AMERICAN IDOL: Official Ledge Thread

[GoldDustOrphan]

I find The Widow Gokey absolutely repellent and completely disingenuous. If anyone is following a script, it's him. Choosing "Hero" for his first performance demonstrates his willingness to actively court the sympathy vote as if it were a specific voting block.

He's calculating and shrewd, much more of a careerist than the judges suspect. He's watched this show and he knows how it works. He has a better singing voice than the majority of contestants, but he lacks charisma, commercial selling points, and he's not stylistically specific (unlike similar-voiced Elliot Yamin and Taylor Hicks). He's really taking his cues from Hicks, who won despite Cowell's disapproval. Gokey knows he too will incur Simon Cowell's wrath for not being relevant or commercial, and he needed a preemptive measure to insulate him from Cowell, who will use Hicks' commercial failure and return to obscurity as a big "I told you so" to similar candidates. But, as the brave widow who lost his wife four weeks prior to his AI audition, he can hard sell his Michael Bolton vibe to single women who like cuddle without incurring Cowell's full wrath for appearing, well, hokey. However, if Gokey continues to inform his every move with the dead wife card, Cowell is the only judge likely to address what has polarized fans on AI message boards - Gokey's appearance of insincerity.

What makes Tatiana Del Toro so watchable is her resolve. Socially awkward, but sweet, she's probably been the odd girl out her whole life, but she clearly believes in AI's mission statement more than its producers. She's there to compete in singing competition, and that's just what she's going to do. The producers may have cast her with a certain role in mind, but she's unpredictable. She knows they're making fun of her, but she'll never let on. And her performance last night caught the judges off-guard. Randy Jackson didn't expect her to be good. Del Toro's composure was a curveball for Paula, who wanted to know where the crazy girl. Del Toro is that girl who won't flinch, the kind who has been a sturdy defense against bullies. It's like the producers invited Carrie White to the senior prom just to humiliate her, and hopefully, they'll pay a similar price.

FYI: Del Toro wrote every song on her self-financed CD and her resume reveals a strong work ethic.