Territorial Bloggings

Down & out down under.

Is the elimination of Michael Johns the shocking & outrageous elimination that we seem to get every season? “Why, oh, why?”, so many seem to be asking, did America get it so very wrong?

No, I don’t think this was the shocking elimination. The only truly “shocking” eliminations would’ve been either of the Davids. Anyone else would’ve been easily explainable.

“How could that be?” you ask, as Michael was such a favorite from so early in the audition phase.

Well, it’s pretty easy to explain, actually. As good as he was, overall, and as nice a guy as he was, in general, Michael had pretty long dry spell from Hollywood week through to about two weeks ago. He pretty much coasted by on talent/rep, looks, & other contestants who had more of the suck than he did. Once the field got weeded out & the competition got comparatively stronger, it was too little, too late for him to ratchet up his game. Folks like David C. had already firmly established their hold on the commonly held fanbase votes, so there was no real way for Michael to play catch up enough to stay in the competition.

It’s too bad, but that’s the phase of the competition that we’re in now. Now, it’s all about seeing how the voting bloc dynamics play out, especially after each elimination. Michael’s votes are most likely to get split between David C. & Carly, I would think, which doesn’t bode well at all for Syesha.

Aside from this lesson in voting bloc dynamics theory, the only interesting part of the results show for me was anticipating the outrage — outrage, I tells you! — at how Seacrest tormented poor Michael by hinting that there might not be an elimination, because there wasn’t one last year. Here’s the thing - while I agree that it was more than a bit tacky, I don’t think it was in any way, shape, or form Seacrest’s idea. He’s just saying what they tell him to say. So, I don’t blame him.

Next week, I think we’ll see things get back to a more normal/expected form re: the contestant eliminated.

-ghp