‘The X Factor’ UK results: Did Rylan Clark, Union J, and Ella Henderson survive?

Sunday night’s new episode of “The X Factor” proved to be a rather surprising one … really with so many superlatives and bad words than we can ever hope to include here. What happened on this results show was quite possible the biggest load of (insert random word for excrement here) in quite possible the history of singing competitions.

Let’s start out with the obvious here: with Rylan Clark and Union J each having two weeks of experience in the bottom two, you would assume that these two artists would be the ones in the bottom again. Nope! You would also assume that Christopher Maloney would finally be in trouble this week, but instead, the producers are running around backstage probably realizing now what a monster they have created by letting this guy enter the competition as a wild card. Then again, you really just have to blame the voting public for this; if they want to give the cheesiest man to perform in Europe since David Hasselhoff a chance to win the competition, then that’s their decision.

Now, let’s try to judge the most impossible bottom two ever:

Ella Henderson – The real debate here is do you reward the better singer, or the better recording artist? We called this in a sense yesterday when we said that Ella’s arrangement of “You’re the One I Want” took all of the fun out of the song, but she doesn’t deserve to be here. This performance is literally one of the best vocals ever on this show. We often shy away from comparisons, but this was almost like Mariah Carey and Adele rolled into one.

James Arthur – Meanwhile, James has so much soul in every inc of him, watching him try to contain the emotion is like trying to keep a raccoon from getting your trash. It just ain’t happening. For once, this was a rendition of Alicia Keys’ “Fallin'” that we legitimately loved.

We were actually hoping that Christopher or Rylan would just come on stage and fall on his own sword, but that didn’t happen. Instead, we went to deadlock, and we ended up losing someone who is a ready-made star in the music industry in Ella. What is shocking here is that there are eight people who are technically in the final five, and none of them are women.

Did tonight’s result tarnish the reputation of “The X Factor” UK to you in any way?