Hey kids! It's an American Idol "rewatch"!

I missed the majority of the first three episodes of American Idol this season, and while I have seen some of the performances from Michael Jackson week, country week, and Motown week, I've decided to go back now and watch all of these episodes I missed the first time around. With the re-airing of Michael Jackson week last night, I've decided to write up some of my thoughts on these episodes. It’s a really interesting experience going back and watching these earlier episodes, because the truth is I didn’t actually see a lot of these performances, and the ones that I did, I barely remember. It’s also interesting to reflect on how my opinions changed over the course of the season. I'm also doing this because I'm bored. I'm sorry.

Top 13 "Michael Jackson Week" I do remember flipping to during commercials during Lost or something so I did get to see a few people. I believe that I saw Anoop, Jorge, Adam, and Alexis, or at least those were the performances I remember seeing anyway, heh.

The performances:
# Lil Rounds - “The Way You Make Me Feel”
# Scott MacIntyre - “Keep the Faith”
# Danny Gokey - “Pretty Young Thing”
# Michael Sarver - “You Are Not Alone”
# Jasmine Murray - “I’ll Be There”
# Kris Allen - “Remember the Time”
# Allison Iraheta - “Give in to Me”
# Anoop Desai - “Beat It”
# Jorge Nunez - “Never Can Say Goodbye”
# Megan Joy Corkrey - “Rockin’ Robin”
# Adam Lambert - “Black and White”
# Matt Giraud - “Human Nature”
# Alexis Grace - “Dirty Diana”

Danny was terrible. Terrible. I often want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt because I’m extremely biased in my hatred of him, but his horrid dancing coupled with his screaming made me cringe and laugh. And then the judges fawned all over him. I. Don’t. Get. It. It is mind boggling to me the way they were talking about him like he was the best contestant to ever get on stage. Ridiculous!

Hi, so, I’m extremely biased when it comes to Kris (duh) and I really love his performance of “Remember the Time”, but I didn’t actually watch it until I had already fallen in love with him and went back and watched his performances I had missed. Even so, I truly believe that if I had been watching this episode back when it premiered, I would have liked this performance then too. Especially considering all of the people who went before him and how kind of stale and safe and boring they all were (especially Scott, Michael, and Jasmine). Kris’s performance of this song is just so fun and joyful and adorable and cool and knowing myself, I bet I would have fallen for him back then. It’s one of my favorite performances to watch now, because he looks so young and cute while he’s performing and it makes me feel all happy inside knowing that he had no idea at that time just how far he would go.

Allison! How is she so awesome? She had one of the best performances that night for sure. Love that Kris helped her pick this song because it was perfect for her. I even downloaded the studio version of this song because I loved it so much.

I love Anoop, but the judges were spot on. He looked really really stupid. I remember thinking at the time that it was pretty bad, but watching it again? Yikes. Anoop, baby, no.

I do remember being completely blown away by Adam when I watched this episode oh so long ago. And agreed with the judges that it was better than anything I had seen to that point. Now, the performance isn’t quite as good as I remember it (apparently Adam isn’t too happy with it either), and I find Paula’s meltdown to be really annoying (as an aside, this episode Paula told Danny and Adam they were going straight to the finale. Yes, she really was making these proclamations the first episode of the finals). Still, I didn’t love “Satisfaction”, so this performance was the one that made me like Adam. He was probably my “favorite” until Top 9 week and it was this performance that did it (I use quotation marks because even though he was my favorite performer, I didn’t really feel too strongly for anyone at that point, and I wasn’t like, in love with him or anything).

I sometimes wonder if I would have grown to love Matt if I had been introduced to him earlier and seen some of his better earlier performances. Especially because he’s from Michigan and you gotta support your hometown guy. Unfortunately, the first time I remember seeing Matt was “Viva La Vida” and then I finally caught him again when he did “You Found Me”, which are both regarded as his worst performances, heh. I actually liked his performance this week when it started and I began to think that maybe Matt would have become a favorite if I would of seen this performance, but then he started going crazy with his high falsetto riffing at the end and I was just like, no. No, I probably wouldn’t have liked him then. I can’t stand when he does that.

I don’t care what anyone says, I love “Dirty Diana”. I remember liking it when I watched it and I still like it now. There’s something kind of slightly annoying about Alexis, but I liked all of her songs she did. She should have lasted further.

Watching the results shows is interesting as well. You can really tell whom the producers were trying to pimp based off of Ford commercials, group sings, and those montages they always do. It’s kind of funny the way they totally ignored Kris and totally and completely pimped out Danny and Adam from the beginning. Also, while they never pimped out Allison, I still find it funny that they mentioned she was 16 every. Single. Time she was on stage, heh.