‘American Idol’ review: Kayden Stephenson, Karl Skinner, Nate Tao close auditions

After a pretty abbreviated process, “American Idol” is already wrapped with the auditions … and we couldn’t be happier. The show often does not even really give their eventual winners long showcases (see Lee DeWyze or Kris Allen), and this really is just time wasted watching contestants embarrass themselves along with the occasional sob story.

After watching Ryan Seacrest’s introduction to that crowd in Oklahoma, we are pretty sure we would be psyched up to go audition in front of the judges, too … even though there can only be one Carrie Underwood, so pretty much any other comparison to the Queen of Country Music is as moot as moot can be.

Karl Skinner – The first audition of the night, and not exactly a good comparison to Carrie. The producers obviously wanted to show somebody from their small-town bus tour that is not really proving to be very successful at all, and he was more of a goofball than a good singer.

Nate Tao – Nate may not be the best singer, but he did have a pretty touching story: his parents are both deaf, so they were not sure that he would have a voice to speak of. Luckily, he genuinely was pretty good, and we could see him making it into the top ten.

Halie Hilburn – If this whole singing thing doesn’t work out for Halie, she can always audition for “America’s Got Talent.” Seriously, she may be a better ventriloquist than she is a singer. But did you really have to put the puppet Oscar in the dumpster? Really? The judges were too mean to the poor thing … we rather liked him.

Zoanette Johnson – We don’t like to highlight the bad singers, but this was actually an interesting idea: why not audition to the National Anthem if you’re good enough to sing it? There’s no harder song out there … but this young lady wasn’t good. The judges did not even stand for this rendition. Plus, Keith Urban falling out of his chair was hilarious.

Wait a second … she actually got a golden ticket? This may be the worst audition to ever be put through to the next round. It’s purely for entertainment at Hollywood Wood since she is an utter trainwreck.

Kayden Stephenson – This was the final audition, and it was a tear-jerker. Kayden is a sweet kid who has cystic fibrosis, and will likely not live past the age of 35. If we have to be a real scrooge here, his voice was fairly weak and it’s not likely that he will make it farther than the opening rounds of Hollywood Week. In a way, though, this was not really so much about that as it was a 16-year old kid being brave enough to come on this show, share his story, and get an opportunity to inspire people to live their lives regardless of whatever trouble they are going through.

(Oh, and the Steven Tyler cameo at the end? Great!)

Who was your favorite audition during the episode this week? As always, we want to hear your thoughts below, and be sure to head on over to the link here to see who shined during the Wednesday auditions.

Photo: Fox