While between DAYS OF OUR LIVES’ Lucas coming home and catching EJ and Sami in the sack and Jesse and Angie’s wedding on ALL MY CHILDREN, it has been a pretty entertaining soap week, I think it’s safe to say that the biggest drama was on prime time: that’s right, AMERICAN IDOL! Much like the other 90+ million voters in the country, my eyes were fixed to FOX and the double whammy of the AI finale and results shows. Move over Y&R’s David Chow and OLTL’s David Vickers, it was all about David Cook and David Archuleta. I rocked out to ZZ Top and George Michael and was part of the collective breath held when Ryan Seacrest opened that shiny gold envelope. So, if you think I love GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Sebastian Roché, mutiply that by a hundred and you’ll get the level of my admiration for David Cook right now. 

I don’t know how this season of IDOL got me so suckered in. I haven’t really paid attention to the show since Chris Daughtry got robbed in season five. But this year, you’d think it was the GH Metro Court crisis and Rose’s death on ATWT rolled into one! In fact, I’m pretty sure that the reason my colleague Joe Diliberto started talking about IDOL in his NIGHT SHIFT blog is because I wouldn’t shut up about it. I knew I was in trouble when I started calling the clear Top 2 “Cookie” and “Archie.” I turned into the walking AI watercooler. I even voted. 

It should be no surprise that when it time came to sign up for the post-finale conference call with the Davids for a story in our prime time section, I steamrolled everybody else in our editorial department and called dibs. Okay, so there were really only two other people who would have done it, but don’t think I can’t take ’em down! So, anyway, I actually dialed in a full 10 minutes early just to be guaranteed a spot in the question line. You know that, by now, both Davids have been asked everything under the sun. I can’t even imagine what their press junket has been like. Cook, a self-proclaimed “word nerd,” was funny and articulate and confessed that he actually did get some sleep last night. (Is anybody else relieved about that?) I was lucky enough to get called on for a question and while my inner Mala was all “SQUEE!” the outer Mala was thoroughly professional and asked some fairly intelligent stuff about Cookmania on the Internet and the popularity of his cover songs. I didn’t get to ask “Little David” Archuleta anything. But he is such a sweetie pie that it’s no wonder tweens and grandmothers alike are swooning over him. He sounded exhausted and like he’s still suffering from the icky throat thing that almost took him down Tuesday night. It kind of made me wish I could sit the kid down and feed him soup. 

Both fortunately and unfortunately, though, neither of these guys is going to be sitting down anytime soon.

originally posted on soapoperaweekly.com