‘The X Factor’ USA review: Did CeCe Frey, Lyric 145, and Jennel Garcia survive?

Welcome to “The X Factor” USA, or, as we like to call it, the show where unless you are under 18 or over 25, America does not want to vote for you. This was a slightly surprising, largely horrifying results show largely in that it showed how much the production of these shows plays an impact in who goes home.

With that in mind, we turn to the unfair, said, and almost hair-pulling-out elimination of Lyric 145 early on in the episode. Here’s the issue with this: they did not have a chance to perform for their lives, and they were saddled with a song Wednesday that they did not want, and only had a few hours to prepare for. The writing was on the wall for this one, and it’s all on Simon Cowell for letting them prepare a song that they had not been cleared fully for the week. He also did not know how to make this group into something that was actually hip-hop. Note to future hip-hop artists: if you get on this show, you better hope that you get L.A. Reid as a mentor.

As for the second elimination of the night, it was also a shocker to see Paige Thomas and Jennel Garcia in the bottom two … with Jennel leaving. Has Simon completely lost his mind? First, he played the awful puppetmaster in forcing Demi to reveal her vote first, and the main reason for that was that he obviously knew that he was going to be voting out Jennel, and wanted to see if Paige would at least get one vote against her. Here’s the biggest problem with this elimination: the judges are just wrong. Paige really has yet to give a good performance on the live show, whereas Jennel has been consistently solid. The other surprise here was that CeCe Frey, Beatrice Miller, and Arin Ray all managed to survive despite getting some low vote totals last week.

Now, we turn to what are the current rankings for the top 10 based on viewer vote … which we will consider in crafting our own handy rankings over the weekend.

10. Paige Thomas (obviously)

9. Arin Ray (who still seems angry about it)

8. Beatrice Miller (who doesn’t seem thrilled, either)

7. Diamond White (who received a terrible non-answer from Britney Spears about her slide)

6. Fifth Harmony (down slightly after not getting to go last)

5. CeCe Frey (who was up seven spots, and is easily the night’s big winner)

4. Emblem3 (up two spots)

3. Vino Alan (in the same spot)

2. Carly Rose Sonenclar (who lost by a tiny fraction of a percentage)

1. Tate Stevens (whose reign at the top continues)

Do you think that America is completely and totally out of their minds at the moment?