As American Idol 9 welcomed back two fan favorites, the show also lost two. After Michael Lynche was saved last week, it meant two Idols had to go home this week. Thanks to Siobhan Magnus' suggestion of In the Ghetto, it saved him enough so that he didn't even appear in the bottom three, according to Ryan Seacrest.

We lost Andrew Garcia first, but it wasn't really too much of a shock. He'd been barely hanging on for weeks, and was most likely getting through on the strength of his earlier success. He was a favorite from the auditions, and once Hollywood week hit, he did the most amazing version of Paula Abdul's Straight Up, showing so much promise. But that was apparently the best he had in him. He failed to even come close to that for several weeks, but then had a good week singing Chris Brown's Forever, and a so-so week after this singing Can't Buy Me Love.

Andrew needed to hit it out of the ballpark this week to stay, and just didn't, singing a lounge lizard version of Hound Dog. He was trying to flip it it, but it just came off too slow. Even Adam as mentor told him it was boring and that it needed more punch. Andrew seemed to ignore that advice.

The interesting thing about all this is that the other Idols ... and Andrew's mom ... assure us Andrew is not boring and that he's actually quite fun and full of personality. If there was somewhere to look back on to show where he failed, it had to be there. He failed to ever bring out that fun personality into his music. He's a good singer, but has never been able to bring his personality into his songs. If he could figure this out, he'd have it made.

Of course at this point, we were dying to find out who the second person leaving was, but we had to do the usual and listen to two guests' performances first. But we didn't mind this time, as two of our favorites were coming home. This week's mentor, Adam Lambert, sang his hit What Do You Want From Me, and pretty much gave Andrew a little lesson on what it takes to bring personality out in a song. Another past favorite, Brooke White, came back and sang a duet with Justin Gaston, If I Can Dream. She seemed so much more mature that the girl who sang two years ago, flubbed her song, and asked while live to start over.

With all that over with, Idol had no choice but to finally share with us who the other person leaving was. It came down to being between Big Mike and Katie Stevens. And at this point, I figured it would be Katie. Usually after someone narrowly misses going home, their fans come out in droves, so I figured Big Mike's fans would have a strong showing. Additionally, Katie was in the bottom three every week until last week when she got a reprieve. I wasn't thinking we'd lost yet another girl, leaving us with just Siobhan and Crystal, but again, between Mike and Katie, the fickle finger of fate was pointing in her direction.

While the judges always liked Katie's voice,  they could never decide what genre she should be singing, and that spelled trouble for her. If these people think you suck when you sing this, but are good when you sing this, but these people think the opposite, that's just not going to work. They wanted her to sing young and contemporary, yet she had an older, richer voice that didn't work on those songs. In five years or so, her sound will catch up with her look and experience, and she'll be amazing. She was just on the show too soon.

That leaves us with one young person that still struggles with song choice, and that's Aaron Kelly. Barring some possible strange choice from him, I'm anxious to see what the other six pick to sing for Inspirational Song Week, as we're left with a unique group who know who they are as artists. That is if Siobhan Magnus can get back to being unique. She needs to pick a unique, inspirational song; not one that every other Joe Blow out there has sung. Add in the fact that everything Big Mike sings is inspirational, Crystal Bowersox likes to choose songs with a meaning, Lee Dewyze can flip anything to sound new, Casey James has finally figured out he needs to keep in that Stevie Ray Vaughan mode, and that Tim Urban can sing something with meaning and back it up acoustically and finally wow us, and it'll be a good week. Laura Tucker