Yesterday was wild card night on American Idol, and it was, well, not so wild.

They started off with 12 contestants, but cut four in an extended bit where they showed clips from a week-long workshop, then brought everyone out one by one to tell them if they were cut. The most surprising cut was Lisa Leuschner, even though Randy said she may have the best voice out of the remaining contestants. But's she's a little bigger than they'd probably like, and her wardrobe is still a little scary, so she's out. I have to say we were a little ticked off at this, given some of the stiffs that got to remain in the competition.

I'm also not sure why they even bothered to do this. The show was 90 minutes, why not let everyone sing? And if you're not going to let everyone sing, why not just pick 8 and have a normal show? Or make the cuts prior to broadcast? It was not a very satisfying process.

Out of the 8 that remained, three - George, Susie, and Jennifer - performed pretty well. Leah also got props from the judges, but I'm still not sold on her. Given the way she sucked the soul out of "Let's Stay Together" and made it into a cheery up-tempo pop song, I think she's now my official enemy for the rest of the season. Even so, she's a pretty blah choice for the role, certainly not of the Kimberly Caldwell level. And really, if I made every 17 year old girl who thinks she's owed a shot at singing stardom my enemy, I'd be outnumbered pretty heavily.

The other performers - Jon, Matt, Elizabeth, and Katie - didn't do so well. Jon went over the top (for this show) in performing "A Little Less Conversation," and perhaps will get some votes for his attempts at dancing. Katie is expected to get a lot of votes from guys given her pulchritude. Matt and Elizabeth could get similar support.

So no one's really safe, and should one of these four get voted in by America, the judges will have to pass over one of the other four. And while I'd like to think it'll be Leah, I'm thinking more it'd be Susie.

America's Next Top Model was a clip show recapping the previous episodes while showing as yet unaired footage, so the extra half hour of Idol didn't cause us too much concern. On top of that our local UPN station bumped it for a Red Sox spring training game. Not sure when it'll air, but we're not exactly scouring the listings to find it.

In quasi-reality programming, E! is trying to rip off VH1 by doing an I Love the '80s style show on the '90s. We watched about 20 seconds of it before being driven off the channel by Kathy Griffin. Egads, she's horrible.