Idol shocker: Casey hits rock-bottom (but gets the save)

Earlier in the day, Idol mogul Nigel Lythgoe dropped a hint that tonight's results would be a shocker. Big shocker there; Nigel says that in a lot of weeks that the results are exactly what we expect. Tonight, however, he was dead-on.

In a strange turn of events, neither of the dead-to-rights Bottom Two favorites (Naima Adedapo and Haley Reinhart) even made the Bottom Three. One of my predicted B3-ers, Thia Megia did fall into the Bottom Three, but she was the first to be sent back to the sofas. So who filled out this week's Bottom Two?

None other than the Angry Idol, Casey Abrams, and youthful crooner Stefano Langone. While I had both of them on the radar for the near future, neither appeared to be in danger this week. A big high-five goes out to Dial Idol, which nailed Casey at the bottom of its rankings. Casey, in fact, did get eliminated on votes, but the judges used their only save to bring him back. Last season, an early Michael Lynche elimination generated the judges save, and Big Mike made it all the way to the Final Four. It's doubtful that Casey will have a similar run, but this makes the likelihood of his inclusion in the tour much more likely. Another twist arose because this week was supposed to determine the Top 10 for this summer's Idol Tour. With next week's expected double-elimination, the producers would have been faced with a huge public relations problem given that the first person cut wouldn't make the Top 10, and therefore not the tour. However, if that person isn't Casey Abrams, they would have made the Top 10 if not for a judges' save. The decision was made to have a touring Top 11, which means the judges' save was almost certainly discussed and decided prior to the show because there's no way Nigel, 19E and Co. would leave the tour's business decisions in the hands of JLo and Steven Tyler. More likely that by the time Nigel dropped the hint about results chaos that the save and the Top 11 Tour had already been finalized.

Meanwhile, regardless of any tweaking I did to my formulas recently, there's no way that I would have predicted this result. This reveals to me that everything I've put together points to who is favored to win - not to who is going home this week. In the next week, I'm going to look at the numbers again and see if some of them pointed directly at what happened tonight. Hopefully, I'll be able to issue two sets of numbers - one geared toward who is poised to win, and the other directed at who is most likely headed home. Keep checking back for updates, and remember to follow this blog on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.