American Idol 7: Was Carly’s Exit the Season’s “Shocking Result”?

Carly was sent packing after giving one of her best performances of the season. What is going on? How could such a thing happen? This is an especially big question mark with some viewers because of the performances of Jason and Brooke.

Jason sucked so badly that even the guest star criticized him. Randy called it a “train wreck.” Simon said it was the longest two minutes of his life. Jason himself looked like he hated every moment of it.

Brooke, meanwhile, balked. She started, she stopped, she restarted. Even Paula Abdul – Paula! – told her to never ever do that. It was perhaps the biggest mistake in American Idol history.

Yet Brooke and Jason stayed while Carly left.

Does that mean this was a shocker? Perhaps the one I predicted we would likely see this season? Some people think it is. I say no way.

As of this week, we had six pretty talented people still left. There were no Nikki McKibbins or Josh Gracins or Jasmine Triases or John Stevenses in this group. Sure, people might not be a fan of one or more of them, and we might even root to see a particular person leave, but I don’t think there is any denying that each one has shown some amount of talent.

But somebody has to go.

After Tuesday night’s performances, it would have seemed likely that Brooke or Jason would go. But that’s presuming viewers vote solely (or even mostly) based on what they see in a given night. Seven seasons of experience should tell us by now that Idol simply doesn’t work that way.

Indeed, it would be very difficult for me to suggest that Carly leaving was a shocker when I predicted it would happen before the performances even aired! Some readers might suggest that the performances should have changed that prediction, but that ignores the whole point of that prediction article. Sting7 and I predict based on the flow of the show. That flow, in my opinion, was pointing towards an exit for Carly. We know people don't only vote based on who had the best performance. Heck, sometimes it's exactly the opposite, as fans vote harder for somebody who screwed up, because they feel they need to save them. This should not be a surprise to us.

Indeed, this is not a new phenomenon. We can look all the way back to season one, when Ryan Starr murdered a song and yet made it through to the next week. After seven seasons, we know that the votes are not always based on that particular night's performance. For a while in the early days of Idol, I wrote articles complaining about the show being a popularity contest instead of a singing competition. Indeed, it's been so long that I can’t even remember when I gave up on writing about how Ryan should stop telling people to vote for their favorites instead of the ones who sang best. It's just the way it is. So with that being the case, how can it be a shocker?

And lest you think it was just me with a lucky guess, Joseph Banks, in his NGH Reports, also predicted an early exit for Carly. He noted in his post-results column, “I've been witnessing a giant disconnect between Carly and the American Idol audience. As I've said before, she has yet to really define her image; this makes it very difficult to solidify a stable fan base."

The fan base issue is key, as I discussed in Why Carly Lost. They are the ones who will support you as a contestant when you do well, and save you when you do poorly. Brooke and Jason built those fan bases from early in the voting rounds; Carly did not.

If this were a world where people voted solely based on the performance we saw on Tuesday night, this would be a huge surprise. But we don't – and never have – lived in that world when it comes to American Idol. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure we want to live in that world. I mean, should David Archuleta have been voted out the one night he forgot his lyrics? Should David Cook have been voted out the one night pretty much everybody agreed he screwed up? One bad performance should not kill a contestant’s chances, at least not at this stage of the competition. Put a string of them together and they’re going to go home some time before finale night. Similarly, one great performance sometimes just isn’t enough to save a singer who didn’t previously build up the fan base support.

So, no, Carly leaving was not a shocker. The way it happened was disappointing, but in the overall scheme of things, not something that should have been ruled out. As associate editor Jenn Brasler mentioned to me, the only real surprise at this point would be if one of the Davids is voted off before the final three. I might revise that to say the final two, but I also might have something more to say about that at another time.

For now, suffice it to say that Carly is a good singer who I believe will still do pretty well with the right kind of album. But her departure was not a shocking result.

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

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

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