THIS WEEK, the end stages of "Top Chef Chicago" began — the fat (in the form of mediocre cooks) has officially been skimmed. The nice, even number of eight — four men and four women (more ladies left at this stage than in seasons past) — made for the perfect opportunity to pit teams against each other in the most cutthroat (ha) "Top Chef" Challenge ever.

Cutting (ha) to the chase: the elimination challenge was titled Wedding Wars. As in, nuptials, the joining of soul mates, the most important day of a couple's life, etc. A real couple ... or a couple of good sports. Oh, and I should mention that along with the pressure applied to our chefs to pull off this task, there is also no time allotted for sleeping. Read on for a recap of the beautiful, inevitably tense, moments starring our stressy, exhausted, egomaniacal (if strangely lovable) bunch.

THERE'S SOMETHING DIFFERENT about the lineup of contestants as this episode kicks off. Sure, there's only four of them, that's true — but something deeper. You can see it in each of their eyes. Every last one of them is concerned that tonight might be their last night on that stage. And almost all of them have a reason to worry.

Welcome to the beginning of the end, my friends. It's a new "Idol" world order, and no one is safe.

In fact, they're 51 million different kinds of not safe. That's how many votes came in after Tuesday night's Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame-themed show. And according to Seacrest, each of the top three vote-getters was within 1 million votes of his or her nearest competitor. Which is pretty tight, considering the volume of votes.

The talk at first turns to Syesha: Did Randy make her cry? He says no. He says Syesha told him no. Seacrest intimates that maybe the answer is really yes. Paula haughtily suggests that she facilitated Syesha's "moment of recognition."

Then, Seacrest asks Simon if he really was as angry as he seemed last night. "No, I wasn't angry, I was just surprised at some of the disastrous song choices," he says.

There's a great intro for a group sing!

Which kicks off slightly awkwardly since Li'l David Archuleta seems to miss his cue by a millisecond or two. The song in question is "Reelin' in the Years" by Steely Dan, and unlike last week, the Idolites harmonize really well. (Watch here.) Too bad there'll be one less of them in less than an hour.

THE EASY PART
As the elimination round begins, Li'l David is first out — a natural choice, since he's the one least likely to be sent home. He had a highly rated night in which he sang two songs — "Stand by Me" and "Love Me Tender" — that played magnificently to his audience of squealing teenage girls whose hearts and eyelids flutter at the mere thought of him. His breathy exhortations were sure to stimulate the raw nerves of their ... phone-dialing fingers.

What was his game plan, Seacrest asks.

"It's never really changed. I definitely concentrated more on having fun with 'Stand by Me,'" he says. "And then with 'Love Me Tender,' I just wanted to really connect with the song and hope that everyone else would connect with it if, you know."

We know. Oh, and he's safe.

The gremlins are loose in the "Idol" control room, by the way. First, there was a problem with the lighting during the first break, then the video switching was totally bungled as Seacrest attempted to show footage from past Idolites' trips home, during which a shot of Li'l David and then only the "Idol" logo were shown. And as he tried to cut to a shot of David Cook, Syesha and Jason Castro backstage, he somehow instead received video that appeared to be a rally of some sort — probably video from one of the aforementioned trips home that the Top 3 take every year.

Too bad this show isn't one of the highest-rated programs on network television. I hear those are run more smoothly.

THE THEME OF TUESDAY NIGHT is, on a number of levels, math. Which isn't my strong suit. In fact, even though I kicked booty to the 15th power at Algebra 2: Electric Boogaloo, I haven't been much of a math fan since Ms. Shelton made me want to lobotomize myself with a graphin' calculator in the 12th grade.

But just as Hillary Clinton is confronting some disconcerting math after presidential primary contests in Indiana and North Carolina — seriously, we're going to have an American Idol before we have a Democratic presidential candidate. That's wild — so, too, are Syesha Mercado and Jason Castro likely weighing their chances of survival on "American Idol."

Syesha's landed near the bottom of the "Idol" pack a record-tying five times. Jason's performances have been flagging in recent weeks. And both of them have the misfortune of not being named David, which seems to be the key to success on this season.

But before minute one had ticked to a close in Tuesday's episode, Seacrest revealed an intriguing bit of trivia: Three of the remaining four contestants have racked up first-place finishes in weekly votes.

Unless the "Idol" math has fluctuated as wildly as fan support for Miley Cyrus, it's likely Syesha never made it to the front of the pack. So that means that Jason has. But when? And what does that mean for Syesha? Will she survive the week? And the Davids — are they not as dominant as we'd think?

I'll get the graphin' calculator. There's a sine curve in this somewhere.

Not because she'll be leaving the hit show -- that's a tough break in any case. But because she outlasted, outperformed and outsang all of the female competitors and all but three of the wildly popular men in this season's formidable lineup.

And she's had to fight for her survival each step of the way, landing near the bottom of the contestant pack a record-tying five times at least without losing her spot in the mix.

The secret to her success? It's tough to say, since the "Idol" audience can be as unpredictable as a Gulf Coast hurricane, but her continued improvement onstage is surely a factor. She dazzled during Andrew Lloyd Webber week and showed off an impressive range with the songs of Neil Diamond.

No.

With a working Internet connection, one may spend the better part of a day watching livlier incarnations of the group at home, gratis.

Nevertheless, there is something to be said for seeing one's heroes in the flesh and the Kids' enthusiastic fans at the Warner Theatre on Saturday likely screamed, applauded and laughed more than they would have if they'd stayed in since comedy is best experienced with others.

Still, that enthusiasm wasn't enough to push the Kids' routine playtime into an all-out chucklefest.

Perhaps it was all the small people around, but our chefs were on their very best behavior this week -- they checked the four-letter words, pointless feuding and molecular gastronomy at the door. However boring that might sound, it's time you took a chance on some fine family fun. And for those of you who need a li'l drama, keep reading. Someone cried, someone got sent home and someone said the b word. But not the b word you're thinking of.

TUESDAY NIGHT'S broadcast sped by at such a breakneck pace that the lollygagging speed of a results show seems almost refreshing by comparison. With 45 million votes cast, though, it seems the fleetness of fans' fingers might rival the speediness of the program itself.

That episode — and the music of this week's mentor, Neil Diamond — isn't allowed to stray far from our minds. Just seconds past the opening credits, we're spun almost instantly into this week's group sing.

The Idolites start with "Cracklin' Rosie" and Jason Castro, who croaks at first with a frogginess that makes it sound like he just rolled out of bed before the show. Then, it's on to "Song Sung Blue" and ... geez, does it seem like the whole thing falls apart? The singing is off-pace, the dancing is off-beat and everybody just sounds terrible. (Watch here.)

It finally pulls together with "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" — although Li'l David Archuleta sounds terribly out of place singing it. When David Cook takes the lead vocals for the song's spoken-word preacher section, though, all finally sounds right. And then it's over.

I'd forgotten how awkward these group sings can get when the cast dwindles. The harmonies aren't quite so harmonious, especially since the remaining contestants can — and in this season's case, do — sound very, very different from each other. And not necessarily complimentary.

THE PAULA QUESTION
Seacrest addresses a topic that many "Idol" watchers had on their minds after Tuesday night: What was up with Paula?

Anyone who watched remembers that when the judges were asked to quickly batch critique the contestants' first performances, Paula became visibly flustered and launched into her opinion on Jason's two songs. Problem was, he'd only sung one. (Watch here.)

The blogosphere went nuts.

There were rumors that she was drunk or high or on cat tranquilizers or artificially zonked in some way. Some claimed the show was fixed. Still others said that Paula's pre-emptive comments caused those who review the show — yours truly included — to pan Jason just because Paula had done so.

Seriously, people. If you've watched this show once, you've likely realized how very special a snowflake Paula is. I don't think she's drunk. She's just quirky. And in the Picasso painting that is her mind, maybe she thought Jason did sing two songs. Or she looked at her notes for David Cook, who was the next performer, and superimposed the two. Or she watched the dress rehearsal and conflated those performances. (That's what she told Seacrest on his Los Angeles radio show on Wednesday, according to Entertainment Weekly.)

And the whole argument being floated that Paula unfairly tipped critics against Jason is really strange, since all of the voters (and reviewers) always hear from all of the judges before they're able to make their selection. Would Paula — whose "critiques" are often empty bits of puffery anyway — sway the voting or reviewing public any more than usual simply because her jumbled ramblings were mistakenly uttered before a song was sung? I really doubt it.

The question all over YouTube Wednesday night is "Is 'American Idol' scripted?" It would take a far keener sleuth than I to give that question an unequivocal answer, but I really kinda don't think so. I mean, who the hell would have intentionally created Sanjaya?

Here's Seacrest's take:

One thing before we move on. Last night, the judges were thrown a curve ball on the air, which is just part of a live show. But it sparked a lot of gossip about Paula. I read some of this online this morning. Just for the record, the rumors? They're not true. She's part of our family. And we love her. And I think Simon still wants to hook up with her.

This wasn't that other Michaels production, the one that was live on Saturday night. This was "The Kids in the Hall," a Canadian male quintet of kooks who trafficked in absurd, biting and gaspingly funny sketch comedy and understood that when the going gets tough, the tough put on dresses.

We spoke with Scott Thompson, who, along with Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney formed the group in Toronto in the late 1980s. For the Kids' comeback tour, hitting the Warner Theatre on Saturday, they've got all new material but some familiar faces.

"You'll see the Kathys are back," said Thompson from inside the Texas Schoolbook Depository in Dallas. (True. The troupe tour stopped in Texas, where they decided to sightsee.) He was referring to catty secretaries Cathy (Thompson) and Kathie (McCulloch). "But they're not doing so well. ... Chicken Lady is back" — that's McKinney's infamous half-woman/half-chicken whose chief attribute is her desire to, uh, lay eggs with hot men. "And Buddy's back, and the head-crushers are back. But they're saying new things."

Magician David Blaine's latest feat of endurance likely will last less than 17 minutes, but he's planning to do it in front of talk show queen Oprah Winfrey — and her audience of millions.

Blaine on Wednesday will try to break the world record for breath-holding during a live broadcast of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," less than two years after going into convulsions during a similar attempt.