The auditions are over on American Idol. Now the real competition begins with the live shows. Viewers at home vote for their favorite performer. The latest episode was meant to end with 12 contestants remaining. But a last-minute issue left an extra two contestants in the competition. However, one of the contestants who was eliminated had a breakdown backstage that wasn’t shown on television. Keep reading for all the details on the “awkward” episode.
American Idol Suffers Technical Difficulties With Voting
The latest episode of American Idol was the first live show of Season 24. The episode began with some of the contestants getting kicked off the show, leaving the Top 14 to find out their fate at the end of the show. However, that didn’t happen.
Ryan Seacrest claimed the show received an “unprecedented” amount of votes, preventing more eliminations. However, a source told the U.S. Sun the real reason why the contestant pool wasn’t reduced down to 12 as planned. The source revealed chaos behind the cameras. The insider claimed there was “yelling and running around behind-the-scenes” as the producers tried to get the results before the end of the show.
The source chalked it up to “technical issues,” not a massive amount of votes, as Ryan Seacrest claimed. The chaos behind-the-scenes wasn’t the only thing viewers didn’t see.
Contestant Breaks Down Backstage After ‘Awkward’ Elimination
Several contestants were sent home early in the episode before the final 14 were revealed. Makiyah, Genevieve Heyward, Kutter Bradley, Abayomi, and Madison Moon were all eliminated from American Idol. But a six contestant, 16-year-old Ruby Rae, reportedly took her elimination hard.
An audience member told the U.S. Sun what really went down after Ryan Seacrest’s “awkward” elimination at the start of the show. The teen was “wiping away tears and being consoled by another eliminated contestant” while the filming continued. The audience member called it “disrespectful” that the contestants barely had time to react to their heartbreaking eliminations.
Fans Blast Voting ‘Mess’
For the first time in the show’s history, American Idol viewers were able to vote on social media. That likely played a role in the technical issues that prevented the votes from being counted. Viewers took to Reddit to react to the “mess” created by social media voting.
- “They shouldn’t count the social media votes from tonight and should do away with it for the rest of the season.”
- “If they want to do the social media voting then they need to go back to the old format of voting until the next day and results at the beginning of the next episode.”
- “The social media voting is horrid. I also hate that they close voting during the last commercial break. It’s so unfair to the person who is last because you’ve had like no time to vote after their performance if you thought it was worth of a vote.”
- “I hated the voting even before social media. Why have the voting end the same day as the show?”
- “let’s not forget social media voting opens up to the possibility of bot accounts spam voting.”
Hopefully, American Idol figures out the voting issue before the next elimination. Tell us your thoughts on social media voting in the comments.
Jennifer Havener grew up in a small town in Upstate New York. She earned her B.A in Writing & Literature from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She always knew watching reality TV shows and soap operas, particularly ‘Days of Our Lives’, would come in handy someday. When she’s not writing, she’s playing with her dogs, Lola and Ruger