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American Idol: Welp, We've Reached that Point in the Season Where the Non-White-Dude-Contestants Start Getting Sent Home

This one really hurt.

Last week the American Idol judges used the save on Sam Woolf, the blandly cute Florida teen who's become this season's designated boy, for better or worse. It was kind of a waste—Sam had been in the bottom three twice before last week, and his charisma was improving incrementally, although you had to really look hard for it to be perceptive. I kind of figured that using the save in Top 8 week, two weeks before it expired from the judges' power, would result in something bad, and I was pretty much immediately right.

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The past few years of American Idol have contained two key demographic trends—the dominance of dudes, and the dominance of white singers. Last season, in which African-American woman Candice Jones triumphed, almost counts in an exception to the rule way, since the producers pretty much designed the season to break the stranglehold that White Guys With Guitars had on the winner's circle since season seven, when smoldering post-grunge makeover artist David Cook triumphed. Top Eight is usually when the demographic inevitability comes into focus, with the non-white and non-male contestants being picked off one by one (usually one remains until Top 4 week). And this week's elimination was maybe the cruelest on that front, because the non-white-dude contestant who got the hook has the most potential to charm the audience and go for broke with her song choices.

Malaya Watson, the tuba-playing, glasses-wearing Michigander, was probably not going to win this year's competition. But God bless her for giving her all into every performance she gave—look at this week, when she honored the "'80s" theme by singing an iconic Chaka Khan song. The other two women remaining chose vocally easy rock tracks from the early part of the decade (and completely failed to give them the charismatic jolt that made them such important tracks, but more on that later). Her performance was by no means perfect, but she threw her all into it, and she hardly deserved to be in the bottom two.

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Malaya leaving, though, was probably preordained from the announcement of this week's mentor—none other than smoldering season-seven winner David Cook. It was almost as if one of the ever-dwindling number of non-white guys with guitars had to go home, although America's choice of who, exactly, took the fall will sting for another week or two, especially while watching the performances by less talented Idol hopefuls who remain.

This week's performances:

1. Caleb Johnson. "Caleb sings power ballad" is pretty much the easiest home-run premise for this season of Idol. His take on "Faithfully" was pretty, uh, faithful, allowing him to show off his Steve Perry-quality vibrato on the softer spots (which he didn't blow out!) and his rock-god range at the end. Is he a lock to win this thing at this point? What happened to this season that he probably is?

2. Dexter Roberts. Aw, remember when songs like "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" could make it onto top-40 radio? I guess if Zedd or someone swapped out the original's backing track for some electro-stomp nonsense it could make it back today. [Ed. note: Zedd rules.] Dexter needs to enunciate better and this song is a bit too lecherous for his dopey-dude persona, but it was one of the better performances of the night.

3. Malaya Watson. Taking on Chaka Khan's "Through The Wire" is a risk for even the best singers, and Malaya's take was by no means perfect—the arrangement could have relied less on the chorus, and her ramping up to the big notes wavered in spots, particularly when it came to her breathing patterns (Keith noted that you could hear her hesitate in anticipation of the big moments, an assessment I agree with). This was definitely not a going-home performance, though.

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4. Sam Woolf. During Season Seven, David Cook placed himself above the competition by being able to connect with the audience better than any of his rivals—including runner-up David Archuleta, who this season's Anointed Teen Idol reminds me a lot of, what with their boyish looks and inert demeanor. Surrounding Sam with adoring girls, which the producers have done multiple times in a fairly transparent effort to shore up his "next Ed Sheeran" bona fides, is an okay way to deflect the fact that he's still nowhere near Cook on the charisma scale, even though he's grown a bit since even two weeks ago. He decided to coffeehouse up "Time After Time," and maybe it's just because I've been listening to She's So Unusual a lot because of its recent 30th-anniversary reissue, but the performance was stilted and showed off little more than his very limited vocal range.

5. Jess Meuse. Cook seemingly gave her a lot of coaching about how to seem more charismatic when there were cameras around… that didn't work. This was a perfectly generic version of "Call Me" that would have gotten a lot of love during a karaoke bar's off night. Also I am not sure why she was wearing a button-down shirt salvaged from Contempo Casuals' fall 1992 line?

6. Jena Irene. This season's Designated Lorde Stand-In started off her version of "I Love Rock N' Roll" with a super-mournful version of the chorus that showed off her voice's gulpiness. This eventually blossomed into a take that was… post-grunge? I don't even know, although I kind of blame the influence of Cook, who was the master of this type of revamp. He picked more appropriate be-grunging material, though, back in the day—the strength Joan Jett's original take on this particular song possesses comes in large part from its crunchiness, and turning it into a Super-Meaningful Almost-Ballad removes a lot of its power, not to mention its inherent meaning.

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7. CJ Harris. Weird to think that a Tom Petty song requires attention paid to the notion of "pitch," and yet his super-whispery, yet consistently off-kilter version of "Free Fallin'" showed just how much vocal talent is possessed by Florida's favorite rocker.

[NOT RANKED BECAUSE AUGH I COULDN'T EVEN TAKE IN THE PERFORMANCE IN A REMOTELY OBJECTIVE WAY] Alex Preston. Can someone tell the kids that "Every Breath You Take" is supposed to be creepy and not sensitive???? At this point in the competition I am probably most predisposed to enjoy Alex's performances, but the full-body cringe this Feelings-filled take on Sting's stalker portrait induced in me was too much to deal with.

MY VOTES: I didn't vote. And now I feel so guilty.

THE BOTTOM TWO: Malaya and CJ.

WHO WENT HOME: [INSERT SAD FACE EMOJI HERE]

FILLER ALERT: More duets on the performance show! Malaya carried CJ on "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)," although it at least made me realize that the country-rocker could probably pull off a fairly convincing "Faith." Similarly, Dexter dominated the performance of "Islands In The Stream" he shared with Jess, much to the diminishment of the whole enterprise. Jena and Caleb's overbearing attempt to channel Tina Turner and Bryan Adams' chemistry on "It's Only Love" was… better left unmentioned at all, probably. Somehow the dippy Michael Jackson/Paul McCartney flop "The Girl Is Mine" made the producers' cut instead of the much superior "Say Say Say," but at least the limp version offered by Sam and Alex didn't include that half-hearted spoken-word argument that appears on the original.

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SPEAKING OF NEXT WEEK: The singers choose songs for each other. Who will be the meanie to challenge Jena Irene with a track that requires subtlety? Who will finally pair up Caleb with Whitesnake? WILL SAM BE REQUIRED TO PERFORM FREE OF ADORING YOUNG EYES FLUTTERING SIX INCHES AWAY FROM HIS FACE?

Maura Johnston is somehow still watching American Idol. She's on Twitter@maura

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