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Man, I KNEW doing disco on American Idol was a bad idea.

Yes, last night's performance show was relatively painless--Adam Lambert, Kris Allen, and Allison Iraheta actually did a particularly good job of de-cheesifying such potentially cheesy music--but tonight's results show was so cheesy, Fox ought to have recruited Kraft, Velveeta, and/or Cheetos as new sponsors.

The show began with judge/choreographer Paula Abdul teaching the top 7 some disco moves more advanced than their usual step/touch/step/touch routines, then the contestants took those moves to the main stage, Hustling and lip-synching through a "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" group number while dressed in Brady Bunch leisure suits. Ugh. I personally got enough within the first 30 seconds. If I thought Danny Gokey was already a (Simon Cowell's words) "clumsy" dancer, that was nuthin' compared to this disco debacle.

I was just glad that Scott MacIntyre wasn't still around for this. Watching him trying to pick up Paula's moves would have been truly painful, and making him unknowingly wear one of these polyester outfits would've been worse than that time the stylists stuck him in "flesh-colored" pink pants.

There was also a group number featuring old-school disco stars Freda Payne, Thelma Houston, and KC (sans the Sunshine Band) that was enough to have me yelling the early-'80s mantra "disco sucks!" all over again.

Freda was instantly out of breath and hit many bad notes that sounded like the clunker Anoop sang at the end of last night's "Dim All The Lights"; Thelma sang well but missed the line at the beginning of her song and executed some questionably "sexy" moves for a lady her age; and KC just did not "get down tonight" at all.

It was so bad that when it was time for tonight's other performer, season 7 runner-up David Archuleta--who, as my regular readers know, I have NEVER liked--it was almost a relief.

You know who else was probably kind of relieved? This week's two eliminated contestants, the expected Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai. Lil has been raked over the proverbial coals almost all season long for her lackluster performances, so she surely won't miss Simon's scathing critiques, and Anoop has been in the bottom three so many times it's obviously taken a massive toll on his once-sunny disposition. (As Ryan put it as Anoop was eliminated tonight: "It seems like you're numb to this after all these weeks.")

Personally, I was just relieved that Allison wasn't one of tonight's castoffs. Last week I questioned the judges' surprising decision to utilize their one-time-only Judges' Save on underdog Matt Giraud, when they still had one more week to use it or lose it on someone perhaps more deserving (and with more of a chance of actually winning, according to Simon). So when Allison was in the bottom three this week (what is wrong with America? why aren't more viewers voting for Allison???), I was skerred.

If it turned out the judges wouldn't be able to save Allison this week because they'd already wasted their veto power on Matt, I was going to be MAD. Especially when she'd just endeared herself to me even more by singing a snippet of OK Go's "Here It Goes Again" while walking over to the bottom-three stools tonight.

But since Allison was thankfully safe--as was Matt, by public vote this time--I must say, the judges did the right thing last week. Matt's not going to win, but I don't mind him sticking around a couple more weeks, since it was Lil who should have gone last week in the first place.

I just hope Allison manages to stick around even longer.

Parker out.

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