Tonight is Original Song Night on Nashville Star, and it's always my favorite night of the season. Original Song Night is what sets Nashville Star apart from pretty much every other televised singing competition, since it's rare that reality TV finalists get a challenge like this. After all, the American Idols never have to pen their own tunes while competing--and when some of them try to do so later, they suffer the wrath of Clive Davis. (Poor, poor Kelly Clarkson...)

But Nashville, aka Music City, is a whole other world compared to Hollywood. Songwriting prowess is a Nashvillian's most all-important asset, not to mention how most aspiring Nashville stars make a behind-the-scenes buck while waiting for their chance in front of the mic. So it makes sense that Original Song Night is such a crucial part of the entire Nashville Star competition. Original Song Night is in fact make-or-break night.

Luckily for Nashville Star viewers who can't wait for tonight's show, I've managed to get

Tonight marked the first night that the So You Think You Can Dance vote lay squarely in the hands of the viewing public. But I've always appreciated the fact that the expert judges had veto power in the elimination process, and were allowed to save any dancer who clearly did not belong in the bottom (as I've pointed out before, just imagine how differently certain seasons of American Idol could have panned out if such a policy had been in place on the nights that Chris Daughtry or Tamyra Gray were axed). So I was not happy to learn that Nigel, Mary, et al would no longer have any say in who stays and who goes.

Anyway, at first I thought America pretty much got it right tonight. And I was relieved. But then, there STILL were a couple of Jennifer Hudson-style elimination shockers at the end of the episode.

But first things first....Mark and Kherrington are fantastic dancers, no doubt, and at one time it would have utterly astonished me to see either of them in the bottom. But frankly,

I don't know about you, but my prom suuuuucked.

At the time I was caught up in a very 90210-esque Brenda/Dylan/Kelly love triangle (I'm a little ashamed to admit I was the "Kelly"...but give me a break, I was stupid and 17), and due to some unfortunate assigned-seating error, my poached boyfriend "Dylan" was seated directly in between me and "Brenda."

AWKWARD!

So Brenda shot icy stabbling glares at Dylan all night and flirted exaggeratedly with her date in an attempt to make him jealous; he subsequently GOT jealous; that got ME jealous; I marched out in a huff while Dylan and Brenda reported to the dance floor to p-push it way too real-good to the ex-girlfriend-inappropriate "Push It" by Salt-N-Pepa; I sought comfort in the bottom of a bottle of Bartles & James; and all our poor mutual friends seated at our table just stared blankly down at their plates of stale Salisbury steak and prayed for this entire fiasco to come to a conclusion.

Is this TMI?

Well, I honestly would have

Tonight the top 10 So You Think You Can Dance finalists were unveiled--an important turning point in the competition not only because it was the last chance for the judges to have any say in who stays and who goes, but also because these top 10 dancers are the ones who will participate in this year's SYTYCD tour.

So with 12 dancers remaining on this all-important judgment night, that meant half of the contenders--or three couples--were on the chopping block this evening. One of the bottomed-out couples was no big surprise, but the other two at-risk couples were definitely more unexpected.

First, the non-shocker: Comfort and Thayne were in the bottom three. I predicted as much last night. Comfort was definitely out of her depth during that Mandy Moore routine, and she was unpredictably disappointing dancing in her specialty genre of hip-hop, too. And her partner Thayne, with his supposed tree-like personality, has never been a favorite with the voters, so it was understandable that he