It’s time to find out who gets the obligatory “The Dream Ends Here For…” write up in USA Today with the second elimination of the season. But first, we must be tortured with bad ideas. The Top 12 perform another song that will make the person they are allegedly honoring sad.  This time it’s a mash-up of  Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild”. Oh Christ.   Lady Gaga never meant for this happen when she ripped off Madonna with this song.    Who in the world heard “Born This Way” and said “Oh shit we could totally sing that together with ‘Born To Be Wild’.  While we’re at it, let’s sacrifice baby seals to Satan, to complete all the Dark Lord’s tasks for us here on Earth.” My first question about this performance is do any of these people understand the concept of singing into their microphones? Not that it matters, since they can’t remember the lyrics anyway. And not that that matters because they can’t sing in harmony at all, soooo…draw?

This week’s Ford Focus corporate attempt to suck our soul dry takes places at a mock-drive in. The contestants’ commercial is a mini-movie montage, or something. It’s a romance, someone tied to a chair with a bomb, wait no, they are sad, now there’s rainbows and friendship OMG WHY IS THERE STABBING IN THIS?? Hey look, they’re friends now, girl power and a gay guy hugs a blonde poodle.  Well, it’s still better than Avatar. The contestants clumsily applaud like they just saw their moms making out with the neighbor’s gardener. Awkward. Then there is some nonsense filler called “What Defines Our Idols” which is about as useless and painful as a burst appendix.

Speaking of filler, these results shows used to be 30 minutes, in and out. Here’s your bottom three, boom, here’s who’s going home, boom here’s an episode of  “When Animals Attack“, done.  It dragged out then.  It drags out when it’s just a blurb on Twitter. This is an hour of 12 people standing on the stage, while J-Lo and S-Ty explain what’s magical and special about them, Randy tells them need to “bring it” more, and Seacrest does a dramatic fake-out before revealing their fake.  It’s like everyone associated with this show had a chip installed in their brain that permanently blocks them from thinking “Gee, this seems like it’s getting a bit old.”

Also, some horrifying disease is going around this show.  All the contestants either all have the flu or SARS or the frickin’ Andromeda Strain, which from the sounds of it could kill them all of.  Who knows, that might be our only escape from more of this.

Oh there’s Lee DeWyze. He reminds me of every guy that’s ever been violently taken down on “Cops” during a meth bust.

It’s Hee Haw McGee Scotty McCreery’s time to pretend that everyone thinks he’s going home, which of course he’s not. Pia goes next, and naturally, this girl is safe. She’s easily coasting into the top 3 of this thing, hands down. Plus her personality isn’t excrutiating like a lot of the others. Oh speaking of which, James Durbin is safe too.

Stefano looks like Sammy Sosa before he went insane. Except Stefano is probably already insane. He’s safe, but Naema lands in the bottom.   Do you remember when Dolly Parton had her own show, back in the 70s? It was called Dolly! and it was basically Dolly dressing in insane jumpsuits adorned with lots of glittery sparkly flower things, telling the same joke about her boobs 500 times and singing unDolly-like songs like “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and the audience just laughing hysterically at the big joke Dolly was making about herself.  I am convinced that Dolly Parton has somehow taken over Naema’s brain, “Being John Malkovitch” style so she can do that show, all over again.  She has complete control over Naema’s mind, convincing her to wear indulgent amounts of ruffles that match the polka dots on her skirt that match the stripes in the headband that match the flowers on her earrings. MY GOD WHEN WILL ALL THIS MATCHING END. She dresses like every sample dress on display at Jo-Ann Fabrics; the obnoxious ones that look like something only the worst kind of sad, lonely person would ever feel compelled to do.    The poor girl looks like every bad “Redbook” DIY craft project crammed into one,  all to the whims of secret puppeteer Dolly, maniacally living out her dreams of offering a traditional country variety show  to a prime time audience.   In between takes, Naema randomly blurts out “Welcome to my good friend Conway Twitty!”, leaving the crew utterly stumped, thinking she’s just tired from rehearsing or wearing too many flowered ruffle skirts.

Karen, who’s hair was finally unleashed by the Vulcan elder who had trapped his katra there in a mighty unbreakable cone, in hopes that he would someday be reunited with it, landed in the bottom. Thia Megia, who was especially boring this week, is safe to sing another boring sad song next week.

Oh and The Black Eyed Peas make an appearance to prove that yes, they can actually be worse than they were at the Super Bowl. Much, much worse. Are they trying to be good? No I mean this as a real question. Do they actually get together and play this horrible music and go “Wow, we could be so much worse than that, you guys! We could be like….the worst band ever! If only we just really, really tried. And maybe stopped trying to sing musical notes altogether. And put a lot of flashy neon crap all over ourselves. That’s got to the trick! I just know it.” Seriously, because nothing else could explain how awful they are as a musical act. I think backstage, the contestants are huddled somewhere going “Wait, is this how they want us to sound?”. Which probably explains all their terrible group performance.

Finally, Karen is sent home, probably to destroy every Black Eyed Peas CD she has, after being scarred for life from that performance. Seacrest makes a half-hearted plea after she sings another bad, off-key song, to see if the judges will grant her their one magical “SAVE” for the season. J-Lo looks sternly at him. “Are you serious, Ryan? We’re talking about a SAVE, here, OK? We don’t just dump these off to some lackey no-name assistant like some crappy Olive Garden gift certificates in our gift bag. Try and take this a little more seriously, OK Ryan?”

So, no Karen isn’t getting any save, but we are getting more of this next. Barring unforseen vocal miracles or a pandemic of Swine Flu that takes out every one else, look for Naema and Haylee to make repeat appearances in the bottom next week. Until then!