"This ... is it." Those apocalyptic words are uttered on The X Factor USA (Thursdays and Fridays, 7.30pm, TV3) and, each week, I wait for the stage to open up and swallow Dimples (Mario Lopez) and Pouty (Khloe-Kardashian-Odom.) Sadly, it never happens. Instead, one hopeful singer finds out they've received the least public votes before they're booted off.
Last week, finally, that person was Cece Frey, the platinum-haired, leopard-print-faced postal worker who did Lady Gaga's Edge of Glory (while sitting on the edge of a glorious piano) before regressing to her winky, cocky, tuneless self on Katy Perry's Part of Me.
"I think very few people hold this kind of love and respect and passion for their art the way that I do," she said, and: "I hope I've taught everyone at home to love who you are because the more you love who you are, you less you're going to need anybody else to."
It's disappointing to no longer have someone to despise. Although Kesha did a pretty good job as last week's guest performer, reinforcing her status as the world's most overrated stripper act. Emblem 3 will surely step into the breach, particularly the blond rapper who looks as though he's trying not to pee his pants whenever he's on stage. Or Fifth Harmony, the girl group who deliver reasonable performances and who could be marketable in a Spice Girls sense, but who are also so cloyingly in love with one another I want to strangle them.
But perhaps the Biggest Goober Award should go to judge Demi Lovato, who begins every one of her egocentric diatribes with the words "I feel like", before telling Simon Cowell where to shove it. She has no contestants left in the competition - not that it's stopping her. Although she is right about Emblem 3 devolving into a manufactured, One Directional version of the Sublime-lite they started out as.
