LITTLE ROCK — Where's Sanjaya when we need him?
American Idol wraps things up over two nights this week - 7 p.m. Tuesday when the fi nal two battle it out, and the same time Wednesday when the next idol is crowned.
As usual, Fox will kill two long, interminable, commercial-filled hours Wednesday before getting around to naming the winner. I wish they'd bring back Sanjaya for one farewell tune.
You remember Sanjaya Malakar from last year's season No. 6. He was the shy kid with the ever-changing hairdo who lasted far, far longer in the competition than he should have because he was just so darned cute.
As one of my fellow critics put it, he was as cute as a basket of puppies. Puppies made of rainbows.
Sanjaya and his hair made it to seventh place - a bit uncomfortable for the producers of the series that pretends to crown the next Idol on ability alone.
We've now wound our way through to the final week for Fox's ratings phenomenon, which kicked off Jan. 15. The series followed the familiar format of visiting seven audition cities and showing far too many faux contestants for my money.
There's a limit on how many bad singers in goofy outfits we can stand. These episodes linger far too long now. Idol doesn't begin to become interesting until the action shifts to Hollywood.
This season, 164 contestants made it to Hollywood for the four grueling days of elimination. More hearts were broken, more obscenities muttered and we got down to the semifi nal 24.
Eventually, they wereculled to our 12 fi nalists - David Archuleta, Jason Castro, David Cook, Syesha Mercado, Brooke White, Carly Smithson, Kristy Lee Cook, Michael Johns, Ramiele Malubay, Chikezie, Amanda Overmyer, and David Hernandez.
Not a Sanjaya among them, although some were obviously more gifted singers than others. Maybe the producers took extra pains this season to ensure they wouldn't have to hold their breath while another Sanjaya worked his way from week to week.
Now that the ratings juggernaut is wrapping up another season, this would be a good time to point out the Top 10 Idol cliches as listed on the AOL Television Web site.
These will be sure to return in season No. 8.
10. The Glory Note - Head up, arm out, hit the long high one and watch the crowd cheer.
9. Adoring mentors - Gushing mentors who love every contestant and really only want to push their new DVDs.
8. Simon and Ryan's bickering - It's all hype anyway, so stop it.
7. Audience celebrities - We don't care that David Hasselhoff is sitting in the thirdrow.
6. Mike-stand walks - "Rockers" who haul the stand around the stage for added cred.
5. Randy's pitchy problems - Randy, dawg, nobody knows what you mean. Is it off-key or not?
4. Lookin' beautiful - If all Paula can manage to say is how beautiful a contestant looks, the performance stank to high heaven.
3. Results after the break - There's always a break and Ryan Seacrest milks it for all it's worth. Dude, it ain't funny anymore.
2. Booing Simon - Everybody boos Simon. The trouble is, his observations are usually dead on.
1. Number Fingers - Ryan says the number to call and the contestant holds up that many fingers. It's always bad luck to sing fi rst. Nobody remembers you by the end of the show.
Front Section, Pages 181 on 05/18/2008