You’d think with both Kanye West and Kelly Clarkson (pictured) performing at last night’s American Idol results show, the behind-the-scenes action would at least be marginally less enervating than the completely predictable voting outcome, the most cringe-y group performance in Idol history, and the anti-climactic announcement of the new rule that will change the face of the show forever in the way that it very well may never been enacted at all. Not so much. While Kanye and Kelly did both get me grooving, I regret to inform you that there wasn’t much behind-the-scenery to chew on. But chew we must, and chew we shall, even if our jaws grow sore from all this metaphoric mastication.

After I raced over to CBS Television City in order to (barely) make the 4:45pm (PDT) pre-tape of Kanye West’s performance — it’s shocking, I know, but Kanye wasn’t performing live when he took to an Idol stage sans contestants and with a bunch of tweens standing behind the judges’ table — I was packed in with the rest of the audience outside the studio for another 20 minutes while the crew scrambled to finish setting up and checking the sound. (Seems those first-week wrinkles still haven’t all been smoothed out yet.) We were finally rushed into the Thunderdome, my seat about as far away from the stage and as safe from making it on camera as one could get, and as the CBS pages scrambled frantically to fill in the crowd, I tried to ignore the creepy pixelated eyes curiously blinking back at us on the Idol Thunder-screen. A production assistant instructed the Swaybots on the correct technique for clapping over one’s head, another PA corralled those aforementioned tweens onto the judges’ platform, Justin Guarini worked the room like a pro, and Ryan Seacrest took to one of the Idol Crow’s Nests to introduce Kanye West.

And that, dear readers, is when Cory the Warm-Up Comic, so missed during Tuesday night’s show, at last emerged into the Idol firmament like Gollum re-surfacing to lay claim to his ring. It was a quick entrance, just long enough for Cory/Gollum to instruct us to be really quiet when Ryan was talking and really excited when Kanye was performing, but it was enough to make me feel like the full dysfunctional Idol family was finally back home. My heart was now at peace. Then I bore horrified witness to the spectacle of Scott MacIntyre struggling to perform sub-Six Flags choreography with anything even remotely resembling dignity, and my heart was consumed whole by the rebirth of the snark demon who takes up residence on my shoulder during Idol season. He is called Smirkelstiltskin, and he has missed you all.

addCredit(“Ray Mickshaw/Fox”)

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