It was the first night of live performances, and teams Adam and Usher performed. For the most part, I was underwhelmed.

In Team Usher’s live performance, the men shined and the women did not, but when it came time for their individual performances, Cathia had the third best performance of the night, and Michelle’s version of True Colors was the second best. (I did want to gag the back-up singers, though.)

The women of Team Adam were also mostly mediocre, with the exception of Judith, who closed out the show and, as expected, gave the strongest performance of the night.

Tonight there were actually a few really clear winners, something we had not had last night. And in fact, I actually agreed with every decision made, which is really rare.

Blake once again kept no one he stole, but did keep a duo, something we have not seen in the live rounds before.

I did notice that one performer whose battle round we did not see still made it through the knockouts. He (and anyone else they montaged the blind audition or battle round for) has had one less performance to build up an audience. That’s hard to make up.