Initial Thoughts
Another crazy episode with hidden immunity idols and a couple of swingers being courted by both sides.  The editing of the episode really gave away the ending, but I’ll talk about that later.
Previously
The producers focus the “previously” segment on the merge happening with even numbers.  Russell was working to make the Heroes believe he was [...]

Previously on Survivor
The Heroes and Villains merged at last, and the Heroes saw that their plan had ‘worked’ in saving Russell but that somehow Parvati was still around. The Russell-led Villain alliance sold them on a story that Parvati had played her own immunity idol and that now she was vulnerable and they hatched a [...]

Chindi’s Take:
Rigelseven will be late tonight as he’s attending a hockey game (Go Caps!), but he’ll be posting his reaction to tonight’s elimination when he gets back from tonight’s elimination game, hopefully with good news. So all of our early readers are stuck with me and a corona, and what looks like it might be [...]

Chindi’s Take:
This is Shania week, which I thought would create some difficulties for some of the performers, particularly Michael and Aaron. Michael stepped up to the plate with a very good performance, and even got a stamp of approval from Shania herself so he was looking safe early in the evening. As the evening progressed [...]

Shania Song Selection: Any Man of Mine
Chindi’s Take:
Siobhan gets the pimp spot for the first time in several weeks… and she pulled out every single stop. She went down into the audience, she brought back the scream and then ended the performance with one long high glory note. This performance was classic Siobhan: soft in [...]

Shania Song Selection: You’ve Got A Way
Chindi’s Take:
I’m torn by Aaron’s performance this week. Country music is definitely in Aaron’s wheelhouse and he chose a song that fit his voice well, but something about it didn’t work very well for me. I’m not sure if it was the breathy way he performed it, or if [...]

Shania Song Selection: No One Needs to Know
Chindi’s Take:
I’m fairly certain that Crystal’s boyfriend had best man up soon, because even if she doesn’t win American Idol she’s going to find herself with a recording career and he might end up as ‘the guy who used to date her back when’.
This week it feels like [...]

Shania Song Selection: Don’t
Chindi’s Take:
I thought that Casey was poised this week to really seize the momentum in Idol. The judges criticism last week were all along the same lines that I’d been saying for the last few weeks, he’s a good blues man and his performances were good, solid and consistent… but consistent doesn’t [...]

Shania Song Selection: It Only Hurts When I’m Breathing

Chindi’s Take:
This isn’t a song that I know at all, (I like Shania but generally I only know the most popular parts of her catalog). From the rehearsal footage we see it seems like this song is right in Big Mike’s wheel-house, soulful, evocative and something he [...]

Shania Song Selection: Still The One
Chindi’s Take:
The question Shania has, and that I had in my Trend Report was how some of the guys will handle singing such a distinctive ‘chick’ sounding singer, when they don’t have the option of the broader country catalog. My question was mostly about Michael and Aaron because I figured [...]

Teflon Tim’s coating finally failed him this week and he was sent home. He’d had several good weeks in a row, but couldn’t afford to stumble. The judges certainly felt like his inspirational song was a stumble, and America apparently agreed. The song selection this week is downright odd, we would expect that with Shania Twain [...]

In retrospect I should have realized from the beginning that this was a non-elimination leg, but it didn’t dawn on me until Phil didn’t congratulate the first 3 teams at the Pit Stop for making the final 3.  This was a frustration leg as killer fatigue takes over the teams and makes even simple tasks [...]