If Brett Favre is on tonight

singing "Pants on the Ground", I guarantee I will crap my pants.

That would rock, by the way.

Yes, it's time for the Idol finale, which in years past has ranged from either boringly unsuspenseful to actually good. We're guaranteed a retrospective on the finalists, returning bad auditioners and lots of self-congratulatory schlock.

Plus a few sightings of past Idols.

Crystal's dad is in the house, and he's wearing a tie. The show opens and we get lots of large crowd shots. They show the kids hometowns and I miss a loopy LaToya London in a feather boa.

Looking back on this year, I wonder what's going to happen next season. I hope they shake up things big time and get the show back to its roots as a genuine amateur competition. If they can do that: get some of the innocence back and return to being an actual competition, then the show will succeed. Otherwise, it's just going to be nothing more than a glorified popularity contest.

How much money did they have to throw at Alice Cooper? And why hasn't he been a mentor on the show yet?

While I don't think the show will be the same without Simon, I think it's time everybody moved on. He's clearly bored by Idol and contrary to popular belief, there something worse than Kara: Simon phoning it in. He's had one foot out the door for the past three or so years and the quality of the show has steadily declined.

Kris just started singing and someone in the sound booth just got fired.

I'm not saying that you can just replace Simon with the next swinging johnson, but he's not indispensable. Several names have been floated as replacements; Howard Stern was supposedly campaigning for the job, but I think that was nothing more than a publicity stunt. I would like to see someone like Gene Simmons take that seat. In any event, the judging panel needs to be more like that from "The Sing Off" and less like "America's Got Talent".

The actual make-up is less important than all three persons having credibility and chemistry. This panel clearly doesn't have it. Last year's didn't either and I believe that to be Kara's fault. I think she was initially brought on to replace Simon, but that would be disastrous.

Look, Simon is many things, but he's never patronising, and Kara is nothing but. I don't think his replacement has to be the same kind of nasty, but someone like Gene Simmons could be brutally honest without being a jackass. After figuring out who to replace him with, TPTB need to find two suitable persons to sit at the table with him.

The four-person judges table is an unmitigated disaster. It takes too much time and they need to go back to three people who can genuinely get along and help mentor the kids, rather than find ways to make the show about themselves.

By the way, did everyone see that guy who ate Barry Gibb?

Man, the best sounding person in that group was Siobhán!

If I were assembling a team of judges, I'd pick Gene Simmons, Harry Connick, Jr. and keep Ellen. I'd make Barry Manilow the permanent mentor and dump Seacrest for Tom Bergeron. Of course that will never happen.

The other thing I'd do to revitalise the show is eliminate the influence of the powervoters. As it is, the show isn't about turning in a good performance, it's about getting people to put up 700 text/phone votes per night. In a perfect world, the voting would be more like DWTS's; each phone/email gets 10 votes (15, 20, pick a low number). To keep the show from becoming an outright popularity contest, the show needs to limit voting so that the casual fan has as much influence as the rabid powervoter.

Either the fan voting needs to be limited or the judges need to have some actual influence over the results. This will result in the final product being stronger; no longer will a weak singer be able to advance towards the finale at the expense of people who are better. The judges will weed them out. Notice that on DWTS and SYTYCD, the people remaining at the end are rarely weak.

Contrast that with Idol, which has seen singers like Jasmine Trias, Sanjaya and Danny Gokey move on when they should have been eliminated earlier. I don't care which system Idol uses; on DWTS, the judges's scores are combined with the fan voting to determine who is eliminated and on SYTYCD, the judges determine who is up for elimination before the fans vote to save someone.

A third option is to change the voting entirely and let "America" vote to kick someone off instead of voting to keep their favourite.

Look, it's Big Mike singing with half of the Doobie Brothers. In case you're keeping score, we've seen Alice Cooper, the Bee Gees and Michael McDonald. Are they going to have any songs that are less than 10 years old? Isn't the stated goal of this show to find a pop star who will be on the radio/satellite/iTunes today?

I could have done without the lame Dane Cook bit, although it was good to see our friend Renaldo Lapuz again. Was William Hung busy? Was it just me, or did they cut to commercial very quickly?

The girls are on singing Christina Aguilera and my friend Mike is desperately hoping that Katie has turned 18 because he feels dirty looking at her. The harmonies are a little off; maybe they're actually singing and not lip-synching.

One thing that strikes me about this show is that aside from the oddly uncomfortable "tributes" to Simon, there's a lot of decent content to the show. They're letting the kids sing. Why did they have to wait until the finale for this to happen?

I also wonder why they can't get more current artists. Sure we've had Christina Aguilera, but now the guys are singing Hall & Oates. I was in elementary and middle school when these guys were popular and I'm almost 10 years older than Casey, the oldest of the singers. Fox, you just paid a lot of money to feature Lady Gaga on Glee, why not pay her to be on stage again, only this time withthe Idols instead of taking up space at a (way too long) results show.

Crystal takes the stage by herself singing Alanis Morrisette. I wonder if the "You Can't Do That On Television" alum is going to show up, too . . . and she does. I would have much rather heard them sing "Hand in My Pocket" instead of the Dave Coulier song. Alanis looks good; it seems she has rediscovered shampoo. On a side note, "You Oughta Know" was my psycho ex-girlfriend's favourite song. That should have tipped me off. Sadly, I'll never get the six weeks we went out back, nor the three months she spent stalking me.

After the 473^rd commercial, Carrie takes the stage. Unsurprisingly, she is last year's top earning Idol and I'm willing to be that no one else comes close for quite some time. See, kids? That's how it's done. If she and Kris were head to head in the same year, she would have chewed him up and spit him out. The only other singers who are even remotely in the same league as her are Kelly Clarkson, Chris Daughtry and maybe Clay. I'd put J-Hud in the same boat, but she's shown that she's a more successful actress than singer.

And then it's time for some crappy Ford product placement.

Casey gets some face time with a song that was hot when I was in middle school. Does this mean Brett Michaels and his bandana are going to be on? Man, he's been on TV a lot for a washed up hair band guy. On top of two white-trash dating shows, he had a stroke and won The Donald's reality show. I guess he really is bulletproof. Where is CC Deville? Although I loathe this song (it was played to death by the radio), this is almost as good as Adam Lambert with KISS last year.

Lee gets his turn with Chicago (the band). I guess it really is old timer's night. If we're scoring for relevant songs tonight, Idol is averaging about a 1983 out of 2010. What's the matter, Simon Fuller? Couldn't get Simon & Garfunkel? Like Lee in general, his collaboration with Chicago is a snoozer.

General Larry Platt takes the stage and I'm looking for Brett Favre to make his appearance. I guess he's too busy recovering from ankle surgery, so they had to get William Hung. My friends Floyd and Shawn are very, very happy. Did you know that William Hung is something like the fifth best selling Idol of all time? He even has his own DVD.

There's another montage/tribute to Simon and Paula makes her return to the show. I wonder if she's on or off the juice tonight. I'm guessing off the happy sauce, but I don't think what she took about half an hour ago was ibuprofen. The love child joke was pretty funny. The rest of her stage time was awkward.

Is this show about announcing the next American Idol or Simon Cowell? I know that some people think it's the latter, but wouldn't this have been better done in an hour-long retrospective on a night between the final singing show and the final results show. If I were Lee or Crystal, I'd be ticked off that the show was so much about him and not them.

The former Idol winners take the stage and this is what this show should be: welcoming home the past Idols and celebrating the show, not the egos of the judges and host. I wonder what happened that David Cook couldn't make it. I'm also happy to see that Fantasia got herself a new stylist. Did they really need the extra chorus with all the Idols that were on stage? (The answer is "no", by the way).

Change #26 I would make to the format of the show: Only former Idol winners and finalists are allowed to perform at the finale.

Just a LOTRO reminder: I'm Kindelle or Vraeden on Elendilmir and Brindelle or Amberley on Windfola. Holla at me.

Change #27 I would make to the format of the show: The weekly results shows need to be 30 minutes and the season-ending finale stops after 60 minutes.

Was the Janet Jackson appearance really necessary? I know I sound like a broken record, but why couldn't they get someone who has had a hit in the last five years? Oh, that's right, I forgot about Christina. I guess Idol is 1 for 12 for current stars appearing on the finale.

At heart, this is what's wrong with the show: for a format that supposedly is intent on finding a current pop star, they spend an awful lot of time mining song catalogs that are twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years old. This has to stop. If the show is to truly generate a current star, they need to sing current songs. Lacking that, Idol will become a popularity-driven karaoke contest. And we all know what Simon would say about that.

Are there really 17 minutes left in this show? (That's assuming it doesn't run over)

Seacrest takes the stage and says, "Tonight is about Crystal and Lee" What a crock of feldercarb!!!! Tonight has been anything but. As near as I can tell, tonight has been about acts who had their heyday thirty years ago and Simon Cowell. What took them so long to bring the show back to them.

Hopefully, they'll sing "Falling Slowly" again . . . But no, it looks like they're going to get their money out of the royalties they're paying to access the Lennon/McCartney songbook. Too bad the only person they could get to help them out was Joe Cocker (or his overweight doppelgänger with bad teeth).

Change #37 I would make to the format of the show: If anyone other than the Idols is going to be on stage for a Beatles song, it will be Paul or Ringo.

There's yet another commercial break and then Seacrest brings us back with the two remaining Idols. The results are certified by some independent accountant and then he announces that Lee wins Idol.

Mrs. High Lord just swore off Idol and went upstairs to watch Sex and the City on HBO in HD.

I guess TPTB got what they wanted. In a way, Crystal got what she wanted, too. Now she won't have to shill for 19E for the rest of her life.

He gets to sing his U2 cover (it's a "current" song, if you consider a song that's 10 years old to be current) amidst all of the confetti.

According to Seacrest the margin of victory was 2%, which is closer than I would have predicted. After last night, I thought that Crystal would win in a landslide. I guess I was wrong. As usual.

The good news is that the show finished on time. We'll see what they do next year to "fix" the show.

I'll be back later this week or early next to reflect on the season.

Congrats, Lee! You made a strong charge at the end, even if I don't get your charm. Apparently enough other people out there did and crowned you the season 9 American Idol.

High Lord. Bane of the Orcs. Out.