She's Gone . . . They Said

The audience by now is making uncomfortable "what the heck" noises in the background. Randy Jackson says to Paula: "Just on the first song, just the first one."

"Oh my God. I thought you sang twice," Paula says to Jason.

"Paula, you're seeing the future, baby, you're seeing the future -- come back," Seacrest says.

"This is hard!" Paula whines.

Clever Randy tells Paula the notes for the second song were actually her notes on David C.'s performance, which came immediately after Jason's. This becomes Paula's story, too, and the show's explanation the next morning. Except Paula then says she loved David C.'s performance, calling it "fantastic."

Smelling the conspiracy theories bloggers were already concocting, judge Simon Cowell decides to reinforce the made-for-TV reality that the second performances had not yet happened. He jumps in with his pans of each performance -- honestly, what did he expect, it's Neil Diamond night! -- and closes with: "You are the top five contestants. I want to see and hear the performances of a lifetime coming up the second time around."

"He's right!" Seacrest jumps in, picking up on Simon's plan to salvage the show's integrity. I know -- "American Idol" and "integrity," hardly ever see that in the same column. "Round 2's next -- coming up!"

Yesterday morning, Paula publicly explained what had happened. On Seacrest's radio show, naturally. Actually, it's a sort of consomme of explanations. Extra points if you can follow it through to the end.

"When I came to the show, I had to get a whole bunch of friends, and you know what it's like -- my entire family and friends wanted to come to last night's show," Paula told Seacrest.

"I convinced them, I can't get you in, can you go to the live dress rehearsal? So I was getting them all in and they got there late, and the only thing I saw in the monitor . . . was Jason Castro and he was singing 'September Morn' [his second tune]. So I'm writing notes on 'September Morn' 'cause I'm thinking, well, what's going on?

"Now the kids are coming out," she continues. "I'm going now, 'oh my God. What do we do?' When you [Seacrest] came to me and I just started looking at what I'm writing down -- we have never had to do this before."

Here's where Paula switches to the company line: