American Idol announced the “twist” mentioned in Tuesday night’s show. They call it “the judges’ save.” As I understand it, if someone that the judges think should not be voted off the show gets booted, they can be saved by judges. The judges have to be unanimous and they can only do this once during the season. The reason for this is that sometimes a comtestant – like Jennifer Hudson or Chris Doughtrey – get booted early, for whatever reason. So the judges can save them. This will be interesting if invoked.
On to the results!
The first person to be eliminated was Jasmine Murray. She had been added to the top 13 as one of the wildcards. Only 17, Jasmine’s voice simply has not matured enough to be in this competition.
While Jorge Nunez was pretty weak last night, I thought Anoop Desai’s performance was weaker. As it turns out, America disagreed and Jorge received fewer votes than Anoop.
The “judges’ save” was not invoked tonight. I don’t expect this will be an issue until later in the season.
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I think what is came down to was the fact that Anoop had been getting a lot of attention in the early rounds and people were able to see a bit of his personality. Plus, the judges really seemed to get a long with him and would often play up his joke of calling himself “Anoop Dawg.”
In these early rounds where the votes are split among a bunch of contestants, I think personality really helps.