My belated recap of the Top 7 Results Show(4/19/06) - Goodbye Ace! *sniff*

We got the normal recap of last night's performances & some of the sessions with Rod; at one point he said "I think they're all bloody marvelous!"

The car-mercial wasn't very exciting; there were billboards advertising concerts with each of the contestants, and then what looked like a photo was the actual contestant who started dancing around... to the song "Kids in America." I think the car was just driving around seeing all the billboards.

Rod Stewart came out & chatted briefly with Ryan on the couch, then performed "The Way You Look Tonight."

And next week's theme was announced to be "Greatest Love Songs of All Time" (so, a change from "Former Idols' Songs", for better or worse). The guest coach & performer will be Andrea Bocelli. On American Idol. Alrighty then.

On to eliminations. We're down to 7, which means there will be two groups of 3 and the 7th person will be forced to choose which is the top and which is the bottom (per George, who just felt horrible about the whole situation, rightfully, and Bo, who just stood in the middle between the two!). So, Elliott is sent to the far side of the stage, and Chris to the near side. Already I'm calling Elliott's group as bottom 3, and when Kellie joins him, I'm certain. However... Paris joins Chris, Ace also joins Chris, and Katharine joins Elliott. I'm uncertain now as the 2 people I thought guaranteed a spot in the bottom 3 (Kellie and Ace) are in different groups. I'm holding my breath hoping that my initial guess was correct. Then Taylor... is told that he's safe! (But he "may or may not have received the most votes.") *Then* Ryan tells him to join the group he thinks is the top 3. He has the commercial break to think about it. When they're back he's standing in the middle with Ryan and walks toward Chris's group, extending his hand to shake Chris'. Ryan starts to tell Taylor he picked the wrong group, but he spoke too soon because as soon as Taylor finished the hand shake he shrugged & went to join Elliott's group! Way to fake Ryan out! So Ryan had to stumble over his words so that what he said made sense...

Anyway, that makes Ace (expected), Paris (the best performance of the night!), and Chris (the Chosen One!) in the bottom 3, while Kellie (the absolutely worst performance of the night, admitted by every human I've seen express an opinion, including Kellie herself) not in the bottom 3. I understand that she has fans. Voting fans. They obviously felt she needed the votes after that performance. But still.

Paris is sent back to the couches and Ryan calls the remaining 2 guys "the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck of American Idol." Hee! So true. Anyway, they've run out of time to make any sort of big deal about Chris' being there, and just announce that Ace is going home. He was prepared and wasn't too emotional about it, entering his sing-out as one last chance to entertain people and brighten their day (or however he worded it on the "Journey" clip, which I thought was sweet, and reminded me of Justin because he always said something similar). Unfortunately the credits started rolling as soon as he started singing and he was cutoff way before the song was done. Sigh. As with Bucky last week though, at least he got to go out on a decent performance. And we might actually get to know him a little bit in his talk show interviews next week!