American Idol making waves and The Bachelor Finale – This Week’s Reality Show Roundup

Photo from lady lbrty via Flickr.

Reality shows have become a guilty pleasure of many, regardless of gender and age. And even if some of the shows are rumored to be scripted, like MTV’s The Hills, many of us still can’t keep away from our television screens as we wishfully live vicariously through our favorite characters.

ABC’s The Bachelor and Fox’s American Idol have been stirring up much commotion from fans, all chatting about why on earth Jake ended up choosing Cruella de Vil and which choir/YouTube star will become the next Carrie Underwood.

Dorky pilot from Texas, Jake Pavelka, may have lost in season 5 of The Bachelorette, but his baby blue eyes and washboard abs won him 25 beautiful contestants all competing to win his heart and rose in ABC’s 14th The Bachelor.

The show was full of drama and gossip: Rozlyn got booted off the show because of her alleged affair with one of the producer although she denies having any sexual relationships with him and claims that her actions were anything but inappropriate. And she is very upset with the show’s executives for giving her such a bad rap, especially because she has a 7-year old son. As shown in the season finale on Monday 3/01, Jake went against his good-boy nature and gave his final rose to the show’s villain Vienna instead of  Disney princess Tenley. It was shocking to see the bad girl win, since many of us were rooting for Tenley to finally get her happy ending since her first marriage wasn’t so hot.

With Vienna’s fiery personality and blunt attitude, we can expect to hear more gossip and see lots more pictures of the couple in papers and tabloids to come. And don’t feel too bad for Ali having to leave the show for work just yet; she was announced to be the next season’s Bachelorette, to be aired May 24.

Photo from wikimedia

And how about this season’s American Idol? The girls’ performances were pushed back one night due to Crystal Bowersox’s illness, so the boys took the stage instead on Tuesday night 3/02 and rocked the mic as they covered some of Hollywood’s popular hits. Big boy Mike Lynche impressed the judges with the vocal skills he learned from performing arts high school as he sang “This is a Man’s World” by James Brown, but Simon said that John Park’s singing group Purple Haze may get their lead singer back if his performances keep disappointing like his rendition of John Mayer’s “Gravity” did.

It’s been more than obvious that judge Kara DioGuardi has a major crush on the shaggy-haired Casey James, but she surprisingly claimed to be unimpressed by his performance of Gavin Degraw’s “I Don’t Wanna Be,” a popular song also covered by former Idol contestants Elliott Yamin and Bo Bice.

The judges were also unimpressed by a popular favorite Andrew Garcia, and they raised the issue that his song choices over the past 2 weeks have been all wrong, first being “Sugar, We’re Going Down” by Fall Out Boy followed by James Morrison’s “You Give Me Something.” They all love his style and voice, so maybe he just set his own bar too high with his cover of Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” that left the judges clapping and cheering for weeks. But with his hearty vocal cords and adorable baby boy, it seems like his fans are going to keep voting to keep him in the contest.

The girls performed last night, after Crystal Bowersox was cleared from her health scare. It is a good thing too, because Bowersox along with a few strong female contenders are considered favorites to win the whole shebang. It appears that this year may finish with a female winner because the scope of talent is far greater than on they boys’ side. We’ll just have to tune into the results show to find out. The results show is tonight and the field will be narrowed from 20 to 16.