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One more down in this brutal competition, and finally someone with a Y chromosome. (Yup, that means Ryan was safe!) Maybe things are starting to even out on this lopsided season of American Sparklehorror. Maybe! Or maybe it was just a fluke.

We'll get to the vote-off in a moment, but let's first start at the very beginning. Apparently on the elimination episode I missed two weeks ago because I was making it rain on the Spain plane, they grouped the kids together in various configurations and had them perform like that throughout the evening instead of in one big, heaving blob of awful group number medleyism. They did it again this week and it is such a good idea! Last night they did such a good job in their little duets! (The quartet not so much.) First up were Scotty and Lauren who are tooootally going to be each other's dates to the Idol prom, which Ryan throws every year for the teenage contestants who are missing their real proms (I just made that up but wouldn't that be faaaabulous?? J.Lo would be all "I'm a chaperone!! Leave room for the holy ghost, you too! Hahaha."). They'll look so cute all dressed up and maybe they'll do some making out under a hickory tree. (Or they'll go to third base on a plastic-slatted lounge chair outside by the pool, I mean it is 2011 guys, not a Southern Norman Rockwell painting.) But yes, it is fun to think that they are dating, or at least flirting. And they sounded nice together! They sang a Lady Antebellum song grossly called "American Honey," but they sang it cutely and sweetly and it's all about being a teenager and stuff (or rather being nostalgic about being a teenager), so it was a good choice for them. Yay kids!

After they sang it cut to Ryan and he had the dopiest grin on his face that just made me think "What are you hiding, Ryan? What are your secrets?" Of course he was probably giddily smiling because Scotty & Lauren's performance was so adorable, and because he and Stefano had had a quick nooner in his dressing room right before the show started. Those two things are enough to make Seacrest grin like the weird giggly seahorse he is, and it was funny. It was great! What a weird, silly little Seacresty way to start the show. Keep smiling, kiddo.

Next up to perform were Haley and ol' Fozzie Bear, and they did a jazzcat jam that was kinda fun I guess, with everyone scatting all over the place (they weren't handling feces, they were making up nonsense jazz words on the spot). Some people are saying on the internet this morning that their chemistry-infused performance hints at a possible romance relationship between the two, but I don't see that. They seem more like the uptight annoying girl who eventually learns to like, not love, the slobby guy her other friends are friends with and they have a gently antagonistic rapport, a mutual respect even, but it never goes further than that. That's what I see when I gaze at them through a bottle of wine. If they are, in fact, having Idolsex together, good for them, though the graphics of that — the wailing and rasping, the scoobity-doop-dat-datssss, the terrifying Fozzie Bear facial expressions — don't exactly fill my heart with the springtime swoons. Sorry, but they just don't. But that's OK! Different strokes for different folks. Ew, strokes.

Ummm what else. Oh, Kelly Clarkson came out with someone named Al Dean or something and they sang another country duet, the second of the evening, and I was like "Where am I, a benefit for a kid in a coma after a grain elevator accident?" No, I was not like that, but that's probably one place where you'd see two country duets in one night, right? I mean, I'm not trying to make light of grain elevator accidents, or any other grain- or farm-related accident. I'm just saying, the fundraiser to help pay for Jimmy's medical bills is probably a good bet if you want to see some country duets. Not from Kelly Clarkson and Scotty McReary, probably, that's probably not that likely, the Clemsons are well-known in the community, but they're not that well-known. But you know, some more local acts, singing country duets. It's a likelihood. Get well soon, Jimmy! They're holding your spot on the baseball team for you. (Though really, guys, the Gophers need a second baseman. You've already lost so many games because you're just leaving that spot open for Jimmy to come back. He's not coming back anytime soon, and we're talking Gophers baseball here! This is serious business. The community needs this. Get it together.)

After that The Four Huntsman or whatever they're calling themselves (it's just the remaining guys) performed a Simon & Garfunkel medley that was lackluster, especially after the other two duets, so whatever, dumpy-dump, oh well. Then Rihanna came out and sang some fog song and there were dancers writhing on the ground with these big silk banner things that were hanging from the ceiling and I thought they were going to do ribbon acrobatics or whatever you call that thing when they tangle themselves up in curtains and do spins and stuff, but no, they mostly just stayed on the floor, writhing way. Rihanna has a terrible red dye job and that's that.

OK! So it was time. Let's talk bottoms. Stefano, Tim, Steven Tyler for a crazy week in 1972. Hm? Oh, right, sorry. The bottom three I mean! It was: Stefano (yikes!), Haley (guess she's not staging a huge comeback after all), and Willy Whispers (ha-cha-cha-cha). Everyone seemed pretty content with this bottom three, so I guess that's all you can ask for. Ryan even kept the silly "You're on the top... of being on the bottom. In a losing contest, you win" stuff to a minimum. He sent Haley back to the Couches of Redemption and then it was just the two guys. Finally a guy was going to go home. Who would it be? Ryan, of course, had his knees knocking in worry that it would be Stefano, he prayed and prayed with all of his grinning might that it wasn't Stefano, and then, prayer answered, it wasn't.

There was a tinkle of bone music and a scritchy-scratch sound like something trying to scratch through the basement door and Ryan announced that Willy Whispers had danced his last noodle dance. Goodbye, Willy! He took it in stride, though he did seem way more disappointed than I thought he would be. He didn't actually think he was going to win, did he? I hope not. So yeah, they played the clip reel — Willy in a moth-eaten tuxedo strumming his catskin banjo, Willy juggling his own skull in old-timey comical fashion, Willy playing his ribcage like a marimba — while David Cook moaned plaintively for people to not forget about him. (Too late, I'm afraid.) Then J.Lo requested that Willy sing one more jangly rendition of "Maggie" and Willy, ever the skeleton gentleman, obliged.

He did his bone dance across the stage, wriggling and rattling, and everyone clapped sadly. At the end of his song he tipped his top hat to the audience and then snapped his fingers and with a poof of strange smoke, he was gone. A low moon hung in the sky and we saw him there for a second, silhouetted, clicking his heels, and that was it. No more Willy Whispers. No more curious night terrors. It's just the humans now, save for the Casey ghost, and I fear we may be less entertained because of it. Willy wasn't the best, that's for sure, but he certainly was silly. Silly Willy. The Jingler, the Jangler, the Dark Spirit Wrangler.

At least it wasn't Stefano! At least it wasn't him. He and Ryan are going to Ibiza this weekend anyway, the tickets were booked already after all, and they'll meet Tim there, Tim who's been sunning himself out there on that fabulous island this whole week. Wearing his big floppy hats and oversized movie star sunglasses. He'll meet them at the airport as they get out right on the tarmac, that's the fun of private planes, the wind whipping their hair, the Mediterranean sun a perfect, ancient light. "So," Tim will ask. "Who went home?" And Ryan will think for a second and say "You know what? I don't even remember."

But then later that night, lying in bed, he'll suddenly feel a chill. He'll hear something rattling somewhere near by, the sound mixing with a faint Wurlitzer tune, and he'll remember. Willy, the wind will say. And Stefano and Tim will stir in bed and Ryan will get up and walk out to the balcony and listen to the tide going out. The rush and roar of the water becoming the sound of a million ghosts and spirits and other vanishing souls fleeting the earth.