Canadian Idol 6 - Episode 16

I want to get right to the final three and talk about what I see happening in this edition of Canadian Idol, and why #6 is fast becoming the biggest Idol bummer of them all.

In the first elimination of a top ten contestants, the bottom 3 are Adam Costelli, Mookie Morris and Sebastian Pigott. Last week Martin Kerr, Omar Lunan, Gary Morisette and Oliver Pigott were eliminated. Paul Clifford went the week before that. Now, I like Adam. He’s got great taste in music and radiates the kind of integrity you see way too little of in the age of video music. I’d make a special trip to see him in a club setting. But he’s not a great performer and he’s not a great singer.

Great singers are not so rare that there is any excuse for any of the top 22 or 24 or 50 Idol contestants not to be a great voice. The musical theatre reality competition series, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria, currently running on CBC, proves that. Maria hasn’t had a contestant without great pipes since episode 1.

Take the names listed above, add in Theo Tams and Earl Stevenson (who are still in the competition) and you have nine better performers than Adam. He’s the weakest and should have been eliminated before any of them, but he’s still in and 5 performers of greater talent nd charisma are gone. Not only that: he stands on the verge of sending one of the top four performers still in the competition home (Mookie or Sebastian, who along with Theo and Earl are the top 4).

Mulroney puts his finger on the problem when he follows his announcement that Mookie and Sebastian are in the bottom three with the aside, “It sucks to be from Toronto.”

If the home visit clips on Monday night showed us anything, it was that being on Canadian Idol is a bigger deal the smaller your home pond. The flag-waving/town-picnic/lets-all-meet-in-the-school-gym atmosphere of support we saw from small town Canada is not available to performers from the bigger cities. It’s an odd disadvantage, but seems to be a valid one.

If Canadians continue to vote for the contestant they know who lives closest to them (people in TO don’t know who lives in the apartment next door), we may get Theo or Earl as our next Canadian Idol, which isn’t terrible. But we won’t get Mookie or Sebastian, the two contestants with the best chance for significant performance success.

Adam is finally eliminated. C’mon, Canada – reward talent, not regional loyalties.