Posted by Katherine St Asaph and Samantha Martin on 10/26/2011 at 11:25 AM News

The Popdust Files: the x factor, tv recaps, x-factor

CARNAGE! That’s what The X Factor would have had you believe about tonight’s two-and-a-half-hour slab of an episode, which began with 17 singers and ended with an even dozen. What it amounted to was one contestant eliminated from each group (with an extra for Simon, which turned out to be completely anticlimactic anyway), which is hardly a bloodbath compared to the boot-camp episodes or, hell, the successive halving that The Voice did.

That doesn’t mean a couple deserving singers didn’t leave us tonight, though, and it certainly didn’t mean every contestant was in tippy-top form. We’re doing things a bit differently for today’s power rankings. The top 12 is reserved for the actual top 12 this time, as a baseline measurement. The judges, no matter how apt, and the eliminated contestants, no matter how magnetic, take the remaining spots. Of course, some of them would’ve ended up there anyway. Whomever could we be referring to? Read on!

X FACTOR POWER RANKING: Top 17
	30.Simone Battle: The S.O.S. Band’s “Just Be Good To Me” is supposed to be devastating. “I don’t care what you do to them–just be good to me” is something you only say if you know deep down you’re going to be hurt. Simone probably knows about being hurt, but judging by tonight’s evidence, she only demonstrated knowledge of smirking, giggling and singing poorly. We won’t talk about that last little comment.
	29.Paula Abdul: Lost her shiny glee to her dress, her wacky lines to Nicole, her judging sense to the haphazardly fused clutches of both Intensity and Lakoda Rayne and, judging by her axing of multiplatform sales incarnate the Brewer Boys, her commercial sense too.
	28.The X Factor App: We downloaded it like we were told. It crashed immediately after opening an article about how Drew likes hamburgers. Free, yet overpriced.
	27.Phillip Lomax: So glad The X Factor won’t have to pretend crooning is strange, exotic music anymore.
	26.Dexter Heygood: Imagine a Britney Spears/Katy Perry mashup, yarled both during and after the song by the Cookie Monster after a bender on a spiked batch. Imagine a military jacket made from a xylophone. Try not to imagine too much about Paula saying “I know you like to kiss girls.”
	25.This Sentence: Nicole to Intensity: “You’re like my little pumpkin patch of yummy pumpkins!” Peter Peter’s “Creepiest Pumpkin Eater” title has been usurped. Also creepy: “If I were a teenager, I’d have you all over my walls,” where “you” meant the Brewer Boys. Find this humor, as well as flirting targets, too juvenile? Probably shouldn’t read…
	24.This Other Sentence: Simon on Tiah: “She just literally worked her nuts off there.” If this had, in fact, literally happened, Simon’s decision to axe her would’ve been much dickier.
	23.Head Adornments: 3 backwards caps + 3 forwards caps + 3 bowlers + 1 fedora + 1 fedora shop + 8 knit caps + 3 flowers (all Rachel Crow’s) + 1 glitter hat + = 23 in total and in rank.
	22.The Tweetometer: What’s more distracting than a glitter hat, you ask? Perhaps a gigantic computerized sign displaying how many people are critiquing you while you perform live.
	21.Steve Jones: When your first moves, after striding onto the stage, are to hop up and down and twirl around, you’re overselling it. To be fair, the judges also oversold their fake bickering, judging by how much poor Steve had to chaperone them.

For the upper reaches of the axed contestants and the lower reaches of the safe, click NEXT.

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