Ryan Seacrest told us early on last night that the final results might shock us, so right off the bat we knew that someone big, someone key to the entire Idol early prediction process, would face the judges. When it came down to Alexis Grace and Michael Sarver in the bottom two, it was Alexis who had gotten the lowest number of votes and had to sing for her young life. The oil-rigger was safe, but it’s okay because he pulled at our heartstrings earlier in the night talking about his daughter. After reprising “Jolene,” it turned out Alexis wasn’t worthy of the elusive Judges’ Save like all those blogs were saying. Maybe this show isn’t rigged after all. Wait a minute, rigged…oil-rigger…holy crap, is Michael Sarver this year’s American Idol?? Here’s our five favorite moments.

5. I’m A LITTLE Bit Country. But Not Much.

We’re not the worlds biggest country fans, and having a bunch of amateurs sing music they’re not thrilled about, arranged in ways we’ve never heard before can be trying. But the lesson we learned last night is that country music when done right can be good. Brad Paisley, who we’re not all that familiar with but who has a nice stage presence, performed “Then” (with no sitars), and later Carrie Underwood and Randy Travis debuted their duet “I Told You So” that was so good that it made a bird sit very still on Carrie’s head for the entire performance without flying away. Really though, it was nice to hear a couple of songs written and performed by people who really knew what they were doing in this genre and didn’t muck it up.

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Turns out America doesn’t give a crap about you no matter how uplifting your English as a Second Language backstory is or how many gorgeous sisters you have back in Mississippi. The two finalists sent home last night on American Idol’s first finals results show were Jorge Núñez and Jasmine Murray who proved they just couldn’t satisfy America’s taste for the King of Pop. Pack your bags and say goodbye to the insane Hollywood mansion we got a glimpse of last night, kids. No more black light bowling or steam room for you guys. As sad as their departures may be, we still found five choice moments to discuss.

5. The Judges’ Save

After announcing that Jorge was eliminated from the competition, Ryan Seacrest told him “I’m going to have you sing while the judges chat,” presumably about whether or not Jorge deserved “The Judges’ Save,” which is the new twist to season 8. Seacrest explained that the judges would allow one “save” this season in case someone they thought was worthy needed a second chance after being voted off. There will be only one save, it must be unanimous, and the week after the save, two people will be eliminated to make up for it. We LOVE that Ryan even bothered to tell us that during Jorge’s performance the judges would “deliberate” in case they deemed him save-worthy, because while Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell appeared chatty, uh, Paula Abul and Kara DioGuardi not so much. Paula was on her feet the whole time. But of course we know Paula expresses herself through dance.

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Ryan Seacrest was decked out in a suit for last night’s results show because he had a lot of work to do. Not only did he have to announce the show’s three finalists, two of which we predicted (are we getting better at this?), but he had eight wildcard spots to give out too. This week’s finalists were Lil Rounds who, as Paula Abdul so gleefully put it, we’ll be seeing for a lot more lil’ rounds, Scott MacIntyre, and the one person we didn’t predict, Jorgé Nuñez (pictured above). After seeing Jorgé’s excitement and the way that native tongue of his befuddled Ryan so, we were thrilled for him.

The first order of the night was the group song and as soon as Ryan announced it, we couldn’t avert our eyes. The group song has always been highly mockable but until last night’s version of Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold,” we never thought it was pre-recorded. Trying to find out who was singing what part was a fun game because no one’s lips matched anything that we were hearing. Our eyes started to blur from looking at the TV so hard.

Lil Rounds was the first of the finalists to be announced — no shock there, she was a lock. Ryan asked Kara DioGuardi what she thought we could expect from Lil this season and Kara replied with “Just … ridiculous vocals every single week. Unless something ridiculous happens.” In Kara’s world, ridiculous is like Aloha, it means many things. And apparently one of the meanings is “amazing” and another involves a Tonya-Harding-esque plot against our songstress.

Ryan then had Arianna Afsar, Taylor Vaifanua, Alex Wagner Trugman, Kendall Beard, Scott MacIntyre stand up and he said, “One of these people is through to the next round. Which one is it?” Hilariously, someone in the audience thought they were being personally addressed and yelled “Scott!”, ruining the surprise that yes, it was indeed Scott. We then had to sit through a commercial break that was all for nothing.

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“It’s too late for advice now,” Simon Cowell ominously responded when Ryan Seacrest asked if any of the judges had a nugget of wisdom for this round of contestants. This week’s performances included a couple of seasoned performers, two single mothers, two high school students, a Norman Gentle, and a guy who has Kate from Jon and Kate Plus 8’s hair, only his is black. (But seriously Adam Lambert, the good news is that dogs across the neighborhood finally got a version of “Satisfaction” that they could hear properly, so thank you, feel free to retire now.)

5. Norman Gentle Rides Again

Much as we want Norman Gentle to stick around, we don’t think he’ll be here forever. As Ryan said after Norman groped the American Idol signage, “That’s the first time a contestant has gone to second base with our logo.” We loved his performance because he basically used the song “And I Am Telling You” to tell us he was not going. We love that as soon as he sang the words “I’m not going,” he knocked on plastic too. Plastic is just as good as wood in Norman’s world. He’s quirky and weird and yes, we agree with Paula that this isn’t the right stage for him, but we’d love to get a few more performances out of the guy to see how far he can get. Also, he called Simon “Sassy-pants.”

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