A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

I NEVER KNEW ME A BETTER TIME, AND I GUESS I NEVER WILL: Sanjaya Malakar's ascendance into the Idol final twelve raises the prospect that he might join a club of dubious distinction: the Worst Idols Ever.

If the Idol's score for anti-talent is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and his tenure on the show is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the Idol yields the overall measure of his awfulness. Matthew Rogers (S2), for example, has extremely high anti-talent, but thankfully little tenure. Final-three entrants Nikki McKibbin (S1) and Jasmine Trias (S3) each lasted way longer than she should have, but I don't think either was that bad compared to some of the others.

So, who ends up the worst under such a metric? RJ Helton (S1) and Anthony Fedorov (S4) made it to to the final five and final four, respectively, but Helton gets a pass because they didn't recruit any decent guys that season, and Fedorov gets a pass because otherwise his fans will descend on this site like locusts.

Really, there's only two contenders: Kevin Covais (S5) may have only made it two weeks into the finals, but he so had no business making it out of his Boston audition. But our winner, I think, is reedy-voiced redhead John Stevens (S3), who made it to the final six in what can only be described as a mercy killing, so petrified did he seem each week when he found out he was safe and would have to sing again another week. Remember: he outlasted Jennifer Hudson because Conan O'Sinatra's "Mandy" was deemed better than J-Hud's "Weekend in New England". That's enough to win this even without remembering his "King of the Road".

Sanjaya, you've got a big mountain to climb, but it may only take him a few weeks to get there. Can he do it?

e.t.a. D'oh! Total brain-fart, noted in the comments, that I had blotted from my memory like Amalek one Scott Savol (S4), who made it to his season's final five past Constantine Maroulis, Nadia Turner and Anwar Robinson despite an almost complete lack of talent and character, especially the latter. If he's the standard Sanjaya has to meet, he may have to reach final two to dethrone him. America, it's up to you.