The Surprising Kris Allen: The Little Idol Who Could...And Should

Kris Allen: He was understandably shocked that he made it into the final two, and so were a lot of other people. Fox

 

by Marc Hirsh

As we go into the final week of American Idol (the last performance show airs tonight, with the winner announced tomorrow), the hysteria surrounding the show reaches a fever pitch as visions of management contracts, recording careers and bragging rights swirl through everyone's heads.

One thing that can be easily forgotten in all of this is that it's a television show. And that's why Kris Allen should win.

Why the wee Arkansan's victory would make better television, after the jump...

That Kris should win has little to do with whether he's the better singer, or the more marketable recording artist, or the more adorable contestant, or what have you. (Though, seriously, he is completely adorable.)

It has everything to do with what would make for better television. Because Idol is structured as a contest not for its own end but in order to supposedly prepare its winner for an existence outside of itself, it's easy to get lost in the illusion that the choosing the winner is the beginning, not the end.

It is, and it isn't. Despite all the talk of contestants peaking too early or failing to make an impression until it's too late, there's surprisingly little consideration of Idol as dramatic entertainment. And Allen has a better story than Adam Lambert, who made his impact right away and has spent the season as the presumptive winner.

Allen started from zero; it's well-established by now that contestants who don't appear before the voting rounds are at a tremendous disadvantage, and starting with Michael Jackson's "Man In The Mirror" didn't exactly portend long-term success on the show. (In a not-at-all-random sample of two Idol pools that I totally didn't participate in [Ed. note: Me neither], Allen was picked by a grand total of zero people.)

But Allen has defied the odds by quietly, almost invisibly, picking up steam ever since then while staying almost completely under the radar. And if Allen were to win on Wednesday night, in fact, it would retroactively make the entire season far more interesting.

That's not about taking a left turn at the last possible moment for the sake of sheer unpredictability. Despite what Survivor host Jeff Probst has been grinning about for the last few seasons, there's nothing inherently dramatic in a blindside.

It's more like reading a book with a seemingly unexpected conclusion only to find, when you go back through it, that it was perfectly set up the entire time, only you never saw it because you were too busy paying attention to the wrong thing all along. (Or maybe it's more like a magic trick.)

Allen defeating Lambert wouldn't be a shock upset, it would be the culmination of months of sharp gameplay that has led him to that moment. It'd be the strongest full-season narrative Idol has seen possibly since its inaugural season, when Kelly Clarkson (who also vaulted to the head of the pack from obscurity) helped establish the show's basic storyline.

That's the sort of thing that we would expect from a season finale of any other show. Why should Idol be any different? If Lambert wins, American Idol 8 will essentially have amounted to little more than A Bunch Of Stuff That Happened. Forget about finding a new superstar: an Allen victory would justify the season as solid television.