American Idol 5: Was Mandisa’s Exit the “Shocking Result” of the Season?

At the beginning of this season, I predicted there would be a “shocking” result on American Idol in which a more talented and popular contestant would be sent home before a less talented competitor. In fact, I made the same prediction last year too, and then had to write another column explaining it when Constantine was sent home. The question before us now is whether Mandisa’s loss is that “shocking” result.

There are some factors that would weigh in on the “yes” side, and immediately after the results were announced, it seemed that this might indeed fall into the “shocking” category. If we took a poll, I think it would come down firmly showing that a great majority of people believe Mandisa has an excellent voice – certainly better than several of the other candidates. Indeed, the judges have indicated as much over the past weeks as well. And while I know there are some people out there reading this who will be annoyed that I’m bringing him up again, one person she is definitely better than is Bucky, who by all rights should have gone home weeks ago if Idol were based purely on singing ability.

But we all know Idol is not based purely on ability. If it were that objective, we wouldn’t need an audience vote – we could just have the judges hold up scorecards and send contestants home according to who did the worst, like a skating competition.

And, indeed, this is a large part of what plays into determining which votes are “shocking.” When Constantine Maroulis was sent home instead of Scott Savol last season, many people found it “shocking” and the e-mail inboxes of those of us who write about Idol were overflowing with messages about how terrible it was. Some people thought Constantine was better than Scott, some didn’t, but a lot of people liked Constantine more than Scott, no matter what they objectively would have otherwise thought of their singing capabilities. Constantine had a lot of fans who were seriously upset when he went home.

Overall popularity played a role in other “shocking” upsets. While most people would agree that Jennifer Hudson was a better singer than Jasmine Trias and John Stevens, it was the overall popularity of the “three divas” that really caused people to fly off the handle at Jennifer’s loss. The same is true of the Tamyra/Nikki result in the first series.

Getting back to this season, certainly Mandisa had her fans, but they never seemed to rise, as a group, to the level of fanaticism as other current or past Idol contestants. As noted in Why Mandisa Lost, “A recent look at the official website showed that the number of messages in the Mandisa topic was easily the lowest of all active contestants. Others have reported similar situations, simply not seeing a large contingent of Mandisa fanatics.”

And if there was any doubt about the lack of fervent support, those of us writing about Idol only had to watch our e-mail inboxes Wednesday night and Thursday – because they stayed almost completely empty as far as outraged messages. In fact, I personally received only one e-mail from a person who proclaimed how upset they were that Mandisa left, saying they couldn’t sleep after the results, the rest of the show will be boring, etc. Even that person said, “I was not her biggest fan” and the message didn’t come in until about 4:30 Thursday afternoon! You have to understand that this lack of outraged e-mail is even more shocking than the result for an Idol writer – we are used to fanatics of all stripes sending in messages about how horrible the results were, no matter what those results were! (For the record, I still received plenty of e-mails, as usual, they just weren’t of the “I’m horribly shocked and will never watch Idol again” variety.)

And that, right there, is the kicker. While Mandisa certainly had a lot of people who liked her, it doesn’t seem she had a large core group who loved her. If a large fan group wasn’t out there promoting her and a large number of people don’t seem to be shocked that she was sent home, we can’t very well proclaim this to be a “shocking” result – even if judging by pure vocal ability would have certainly caused a different outcome.

Don’t fret, readers, at least not yet. It would not surprise me one bit if we still have a shock or two left for the season. Even the singer I think shouldn’t have made it this far seems to have a strong fan base behind him, and that could cause some interesting results as we move forward.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other recent American Idol articles on Foxes On Idol and RealityNewsOnline:

David Bloomberg is the Editor of Foxes On Idol, and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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