Theme, shmeme, lets call the whole thing off.

It's Disco Night! Or is it? Once again, our noble contestants take a running, leaping stab at hitting the theme and . . . well, they mostly kind of miss. And a pre-emptive warning. I love Irish. Shut up. No, really, shut UP. I don't care how bad you thought he was last night. I DON'T CARE. I love him, you can not shake me from my love for him and if I want to love him, I will. Go ahead, try and stop me, you will fail. YOU'RE NOT MY MOTHER.

ahem.

This week's Opening Performance I Won't Be Able To Remember By The End Of The Show Until They Recap, is Chris. He's singing Wild Cherry's 'Play That Funky Music' and . . .
Well . . .
I've . . .
Man.
I've just run out of ways to say : he sings well, he runs all over the stage, he brings out his Jack Black and he's pretty good. Because this is what he does every week and you know? I'm a little bored by it. This was probably one of the best performances of the night, he sang well, he used the stage he blah blah blah blah I'm BORED. The only thing of note was that Irish has lent him the group falsetto for the night and he avails himself of it admirably. So. Well played. See you next week. And do we really need to know what the judges thought? They'll say the same thing as well, Mark thought he was hot chizizzle (up the dosage Mark), Marcia gives him the Mutto excuse of singing through an illness (which we don't need to know thanks Marcia, he actually sounded exactly the same so we couldn't tell he was ill) and Kyle tells him he owns the show and (proving once and for all that the pulse his finger is on, is one set about five weeks behind everyone else on the planet) notes that the Jack Black thing is awesome.

Lavina has chosen The Emotions 'Best Of My Love', which is a personal favourite disco number of mine and which has also been used in at least three seperate Sandra Bullock film montages where she makes a fool of herself in front of the Hot Leading Man Of The Moment, before pratfalling, whilst learning something about herself and making him fall head over heels in love with her. Lavina has gone sleeveless again this week, in a big old Fuck You to Kyle. The tatts are on full display. She looks like she's having a hell of a lot of fun and sings it quite prettily, if not brilliantly. Her pitch is still flawless, she doesn't really break out any big notes but she still gets a good lengthy scream at the end from the crowd. Mark still hates that she's not Emily and has to take a moment, allowing Marcia to inanely prattle about how the song was made for her to sing and for Kyle to praise her voice and then harp on about styling issues again. Having composed himself, Mark then takes his turn and says he feels like he's repeating himself and she's not giving any emotion, not having any fun. I freeze the tape at the exact moment where her jawline becomes clenched. You can see her fighting the urge to roll her eyes at him in disbelief and ask him exactly what the hell he's talking about. I have no such qualms and yell at the television for a minute and a half.

Intense Ricky is back! Look! The eyebrows are furrowed, there's a tiny vein pulsing at the side of his temple! Its the crazy eyes!! Huzzah! Oh but his song is a little dull. Ouch. Kool and the Gang's 'Get Down On It' is a DULL snoozefest of a song, bland and repetitive, how I wish he had chosen something a little brighter. At least his singing is still extremely good and I don't know if you noticed, but his trousers were awesome. I begged for the cameras to pan around and give me a backview but alas, alack, they did not. Bastards. He asks me to get down on it and I nod at the tv that I would in fact, if so asked, get down on that. Mark freaking HATES this boy, Chanel/Marcia style, and calls it a long two minutes. But Marcia disagrees, calling it dynamite. Kyle subverts the world and rearranges the stars. He agrees with Mark, but - and this is the crucial bit - he actually tells Ricky what he needs to do in order to avoid being boring again by hooking the audience in within the first ten seconds. I hate hate hate it when Kyle is the voice of reason, but he's doing it more often than not this season. We call this frustrating.

Irish. My love. You are my heart. You represent the soul of this competition to me. I love every note that wistfully wings from your lips. Your beauteous celtic throat is a thing of wonder to me and I desperately want you to do ever so well. But, and my heart I mean this in the nicest possible way, you should never ever dance to disco music on stage, in front of people, actual living breathing people who are able to draw breath to laugh, ever ever again. Ever. I personally found it delightfully geeky and terribly British of you, but it is my understanding that others did not. That's why Mark was in the foetal position under the judge's desk when you had finished the Kylie Minogue version of 'Celebration', a woefully inadequate disco tune that I hope not to hear repeated anytime soon. Kyle calls it the worst thing on television ever and when Damian tries to defend that he was getting into the spirit of the theme, something not all the contestants did - BOBBY - he is shot down horribly. Mark hopes he won't be going because it will mean he'll have to listen to that song again. Marcia stands up for my boy saying that "at the best of times, all you can do is the best that you can do" and Mark denounces the stance, crying that if that's the best he can do then he should go. My darling delightful James throws their comments right back at Mark and Kyle telling them they're not watching enough tv if thats the worst and most bizarre thing they've seen and is beeped out by Channel Ten, I think, for referencing Dancing With The Stars . . .

And then in comes young Lisa, swooping in like a falcon from on high, to save my beloved Irish from having the worst performance of the night. Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' is an insouciant song, sung in the manner of a bored woman retelling her many tales of men who have disappointed her. It's high pitched, it's high strung, it's heightened and a little bit angry but mostly resigned. It is a mature song that should be sung by someone who has been betrayed in love many times and expects nothing less. It should not be sung by a sixteen year old who probably only recently felt that betrayal for the first time upon the realisation that Orlando Bloom was not in fact a silver haired, pointy eared elflord but was instead a skinny, kind of funny looking, appallingly bad actor. She is ridiculously flat, she misses a giant chunk of the second verse and the song is at least two octaves lower than it should be. It is much much worse than Irish's daggy dancing. Mark and Marcia practically claw each others eyes out arguing about Lisa and then Marcia - oh Marcia! - brings up Lisa's age and asks Mark to bear that in mind. I resist the urge, as I often do, to scream to the heavens about age restrictions and maturity levels and how NOT EVERYONE CAN BE JESSICA, MOST OF THE TIME THEY'RE CASEY and sixteen is too too young. Kyle thinks Lisa looks like she's being forced to perform by a stage mother and says if she makes it to next week - the famed guitar week - then she had better be fucking brilliant. I hope she goes, please, I'm asking for HER, let her go.

Fosse and I heard Dean's performance of Vicki Sue Robinson's 'Turn The Beat Around' in the car and he astounded us by actually sounding good. I was hoping that when we saw it, we'd see that he'd come out Peter Allen style in a slit to the navel jumpsuit with sequins, holding maracca's. Dean sounds the best he's sounded and backflips off the stage, which gets a wow from me, but Fosse shrugs it off, dryly noting that Dean didn't do the backflip, God did. I laugh so hard, the coffee I had an hour ago almost spurts out of my nose. He pops another one towards the end and the screaming fangirlies go out of their freaking gourds for forty seven seconds - I timed it. Mark just loves that Dean listens and learns because Mark so very desperately wants him to win. Marcia and Dean have formed a little mutual admiration society and just thank each other back and forth, whereas Kyle, who hated the song choice, loved the perfomance. Mathieson notes that in four years of Idol, no one has ever backflipped and I pause the tape to turn to Fosse and screech that in fact, Marcia backflipped on Chanel, thank you very fucking much.

Bobby has stripped all the disco from Rick James' 'Superfreak'. It's like he carjacked it at an intersection and he's going to sell it back to us and is just hoping we don't notice what he's done. I make vague muttering noises at the screen about having seen this all before and Boner calls him one dimensional. Don't get us wrong, we all acknowledge that he is a new and interesting talent and deserves to have some kind of career, but we're getting bored of seeing it on Idol. It's exactly the same problem I'm having with Chris. They're great singers and performers but so one note. Meh. All the judges rave about the arrangement so the audience at home realises how freaking brilliant Bobby is, yeah yeah, we get it. Kyle backhands all the other contestants who tried and failed to STICK TO THE THEME. Mark raves about how Bobby turns the genre upside down each week, making it sound as though if the others did what Bobby did that they'd get the same kudos. I call shenanigans and also bullshit on that remark, because the other contestants would get eaten fucking alive if they did that. And then he gives him a touchdown. My hands are up in the air, my forehead is creased and you are giving me WRINKLES, Holden. I'm ridiculously unimpressed but content to be on my own on this one.

Jess proves herself to be head and shoulders above the rest, once again, performing Donna Summer's 'On The Radio' with aplomb. She even has 70's disco Countdown hair, flat to the middle and curly at the bottom. In stark contrast to Bobby, Jessica is not afraid to stick to the theme, showing her amazing versatility. She rocked rock week, her number one song and incredibly deserved touchdown was amazingly good and she has picked great songs (Pussycat Dolls hate aside) pretty much every other time, she only sucked last week when she was ill. She has fairly consistently knocked it out of the motherfucking park. Her singing still has a slight strain to it - I hope she's not doing any damage to her cords - but they are still stabs at greatness. Her notes are almost all pitch perfect and only a little shaky in bits. She is great, she is mixing it up, she is an absolute contender for the top spot. Mark liked the key and that she's always got great pitch, but that she needs to let loose her tiger. She has a tiger? Man, they have really lax pet laws in the Northern Territory. She should bring that kitty to the show and let it loose in Mark's dressing room. Marcia thinks Jessica has one of the finest voices she's heard and Kyle notes she came from a sad looking bush frump (but a sad looking bush frump with a TIGER, Kyle!!) to someone who can potentially sell a lot of CDs internationally. Awww, I think it is SO sweet that they still think someone from Australian Idol will be an international star. So deluded, yet so much fun.

So who's going? Come on, you know I'm no good at this. I've picked Lisa based on a truly woeful performance but I will literally be gobsmacked if she goes. If Irish goes, I'll go into a week of mourning and wear nothing but black. Hey, it could be anyone, but I would like to see a bottom three of Lisa, Chris and Irish, with Bobby as my reserve, only because those three boys have never been bottom three and well, they need to know that their schtick is getting old and they need to mix it up. But no more dancing Irish, yeah? Promise? Thanks.

TallulahBelle out.

(And Irish? Start visiting the TWoP boards. You would have seen my request for you to sing the Scissor Sisters song 'Don't Feel Like Dancing', which would have suited your falsetto down to a freaking tee and also? Song about not dancing. Do you see where I'm going with this?)