So this is the finals? You could have fooled me. The first show of the "American Idol" season to allow each contestant two performances instead of one for the most part doubled the misery. The ejection of Chris Richardson and Phil Stacey last week should have been a wake-up call for the still-standing Blake Lewis, Melinda Doolittle, LaKisha Jones, and Jordin Sparks. Phil, who has been a constant presence in the bottom three since the round of 12 began, must have had a security blanket effect: "No way I'm getting kicked off this week with Phil still around." Blake in particular seemed diminished in stature with no other men around. That might be because Stacey and his complete lack of style and Richardson and his thin little voice made flattering comparisons for Lewis week after week. It also might be because Jordin Sparks is like six inches taller than he and Blake barely even edges the diminutive Doolittle and Jones. It's hard to be larger than life when you're like 5'6" in lifts. Yeah, Prince is really short, but Prince is way more awesome than Blake Lewis. And his falsetto doesn't suck.

Melinda Doolittle For her first performance on a night dedicated entirely to the songs of guest coach Barry Gibb, Melinda did "Love You Inside and Out" and I thought that it was one of her better recent outings. For one thing, it was a better song than Melinda's usual fare, and for another, at last she seemed natural. Doolittle's new longer hairstyle suits her, and she's obviously a t-shirt and jeans kind of lady. She moves entirely differently when she's dressed down. The arrangement she chose didn't really showcase Melinda's big guns vocally, but it's taken Doolittle way too long already to figure out that not every song needs to go up to 11. Obviously, on a night when she gets to go twice, she has an opportunity to underplay it at least once. But the flipside of the double-dip is that it makes Doolittle's tendency to be predictable and safe even more obvious. The judges have been telling her for months that she needs some grit, some individuality, some starpower. At this point I think we have to assume that we're never going to see it. The question is, who is going to exploit that weakness and beat her? Blake has style to spare but can't really sing. LaKisha has her own glaring weaknesses and unlike Melinda her strengths seem to be abandoning her as the pressure mounts. That leaves Jordin, but Melinda has consistently outsung Jordin all season. So I don't know. 8

Blake Lewis You'd think Blake Lewis, who has been the best potential "Idol" all season in terms of getting people to move around on their couches, would go with "You Should Be Dancin'" like cowbell goes with disco. But no. I just didn't feel like I should have been dancing! Barry Gibb week might have been a trap for Blake, who overindulged himself with the beatboxing and seemed to find keeping his falsetto near pitch and dancing at the same time very difficult. Pasting little cut-and-scratch eh-eh-eh's to the most memorable hook in a famous song was a bad choice. Blake tackled the instrumental section of the tune with such furious abandon that it made his singing sound very, very quiet and thin indeed. There's another thing, too. "American Idol" is a massive experience. It changes lives. Even watching the show for just this one season I've seen extremely confident and talented singers with precise ideas about how to present themselves ground methodically into dust again and again. Look at Chris Sligh, or Brandon Rogers, or Stephanie Edwards. The pressure gets to people, and Blake just seems diminished now that his lesser running mates Phil and Chris are gone. It has to play on his mind a little bit that the hip, edgy, "contemporary" contestant has never won "Idol." He could still win, but it's going to take a massive breakthrough next week. 6

LaKisha Jones This one was an unmitigated disaster for Kiki. "American Idol" proved long ago that the average U.S. citizen can't tell to save their lives whether a vocalist is singing in key or not. But they can certainly tell when a song they know by heart is being taken outside and beaten to the brink of death with blunt instruments. Jones looked, sounded, and moved wrong while singing "Stayin' Alive." Obviously, it's not really a song built to showcase a single vocalist, let alone a husky-voiced female one. LaKisha tried to have it both ways by slowing the tempo down slightly but leaving the arrangement otherwise tantalizingly familiar. It didn't work, as it only served to make the inferiority of her interpretation of a song everyone in this country who has ever been to a high school dance knows by heart more obvious. She could have stayed alive (excuse me) by just leaving well enough alone, trying to follow the melody and then getting out with her reputation intact for her second chance on the night. Instead, in the last third of the performance she let loose with a random series of shrieks that were only tangentially related to the chords being pumped out by the band. Melinda would have been able to negotiate this challenge by relying on her professionalism. This is LaKisha's problem, when it comes right down to it: She's simply not enough of a musician. Present her with something she's sung along to on the radio before, or later on in the season songs like the Bon Jovi tune she was able to translate to her style, and she's a great singer. But if you get her out of her comfort zone she simply doesn't have the instincts to fight through it. I don't think she can possibly win after last night. I did, however, like the way she changed the song's first line to "You can tell by the way I use my walk that I'm a WO-MAN." 4

Jordin Sparks After this first performance, I was ready to finally give in and hop on the Jordin bandwagon. She looked terrific. Straightened hair really suits her, making her come across as much less of a lightweight teenybopper. Her "To Love Somebody" was stellar, particularly coming after two real misfires by Blake and LaKisha. It seemed for a moment at least like Sparks was the only contestant who responded to the ejection of the last two people in the field with no chance at all to win by raising her game. But she had to go again. More on that later. 9

Melinda Doolittle Exactly as I imagined she would, Melinda followed up her restrained first appearance with a scorcher. I should be sick to death of Melinda's patterns by now. Every damn time she picks a crummy song, lulls you into a false sense of boredom with the first verse, and then busts it open. Can you imagine what her first album will be like? My goodness, they can save money by just recording one song and repeating it 12 times. But what can you do? The woman can sing. The final triad of "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" was one of the most viscerally satisfying moments of pure musicality for the whole season. Of course, all the other ones were also provided by Melinda on songs that sounded just like this one and were structured just like this one. If Jordin or Blake gets it together for next week, where is Melinda going to go? We've already seen everything she has to offer. But at her peak, for all her technical virtuosity, there is always seems to be something lacking in intangibles. If she's going to win, I want to see her provide an unquestionable perfect 10 before it's all said and done. I thought Simon's comment about the second half of the tune alone guaranteeing Melinda safe passage to next week was spot-on. 9

Blake Lewis Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? We shall see. Lewis took a colossal risk by picking a random old Bee Gees song that no one save Barry Gibb seemed ever to have heard before, "This Is Where I Came In." I kind of liked it. It was obviously much better than "You Should Be Dancin'," with a tune Blake could actually carry. I also think that Lewis has done a good job of synthesizing his various musical reference points into a coherent whole as the season has gone on. This performance featured both a trademark booty-shaking Blake groove and slower refrains where Lewis got to showcase his not entirely unpleasant wispy fey Britrock register. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of him winning yet, though. It is a singing contest, so they say, and Lewis is only an okay singer. If I hadn't given up weeks ago and started grading on a curve I would say that on a purely technical basis Blake's ceiling is maybe a 7 or an 8. You don't have to be a technical wizard to be an "Idol," as Taylor Hicks well knows. But Blake's alternative strategy leaves me a little confused. What's with the obscure song pick? It pretty much guarantees a tongue-lashing from the judges, since Simon and Randy are both devoted advocates of "if I haven't heard of it, it must suck" logic. But maybe Blake is playing a deeper game. If he's assuming that most of the fans who have been voting for Chris Richardson and Phil Stacey will transfer their allegiances to him, he's not crazy to do so. If that's what ends up happening, this was his last chance to take a huge risk. I don't know exactly what the upside of "This Is Where I Came In" was, other than tickling Barry Gibb pink. You have to give Blake some props for doing his best to keep the show interesting in the bleak post-Sanjaya era. 8

LaKisha Jones LaKisha had a ton of work to do to make up for the "Stayin' Alive" debacle, and her "Run to Me" wasn't nearly good enough. We already have heard LaKisha sing more than enough torch songs, and this really wasn't a particularly inspired outing. So will the voters reject Blake for being interesting bad, or LaKisha for being boring bad? I suspect Blake has a larger established fanbase, and what's more, anticipation should still exist for what Lewis might uncork for the last two shows. LaKisha hasn't had any surprises left up her sleeves for like two months now, which in retrospect makes it a little surprising that she's lasted this long. I enjoyed her thanking Simon wanly for a complete rip job. I don't look forward to watching her get sent home. 7

Jordin Sparks Thanks, Jordin. I have had trouble putting my finger on exactly why I am Sparks doubter for a long time now. Getting to see both her good and her bad sides in quick succession on Tuesday night really cleared things up for me. Here's the thing: Jordin is not smart. I should have picked up on it when she picked a song from The Land Before Time for Diana Ross week, or at least from the "Hey Baby" in the Gwen Stefani show. Honestly, of the hundreds of songs Barry Gibb has written, is there a single one more horrible than "Woman in Love?" Is there a figure in music worse for an "Idol" contestant to invite comparisons to than Barbra Streisand? Honestly, Sparks' finale was one of the tackiest things I've ever seen. Her ill-fitting gown made her look like a little girl playing dress-up. And what's more, Sparks doesn't seem to have the musical intelligence to understand which melodies complement her voice and which don't. On occasion, she has been every bit as technically masterful as Melinda Doolittle, with a personality and relatability already installed that Doolittle can't touch. But every time she wins you over the next week she sucks. Her low register didn't work for her at all on "Woman in Love." She sounded like she was croaking. Then her high notes were very shaky as well. I was ready to crown her the big winner after her first song, but the second one was shrill and tone-deaf and she missed any chance to distract me from her singing by standing virtually motionless at the microphone for the entirety of the performance. Honestly, I know I've said it before, but doesn't anybody want to win this thing? 5

The picks:

Homes: LaKisha Jones
Lobes: Melinda Doolittle
4-Sided Die: Blake Lewis