At last, American Idol Season 9 seems ready to finally kick the bucket. It's on the floor, writhing around, blood hemorrhaging everywhere. The doctors are shaking their heads and throwing their hands up in the air. There's nothing they can do. The family has been convened. The priest is on his way. It's only a matter of time.

Everyone seems to get it. Everyone seems to understand what will happen next. Everyone, except Randy, Ellen, Kara and Simon. Blinded by their astronomical paychecks they run around trying to convince us that there is still a chance for survival. A miracle could still occur.

Part of me wants to believe them. And so, week after week I kept tuning in, buoyed by the false hope that someone could have "a moment." But, week after week, it doesn't happen. And so, tonight for example, I turn on my poor husband, claiming that he's being unnecessarily loud as he eats his corn niblets and questioning why he has set the table with steak knives when we are eating chicken kiev. It's terrible, I know, but he'll get over it.

What he won't (and shouldn't) get over is the crap that we were all served tonight when the Final 3 were supposed to dazzle us with their inspired (and theme-free!) song choices and their unique interpretations of the judges' selections for them. Their performances were neither inspired nor unique, although the judges- clearly high on ecstasy or some other bliss-inducing drug- would have us believe that we witnessed something extraordinary tonight. We did not. And here's why:

Casey James

OK, It's Alright With Me

&

Daughters

Poor Casey. Never have I seen an Idol contestant more aware of the fact that he is well past his expiration date. Nobody's asking Casey if he thinks he can win. Oh no. Casey has no chance, that much is clear. But there's technically three contestants left this season and we have to go through the motions so ....

Casey chooses Eric Hutchinson's "OK, It's Alright With Me," putting his own Huey Lewis & The News spin on it (yet again! who knew they were so influential?!?). He actually made the song, which is fairly recent, sound older that it is. Fail. And there was that silly grin back. But really, what does it matter now? He's not playing to win. He's just auditioning for gigs at this point.

Randy and Kara put their two heads together and chose John Mayer's "Daughters" for Casey (Impressive!) It was supposed to allow him to show his softer side, but all it really did was act like a downy pillow that made you want to drift off into a nice zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It was subtle, understated and nothing more than a big yawn.

Crystal Bowersox

Come To My Window

&

Maybe I'm Amazed

Oh Mamasox, you have been a real trooper this season. For weeks you were the only reason to even tune into Idol - the only one capable of putting together a decent performance on a regular basis. But even you have stumbled of late. Why would you allow the Idol producers' dreams of an actual two-performer competition come true?

Crystal chose Melissa Etheridge's "Come To My Window" for her first song of the night. Hopefully she won't be taking credit for the arrangement which was too fast and ultimately bucked Crystal off, leaving her in a heap of dust wondering what happened.

Then, Ellen tasked Crystal with Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed." I loved the idea of it and hoped that she would model her performance off of the lovely Jem cover (you can find it on iTunes - go ahead, give a listen and tell me it doesn't sound like Crystal). Instead, Crystal kept it on the straight and narrow without even doing a little word play. I don't think she could have destroyed the song by replacing "Maybe I'm a man, maybe I'm a lonely man" with something more gender appropriate. But she didn't seem to dare mess with it. Crystal said the song was in her comfort zone, and while she sounded fine, her look said otherwise. Something was off for her tonight, which left a nice big, fat opening for:

Lee Dewyze

Simple Man

&

Hallelujah

Yes, it has happened. Lee is now the clear front-runner to take the Season 9 crown next week. Perhaps that was the plan all along. I would hardly be surprised.

Energized by his trip home to Chicago where he performed to a crowd of more than 40,000 (10 times the size of what either Crystal or Casey attracted in their considerably smaller home towns - I assume we'll see more of this during tomorrow's results show) Lee almost looked cocky on that stage tonight. When he started singing the first few lines of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man" he had the look of the cat that had swallowed the bird. Is it possible that Lee could have this all planned out? (Nah - more likely the work of cunning and desperate Idol producers)

While "Simple Man" was a good use of Lee's tone and style, it wasn't that exciting. Granted, it probably wasn't supposed to be because everyone knew Lee was going to be closing the night's show with Simon's choice of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." Why no one called foul on this choice, I have no idea. For one, we all remember that Teflon Tim Urban covered this earlier in this season. I wasn't Tim's biggest fan, but come on, give the kid a modicum of respect and let him have his song choice. No, instead Simon tasked Lee with doing an improved version of one of his favorite songs. We know that it's one of Simon's favorites because not only did he tell audiences exactly that when Jason Castro plucked it from pop culture obscurity in Season 7, but he also helped British X Factor winner Alexandra Burke take it all the way to the top of the charts in 2008 to become the highly coveted Christmas No. 1. I figured Simon would want to go out on a better note than this, but with Season 9 already in the toilet, why put the extra effort forward to find Lee his *own* song to shine with.

Lee isn't off the hook here either. I have no doubt that "Hallelujah" will be once again climbing the iTunes Top Songs list by tomorrow morning. It's just one of those songs that always whips new listeners into a frenzy. But I have no problem saying that I think Lee failed to deliver on it in a big way. Technically, he sang it fine but emotionally, he gave nothing to it. Listen to this song. Listen to Jeff Buckley sing it. Listen to K.D. Lang's version from the 2010 Winter Olympics. That's what this song is capable of and Lee did nothing to infuse it with any emotional resonance. He tried - with a choir of background singers - but it just didn't live up to the hype.

Most likely to be in the Top 2: Lee & Crystal

Most likely to go home: Casey

Best performances of the night: Randy, Ellen, Kara and Simon for trying to convince us that there was anything left to salvage of this dreadful season.