guest performers, Flo Rida delivered a crowd-pleasing version of “Right Round,” and season 5 contesant Kellie Pickler, looking expensively styled but not sounding much different from her days on the show, sang her single, “Best Days of Your Life.” Frankie Avalon, a teen star from several centuries ago, started the hour singing “Venus,” a pop hit he’d sung in 1959, the year Simon was born. He was an American idol before American Idol