OK, so 3.6 million of you have seen it by now, at least a third of whom probably either have it on tape or are rearranging the New Year's schedule to accommodate.

This strikes me as a wonderful rationale to skip the 864947924th in-depth examination of Ben's clothes, or Jake's toolishness, or Emily doing anything really...so instead, courtesy the amazing generosity of shing my fellow TwoPer and her spare ticket, I present a Shoe & Joe first-time exclusive: impressions from inside the action...

Kalan kiddo, the next time they ask you to share makeup stylists with Benedict? Just say no, OK?
I'm not sure how it works out, given how much time he spends experimenting with it, but somehow the hair is always at its most ridiculously poofy just when the really major media exposure comes due (albeit the sheepdog look is at least preferable to the Precious Moments ringlets at the Junos...) It's like he needs it to hide behind as a last resort, or something.

That said, that performance itself was damn impressive, IMHO. Best way I can describe it is that those ten minutes of finale were the only ones in which it felt like anything serious - if I may be permitted the Zackism - was happening.
I realise that rocking the Idol stage isn't exactly on a par with the equivalent at, say, Madison Square Garden...but I was there, and he absolutely did. Clearly had a ton of knowing fun doing it, too, which somehow made even moves that routinely make me giggle come across as loose and natural. At the very least, the audience was treated to more facial expressions in eight minutes than he showed off last summer en toto.

The DWDTG trio was a total hoot, too. The highlight of the show for me, really. Very un-Idol, in that there appeared to be literally no script in sight; three musical kids jamming just for the hell of it, and having a ton of fun. Loved the little "not yet, b'y, not yet" salute to Cowboy Rex afterwards - I have no doubt it was intentional, and going by the laughing neither did Melissa.
It was also funny, re: Kalan, to watch the juxtaposition of the old serious, thoughtful head-ducks with the new confidence and playfulness: "Uh...run? For their lives?"

Also...if I was a truly evil person I'd start the Kalissa ball rolling right here by just mentioning that the two Albertan Idols hugged after the performance. I mean, it was a very BIG, warm hug, and that they clearly seemed to be enjoying each other's company while it lasted. Y'know, fellow Albertans, just the right age...

Ahem.

Other stuff...

--It's really quite something - not to say oddly mind-relieving - how much of the Idol viewing experience is manufactured on the spot. Besides the (really cruddy, aside from the tee-shirts, which I was trying to convince my companions to buy an "Emily" one, but they refused to be branded for life just to satisfy my snark urges, the killjoys) souvenir table, there's a poster-making station, a face-painting station...even, to my vast amusement, a take-your-picture-with-your-favourite-judge station, just so you can get really into the "helpless corporate tool" experience.

--Man, that theatre is small and cozy-like. Being there felt uncannily like watching from back home in my living room, so I was totally disoriented. Until of course they turned on the Flashy Lights of Excitement and everybody started clapping. I do have to admit, that felt kinda cool...or nostalgic...or something...from the inside.

--You heard it here first: Before each return from commercial Ben flips his mic exactly twice. Also, he's legally blind. Either that, or TelePrompter technology is way goofier than I've been picturing it, which I guess works Benedict-wise too.

--Roughly three seconds into her first appearance, I really, truly, deeply wanted to hurt Sue the Warm-up Lady, who appears any time we might be in danger of relaxing and appreciating anything we've just seen and tells (croaks, actually) us that what we're REALLY having is FUN! Lotsa FUN! Aren't we?
Because, if we're not, she'll just drag random wannabes out of the audience to warble radio standards with that distinctive suburban-karaoke smugness. At random points throughout the proceedings I was also tempted to lay an auxiliary maiming on these people, esp. the one a scant two rows ahead of us. Dude who screeched his way through a Miss Universe serenade was fairly funny, though.

--Another mildly disorienting discovery: the judges keep popping backstage during the commercial pauses. Couple times, they barely made it back to their seats. What could they need to do back there for three whole minutes at a time? Incremental bathroom breaks?

--I continue to be vastly amused by Jake the Tool's annual solo credit suck- uh, I mean, sequence. "We never do thank you, Ben..."...at least not since the last time our contract renewal was coming due, i.e., last year's finale, at which point we used those exact same words..."and Byrd, and Mark, everybody at CTV, who puts on this great show..."...etc, etc, ad nauseum, and heavy on the nauseum let me tell you.
Meanwhile Farley's all about the industry recognising their talent-finding contributions, again. Sorry, Flex, I love you to death but you lost that battle shortly after 219 Days hit CD shelves. Which makes Zack's subsequent contribution, about how Melissa and Rex are primed to do even better than their predecessors (well, predecessor, unless you want to get technical), equally hilarious. Even if it turns out to be true. I mean, even he couldn't get through it without admitting that "this is cheeze...but it's really good cheeze!"

Which, really, about summed up the entire evening...

--Hug, slap, pat, touch, ruffle hair - I don't think there was a moment when one member of the Top 10 wasn't in contact with at least three others. To my mild surprise Rex and Josh, especially, clowned with each other almost non-stop during the breaks.
Melissa literally couldn't walk past Darryl without giving him some form of physical encouragement. Which means it's a really good thing she walked past him a lot. Yes, these kids really do love each other to pieces - I'm assuming because they are such kids still, no adult artistic egos to get in the way.

(At one point late in the show, heading to commercial and so back to the front row, Warm-up Lady just silently held out a box of tissues as they went past. Ashley grabbed one first, then Amber, and it all kinda dominoed from there.)

--Got a kick out of the little (white, mostly) kids in the children's choir attempting the full-bore Southern gospel moves. Just like they must've seen them on the Grammies or something.

--Group singage generally not bad at all. You could tell, because at one point it featured Aaron singing Satisfaction while the girls fawned all over him, and it was actually amusingly authentic in a Meatloaf-ian sort of way.
There were fewer moments created by the music itself, a la last year, but the Moments here flowed into the music really well. The choice of Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) as the big teary-eyed anthem to the parental units was especially appreciated.

I also really liked the notion of backup vocals on the CD clips, the buzz gradually increasing for each successive finalist. Except for Suzi, who doesn't need the encouragement.
King Size? Please. She's just barely the size of the Idol stage. When the Peter Frampton look-alike manages to generate more real rocker excitement with a track off an Idol CD than you do with a CCR classic...well, it's not looking real promising in re: moving on up and outta those BC bars.

--Whether the lack of suckage had anything to do with my noting several times that Rex looked to be merely mouthing the slower parts, I...well, I do have my strong suspicions.
Hearing him live just confirms that his vocal comfort zone is about as sprawling and cosmopolitan as his hometown, and as far as I could tell over the SCREAMS! he rarely got near it this night. (Shame they didn't have a Canadiana medley, really.)

--Also, Casey fell off key more than once, at least from what I could hear.

--Amber, on the other hand, is freakin' unbelievable live. Yes, I tingled.

--Ashley and Josh were fantastic too...everybody else, pretty much the same. Emily's mic kicked out during her second solo, which wouldn't have been so bad except it was also her last solo.
Poor princess - at least she has the consolation that the plastic-fantastic set showed off her pageanty-ness to perfection. Dunno how it came across on TV but the swanning across the stage on the CD-clip was totally hilarious.
Also giggle-worthy was the way the same teeny strobe-lit surroundings (plus memories of past glories) kept giving Darryl this twisted Mousketeer-does-Vegas vibe.

--Another niftily unprocessed - if a bit too obviously desperate - touch, picking the Standards performances for the Top Two reprise. Probably the one moment all night I truly enjoyed Rex, vocally speaking. Briefly. In the several seconds right before the cheerful little "Who-ah, I Am Really singing Now!" smirk showed up.

--I think I need to apologise to the people around me for going into total fangirlie mode during the BNL's set. Because, well, One Week, and me eagerly singing along, and everything. Been way too long since I caught them live. They did sound great in the theatre, albeit dialled way back from what they can do with it. "We're gonna release a tribute to Ben Mulroney." Hee. [sigh of total contentment]

--Sass...well, I'm kinda relieved to get home and read the boards, because I spent that whole performance wondering if I was just too un-soulful to appreciate the lack thereof. Y'know, if it was some sort of Old Rocker Wisdom that the more heartfelt you get the more you sound like a half-strangled cat.

--I appreciated Byrd's performance not so much for the singing as for the ability to bring every single vocal trick she possesses to bear on it. And I still can't believe she wasted that whole Moment on Dionne Warwick in the first place. However...it would be seriously nice, at some point in my life, to have that many people that genuinely happy I'd touched their lives.

--Parental tribute was beautifully handled in and of itself - in fact I was left with the distinct impression that several of the 'rents would be way more interesting than their offspring, were the positions to be reversed - but as a follow-up to those strenuous judicial attempts to position CI as a sophisticated, relevant talent search it wasn't exactly sealing the deal, or anything.

--Forget Melissa's dad - who still faintly creeps me for some reason, maybe because I keep mentally transposing his manic-ness to the stands at his daughter's rugby games - I'm all about her mom. So sweet, so bemused, and so ready to go with whatever makes her daughter this happy.

--Rex's vid-bio was a masterpiece of judicial misdirection, really. Except it kinda backfired at the end, when Jake said "I don't want him to go back to Burlington and become a mechanic..." and I was like, "What? He's a great guy, he's got a great life, what for you want the music industry to strip it all away?"

--Hey, the Top 10 can harmonise beautifully, who knew? Oh...Rex is mouthing again.

--Unfortunately, there's no way at all for him to get out of the duet. If the same people responsible for saddling him with another pop ballad are in any way involved with the making of the winner's CD, b'y should be down on his knees thanking Roman he lost.

Seriously. It hit right in Melissa's vocal sweet spot but Rex was just hilariously bad - in the theatre you could hear a tiny little [gasp] when he cacked that one big note in the middle, exactly as if all the fangirls had been nervously holding their breath.
Also, a tiny little ripple of "Oh, come ON..." laughter when the hands...almost...touched. Or maybe that was just me. Note to Idol producers: last year's duet was memorable not because all of your viewership necessarily spends the rest of its TV time glued to Dawson's Creek reruns.

--I was totally, utterly cutified by Melissa's moment of victory. Go ahead, revoke my snark license (I'm sure it's been discussed), but I don't find her boring in the slightest.

I mean, I don't plan on spending this winter glued to her every move or anything. AIAD and 219 Days about shot my support-the-potential wad for life, last year; only if Melissa's CD turns out to have truly fantastic music on it will I buy it. Meaning I won't be buying it, pretty much.
But her voice would be incredible on a 37-year-old and like Kalan and Theresa before her, she sings me the song, not sells me her voice. Or her personality. Hey, she's not perky!, I'm mildly intrigued right there.

--So, um, that's the great new single, eh? Huh. Well. So much for intrigued. It's...um...well, to be totally honest it strikes me as pretty much the same ol'uplifting blandness, only with fires and oceans instead of hearts and rainbows. ("I'm finally gonna be the one with a story to tell", though, decent line.) It'll probably clean up real good for the radio but I can't see myself buying.

And thus endeth Canadian Idol 3. It wasn't by any stretch of the imagination a hell of a ride.

In fact, in terms of "talent, stars, something cool", it wasn't even enough to motivate me to anticipate Season 4. But, hey...it is what it is, and for what it is, it was a more-than-decent wrap-up.