American Idol 2014: Hollywood Week Performances — Round 3 [VIDEOS]

The nail-biting drama of American Idol 2014 Hollywood Week continues tonight with the infamous group rounds. Dozens of Golden Ticket Winners have already been cut in the first two rounds in Los Angeles. Now the contestants will be facing their hardest challenge yet to survive the next cut.

So far the American Idol season 13 contestants have already endured two grueling rounds of competition. Some of them have already performed twice, once in the surprise “Hollywood or Home” round, and then again in the first solo round.

As it stands right now, we’re afraid American Idol judges Harry Connick Jr., Jennifer Lopez, and Keith Urban are going to have a mess on their hands this evening. As we saw on the show last night, some of the groups have barely even had time to rehearse together, and more than one seemed on the verge of imploding before they even step on stage.

All of the hopefuls are also operating on very little sleep, and the strain has already caused at least one contestant to quit when he just became too sick to continue. The previous two rounds may have been brutal for the American Idol 2014 contestants, but tonight’s group round is likely to make the previous challenges look like a cake walk in comparison.

And here we go!

We open tonight with a look back at former American Idol stars going into their group round performances. We see Phillip Phillips, Carrie Underwood and other future Idol winners facing the grueling pain of this round of the competition. Then we have a montage of the horrible and the awesome moments we’ve had in previous group rounds. Then it’s time to get on with the performances.

Tonight the American Idol judges are going to be cutting the remaining contestants in half, leaving us with about 50 left at the end of the night.

3 Mo’ Days: Tony Foster, Jr., David Oliver Willis, and Sarina Joi Crowe (3 Mo’ Days) kick us off tonight. We like all three of these contestants but the weakest one, by a small margin, is Tony. We would love for the judges to put through all three guys, but they decide Tony just didn’t cut it and he is eliminated.

Tony wants to know why and they tell him there are just so many good singers, and he was looking at his feet the whole time he was singing. He thanks them politely for their feedback.

Backstreet Cowboys Dexter Roberts, Casey Thrasher & Ben Briley for some reason are doing Backstreet Boys, which just sounds kind of weird. They seem to have it together, but we just don’t like the song choice. Ben droops a little next to the other guys. The judges seem to love the whole thing though and put all three guys through.

We see a whole bunch of singers go past giving some really good performances, including  Neco Starr, George Lovett,  Briana Oakley, MK Nobilette, Paula Hunt, and Andrina Brogden.

We don’t see get definite yes votes on all of them going through, but we think they are all moving on. Good news for Brandy Neely, Emily Piriz and Kenzie Hall as well.

Megan Miller, Spencer Lloyd, Alyssa Siebken are up next and it is a train wreck of a performance. J-Lo says some of them have shown real potential in the past, but if it was based just on this performance, it would be a wash. Cue the dramatic music as the judges tell Spencer and Megan they are going through, but Alyssa has been cut. She mumbles to the camera about “hidden agendas” and does not leave nicely.

Also cut were Madison Walker, Keith London, and Austin Percario, Stephanie Petronelli, and sound healer Adam Roth. Another contestant who is going home is Tiquila Wilson, who actually decided to quit because she feels her future is in gospel music and Idol just doesn’t feel right for her. Harry says he respects her decision and it is “our loss.”

Harry Connick Jr. pipes up and announces that he is going to quit the competition as well because he just doesn’t like the other judges. He actually walks off set and flips double birds back at Keith Urban and Jennifer Lopez. Of course, he finally comes back as they all laugh.

Caleb Johnson, Tyler Ahlgren, Matthew Hamel, and C. J. Harris are up next. There are some really good moments, especially from Caleb. But there are also some bad moments and some really terrible forgetting of lyrics as well. Harry says Caleb “owned” that performance, but it wasn’t the best for C. J. but they both are going through. As for Tyler and and Matthew, they just couldn’t hang with the others and they are going home.

Munfarid Zaidi, Jena Asciutto, Allie Odom, and Sikenya Thompson (Clarity) are up next. Sikenya is really sick and sounds terrible. She almost freaks out right in the middle of her performance, but J-Lo keeps urging her on. She keeps singing and amazing, actually sounds pretty darn good. The group overall is decent if not spectacular and the judges decide everyone but Allie will go through.

Now we have Savion Wright and John Fox in a group and we’re fond of both of these guys. The whole group does relatively well but the judges think John was the weak link. They send him home, but Savion goes through to the next round. He’s quite upset about John getting eliminated.

Altanta contestant Jessica Meuse and her very drama-plagued group are up next. Jess just has to tell the judges about her struggles finding a group, etc. etc. We think you should just shut up and sing. Nica Nashae, Stephanie Hanvey, and Cara Watson make up the other three in the group. Although the whole thing is kind of a shambles, the judges only decide to cut Stephanie.

Stephanie’s stage mom FREAKS out when she is eliminated and screams from the audience. Then she goes backstage and starts yelling at Jessica like it’s all her fault. Stephanie starts crying and tries to talk to the cameras but her mom yanks her away. What a load of drama! Next year, we hope Stephanie comes back WITHOUT mom.

Now we have Terrica Curry, Carmen Delgina, and Emmanuel Zidor (Love’s Angels) as the next to last group of the day. The performance is very rough around the edges. Each person sounds reasonably good, but together they are clashing. Harry says they only see true star potential in one person of the group. It does not, however, turn out to be the person we expect. The judges decide Emmanuel is going through and the two ladies are headed home. We would have kept Carmen instead.

The final group to perform is Christina Collins, Olivia Diamond, Queen Bulls, and Malaya Watson. They have named their group Loud and Fierce, but we don’t really think they are too much of the “fierce” part. Malaya is really the standout but the other three are kind of blah and push too hard. The judges don’t seem to mind though, and decide that all four girls are going through.

Well, that is a wrap and we’re surprised because we really didn’t see ONE group that we think justifies host Ryan Seacrest saying at the start of the show that we’d see some of the “best ever” tonight.

Overall, it was kind of blah with a few singers who had standout performances. Let’s home the final solo round next week gives us a lot more wow moments!