"American Idol" Finale: Twist and Shouts for the Winning David

By Elaine Liner Archives
Cover image for  article: "American Idol" Finale: Twist and Shouts for the Winning David

 
Simon apologized. And with that, the end was clear. David Cook, not David Archuleta, would be the next American Idol.
 
All season Simon Cowell had pushed Cook toward the finale. Then on the penultimate Idol episode Tuesday, Cowell had given the “knockout” to Archuleta. Was the switch a deliberate maneuver to garner more votes for his real favorite, Cook?
 
Whatever, it worked. With a record 97.5 million text and phone votes flooding in, Cook, a 25-year-old former bartender from Missouri, took the win by a 12 million-vote margin.
 
The announcement of Cook’s win came at the end of an excruciatingly bloated two-hour finale. Host Ryan Seacrest pushed the clock by reading the winner’s name at exactly 10 p.m. ET. The previous 120 minutes of Idol were jammed with:
 
  • An Osmond-esque group number by the top 12 Idol finalists;
  • Egregious product placement for Mike Myers’ awful-looking new movie, The Love Guru;
  • Third-place finisher Syesha Mercado’s performance with Seal;
  • A numbingly boring performance by the somnambulant Jason Castro performance;
  • The final Ford ad of the season;
  • Product placement for Ford Escape Hybrids that each of the final two singers receives;
  • The top six women performing with disco relic Donna Summer (which Seacrest pronounced “Summers”):
  • A Carly Smithson and Michael Johns performance (Who? Exactly…);
  • An appearance by late-night ABC host Jimmy Kimmel, who called Idol “karaoke” and said Seacrest wears “Lee press-on nails”;
  • A medley of Simon Cowell’s season of insults set to music;
  • A performance by the top six men with Bryan Adams;
  • Jordin Sparks hawking the American Idol Experience attraction at Walt Disney World;
  • and David Cook’s performance with ZZ Top.
That was just the first hour. In hour two we got:
 
  • Brooke White performing with rock relic Graham Nash;
  • The Jonas Brothers in an obvious lip-sync performance;
  • Seacrest bringing a little old lady onstage to intro a segment featuring another round of public humiliation for the worst singers at nationalIdol auditions;
  • Another appearance by one of those terrible singers;
  • One Republic performing “Apologize” with David Archuleta;
  • Jordin Sparks, last year’s winner, emerging from obscurity as a life lesson for this year’s winner;
  • 1972 footage of soul relic Gladys Knight digitally manipulated to include Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. as new Pips;
  • Carrie Underwood performing in tottering “do-me pumps”;
  • The top 12 performing again with Osmond-esque choreography;
  • George Michael singing an awful song about global warming that included the lyrics “Do we still have time?” at a point in the show that time was running out;
  • Paula Abdul standing up and wiggling her booty to a global warming anthem;
  • Simon Cowell apologizing to Cook for not praising him sufficiently the night before and saying “For the first time ever, I don’t really care who wins. I think you’ve both done terrific.”
  • Then, at long last, Ryan Seacrest announcing which David won.
The show ended with David Cook singing his upcoming single, “Time of My Life,” the winner of the show’s songwriting competition. Appropriate ending to a finale that seemed to take a lifetime to get to the big moment.
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