Last night’s American Idol was shocking for one reason. Yes, Matt Giraud’s gone. Yes Adam Lambert was in the bottom two.

But that’s not it. We’re talking about the fact that, on last night’s American Idol, we discovered that Taylor Hicks isn’t dead. Not only that, but Taylor Hicks also hasn’t fallen into such a state of destitute poverty that he’s had to harvest his internal organs to Russian gangsters for food. Talk about a shock.

However, Matt Giraud left American Idol last night, knowing that he’ll never even be as popular as Taylor Hicks. Fate’s a sod sometimes.

In the world of American Idol, everything has a hidden message. True, the majority of those hidden messages seem to be either ‘Wow, these Fords and comfortable AND affordable!’ or ‘Here, have you tried thirst-quenching Coca-Cola recently? I heard it makes your penis bigger’, but the American Idol guest stars send a different message completely.

When Jennifer Hudson was an American Idol guest star a few weeks ago, the message was that any of the contestants can achieve their dream through sheer strength of personality regardless of where they come in the competition. And when Jamie Foxx appeared on American Idol this week, the message seemed to be ‘Never, ever let yourself become this man. Ever. Look at him. He’s a massive tool.’

And then there’s Taylor Hicks, who filled the guest star spot on last night’s American Idol results show to perform his new single Generic Redneck Bollocks or whatever it was called. What was the hidden message of Taylor Hicks?

Well, it could have been a stark warning to the American Idol contestants that even the show’s winners can spend their lives snivelling in total obscurity. Or it could have been a friendly reminder that America likes its reality TV show winners if they don’t constantly twitch like a Vietnam veteran licking a car battery. Who knows?

But forget Taylor Hicks (again) because two huge things happened on last night’s American Idol. The first was that Matt Giraud was eliminated, which we won’t dwell on because we’ve already written his obituary once. The second, though, blindsided us a bit.

The second was that Adam Lambert – the flamboyant emo with the voice that sounds like an angel being attacked with pins, the man who everyone was convinced would win American Idol – was in the bottom two. Reuters reports:

Host Ryan Seacrest played up the surprise results for all it was worth, taking Lambert by the arm to join fellow low vote-getters Matt Giraud and Kris Allen, leaving Iraheta and Danny Gokey to stare at each other slack-jawed. After Lambert ended up in the Bottom Three, panelists Paula Abdul and Kara DioGuardi both expressed shock. “It’s crazy,” Abdul said.

For once, Paula Abdul is right. It is crazy that Adam Lambert, who Simon Cowell gave a standing ovation to a few weeks ago, was almost eliminated from American Idol. Why did it happen? Are people sick of all the attention that Adam Lambert gets? Have people stopped voting for him because they assume he’s going to win anyway? Do people really prefer Dead Wife Bloke? Do they? Really? Because that’d be weird.

Still, though, at least we understand what Paula Abdul was banging on about when she said that Adam Lambert was like Michael Phelps this week. It doesn’t mean that he’s a champion athlete, it just means that everyone thinks he’s creepy and a bit funny-looking. It all makes so much sense now.

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Well well, maybe that American Idol Judge’s Save gimmick wasn’t as hopelessly poo-headed as we all thought.

Just look at Matt Giraud. Everyone figured that, after his save last week, he’d be kicked off American Idol last night. But no. Instead Matt Giraud remains on American Idol, while Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai got booted.

So does this mean that Matt Giraud will win American Idol? No, it means that he’s slightly better at singing than Anoop Desai and Lil Rounds. But we know rape alarms that are better at singing than Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai, so whoopty bloody doo.

It’s been a long time coming – so long, in fact, that we’ve already formed entirely fictitious memories of how perfect life was back in the early stages of the season – but American Idol has finally revealed its top five contestants. And it’s with some degree of authority that we can declare that this year’s American Idol will be won by either Adam Lambert, Dead Wife Bloke, That Other Man, A Woman or Whichever One We’ve Missed Out.

And, whatever you think of American Idol, you’ve got to hand it to the show – that sure is one talented bunch of people who’d largely go unrecognised in the street.

However, although we’re thrilled that it won’t be long before everyone gets to stop pretending that Adam Lambert isn’t very obviously going to win American Idol, we’re a little sad that Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were kicked off American Idol in a double elimination last night. A little sad, mind you. Maybe sad is the wrong word. We noticed that Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were kicked off American Idol last night. There, that’s better. Reuters reports:

Rounds, who sang “I’m Every Woman,” and Desai, who performed “Dim All the Lights,” had both faced elimination in recent weeks by repeatedly placing among the bottom vote-getters, and both seemed resigned to their fates. “I’m still really disappointed,” Desai, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, said during the program. “I’m coming home,” added Rounds, addressing her husband and three children.

The elimination won’t have come as a surprise to Lil Rounds, who’s been informed week after week that she’s a terrible singer, but Anoop Desai really put the effort in for this week’s American Idol. By which we mean that he didn’t shave for a couple of days. You know, like George Michael. Or that homeless man who threw a bottle at us when we caught him going through our bins the other day. He deserved more.

But although it’s the end of American Idol for Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai, they can still return home with their heads held high. After all, not all of us can say that our life peaked during a two-month period of time when a smug British man with bad hair and granny teeth consistently mocked our lack of ability and stage presence in front of an audience of millions, can we? No. Not all of us can say that.

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Ah, American Idol Disco Night – a tradition right up there with visiting elderly relatives and hereditary bowel disease.

Honestly, why? Whose idea is it to keep bringing Disco Night back to American Idol? If it isn’t someone who has a financial interest in those cross-channel ferries than run a nightclub service to Calais every month with music by a middle-aged local radio DJ then we’ll be surprised. American Idol Disco Night is terrible.

So what happened on last night’s American Idol? Some people with funny haircuts sang some uninteresting disco songs in a mediocre way. Don’t you watch American Idol?

Because each season of American Idol lasts roughly – and this is just a ballpark here – 400 years, it doesn’t take much for the show to look stale. And, for all sorts of reasons, that’s exactly what happened on last night’s American Idol. Here’s why…

1 – It was Disco Night on American Idol last night. Disco Night, for crying out loud. There are only two places where disco music – or at least the disco music chosen by the American Idol contestants – should be heard. Wedding receptions and hell. Provided that wedding receptions aren’t automatically a direct subcategory of hell, of course. And we need hard proof that they aren’t. In summary, disco music makes us want to kill ourselves.

2 – In terms of the zeitgeist, American Idol has been blown clean out of the water this week by Britain’s Got Talent and, specifically, Susan Boyle. Nobody wants to see pretty young starlets wiggle and writhe through zippy performances any more – they only like hearing depressing songs performed by dumpy little sasquatches who look like they pick their dinner out of their hair every evening. Plus, screw you Danny Gokey. You’ve got a dead wife? So what? Susan Boyle has got fairly big eyebrows. That’s tragedy.

3 - This far into American Idol, we can start to see through each contestant’s palette of tricks and gimmicks. So when Adam Lambert slowed down If I Can’t Have You enough to let him pull an array of faces that made it look like he was being sucked off by something startling like a dinosaur or his grandmother, it wasn’t a surprise. That’s what Adam Lambert does every single week on American Idol. Similarly, when Lil Rounds was rubbish and a bit embarrassing to watch during her performance of I’m Every Woman, that wasn’t a surprise for exactly the same reason.

In fact, the most interesting thing we can honestly say about last night’s American Idol is that Anoop Desai didn’t shave beforehand – something that Paula Abdul singled out as an example of his artistic growth. We haven’t shaved for over a week. We think that makes us Ernest Hemingway. Thanks, Paula!

But still, because Matt Giraud inexplicably got saved from elimination on last week’s American Idol, two performers have to get the shove tonight, and that has to be a good thing. Or is it? We’ve just realised that we’ll get two goodbye performances instead of one this week. And they’ll both be disco songs. Arses.

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You know when your mum threatens to hit you, and the anticipation is worse than the actual violence?

American Idol does. And that’s not just because everyone involved in American Idol seems like they were beaten up as children and the abuse has manifested itself in chronic, relentless, insufferable attention-seeking. No, we’re talking about the American Idol Judge’s Save – the long-threatened but largely toothless gimmick that was finally brought into play last night.

And it was lucky old Matt Giraud who was saved by the American Idol judges. This means Matt Giraud will be out next week. Obviously.

There are several things that have set this season of American Idol apart from the others. For instance, this is the only American Idol season with four judges instead of three. Also, this is the first American Idol season to precede itself with an old contestant killing themselves near Paula Abdul‘s house. And let’s not forget that this has been the only American Idol season where we appear to have been gloriously encouraged to mock the blind.

But mainly there’s the Judge’s Save – the convoluted, slightly unfair and colossally stupid gimmick that allows the American Idol judges to save one contestant in the entire season from elimination provided that they’re not in the final four and two contestants are eliminated the following week, even though it’s almost guaranteed that one of those two eliminated contestants will be the one who the judges saved the week before. Are you keeping up? Good, because this is apparently very important.

And on last night’s American Idol, Matt Giraud was the lucky recipient of the Judge’s Save. Oh, you know Matt Giraud. He’s the completely unremarkable American Idol contestant who has never sang, said or thought anything of any interest to anyone, who seemed happy enough to bumble his way into the instantly forgettable doldrums of mid-season elimination and who has a brain that, we imagine, is capable of nothing more than playing this tune on an unrelenting internal loop.

Anyway, despite spending this week’s American Idol bellowing a horrible Bryan Adams song that was horrible even by Bryan Adams’ horrible standards, Matt Giraud was spared elimination by the kindly judges, probably because they know that Adam Lambert and Dead Wife Man are definitely going to make it into the final, allowing them to spunk away the save on any old bastard they like. Reuters reports:

“Matt, it’s good news,” Simon Cowell told the singer, who broke down in tears after the judges’ unanimous decision allowed him to stay in the competition at least one more week. The audience, which had chanted “Save, save, save!” cheered wildly.

So we’d like to offer our hearty congratulations to Matt Giraud. Matt, the public might have openly demonstrated their total apathy towards you – something that’s bound to hamper any dreams of you developing a successful post-Idol music career – but at least four smug millionaires have sort of said that they kind of like you, and that’s all that counts.

And this means that Matt Giraud will probably now get voted out for good during next week’s American Idol Disco Week. Forget what everyone says, Matt, there’s plenty of dignity in leaving a reality TV show while dressed in a colourful afro wig and sparkly platform shoes after performing a consolatory rendition of Funky Town. There is.

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