NBC’s ‘The Voice’ results: Were Austin Jenckes, Jonny Gray, and Kat Robichaud safe?

Last night on “The Voice,” we had the top 12 perform for the first time that the audience would really make their presence felt more than ever. No longer was it about parity of the teams; instead, this was all about the contestants going home that America deemed. This serves as one of the hardest parts of the competition, and while we felt like there was a likely bottom three (in Jonny Gray, Austin Jenckes, and Josh Logan), this show has been known to surprise a few times even when you consider iTunes and some of its results.

So of course, there are some results now to share … though it took a little bit of time in between the “group performances” (ugh) and Carson Daly filling time by enthusiastically reading off of the teleprompter. (Still, it’s better than the Sprint Skybox with Christina Milian, right?)

We did have our first real surprise of the night pretty early on, when Jenckes was one of the first artists saved on the results show along with Caroline Pennell, Matthew Schuler (our current favorite to win), and one of Adam Levine’s favorites in Tessanne Chin. These were followed by Cole Vosbury, Will Champlin, and Jacquie Lee, and that left us with a group of five in Jonny, Kat Robichaud, Josh, James Wolpert, and Ray Boudreaux. None of these names were really surprised; while we think James was a favorite, not everyone loved his “Mr. Brightside” nearly as much as we did.

The next surprise given the lineup was seeing Ray safe, which probably just goes to show once again that Blake Shelton is a meal ticket that gets you far. (We still don’t think that the favorite this time is on his team.) With James being safe, we then were left with Kat, Jonny, Josh, and a very annoyed Cee Lo. He does have a little bit of a beef here, but we do have to say that America really didn’t do a terrible job with the voting based on performances.

While we still don’t like this “Instant Save” feature since it does tend to give singers from the East Coast an advantage (people in the West have to spoil the show to actually vote), Kat was probably the most interesting of the three and she moves on, while Jonny and Josh leave. These results shows are always boring, but at least the right two probably left this one based on long-term prospects. Grade. B-.

What did you think of tonight’s episode of “The Voice”? Did the right people go home, or are you going to be spending a little bit of time from here on our rolling your eyes at America? Be sure to share your thoughts below! If you want to see if our pre-show predictions were correct, click here to see what we had to say in our weekly iTunes sales piece.

Photo: NBC