I’m starting this article before the foregone conclusion that will happen during tonight’s American Idol results show, that is: Sanjaya isn’t going anywhere.  By the time you read this, you and several million other viewers will be annoyed, whoever leaves instead of Sanjaya will be angry, but do you know who’s going to be the most pissed that Sanjaya is sticking around?  Four people: Randy, Paula, Simon and Ryan.

I’ve been watching Idol off and on since its inception, and there’s always been one constant (well, two if you count Paula’s “your voice is like a rainbow” comments): no matter who the contestant is, no matter how bad he or she is on the show, Ryan and Paula always supported each and every one of those kids.  The Jasmine Triases, the Kevin Covaises, the John Stevenses (not the Supreme Court Justice, the pseudo-crooner), even though they stunk up the joint week after week, Ryan and Paula, the two cheeriest elves on reality tv, were always there to support the kids.

But not anymore.

If you paid attention to the vibe in the room on Idol Tuesday night, you could only come away with one impression: the judges and Ryan hate Sanjaya.  They just hate him.  I’m sure they’d deny it, even Simon, but they totally do.  Why?  Not because he’s horrible, but because he’s just ... he’s ...

Okay, there’s only one way I can explain this and that’s by a big ol’ extended metaphor, so sit back:

Imagine that Fox went to the producers of American Idol and said, “Hey guys, the show’s going great.  We love everything about it.  It’s perfect.  Except for one thing: we want to have an animal act in the show.  But don’t worry, we’ve got it all picked out for you.  We have a pig that plays tic-tac-toe.  We’ll put a nice bow on it, a new color every week, and the pig will come out and play tic-tac-toe against a human.  It’ll lose, of course, but it’ll be really cute doing it.”

And then every week American Idol would have to trot out the pig and watch it play tic-tac-toe.  Every week everybody would giggle over how cute the pig is and marvel at what bow it’s wearing, and then it’ll play the game and lose.  The pig’ll be escorted off and the next day everybody at home will talk more about the pig than the singing, human contestants.

Think about what that would do to Paula, Randy, Simon and Ryan.  Think of how something that was cute at first would turn into an irritant and then, ultimately, into a colossal waste of time that the four of them would utterly despise.  On Tuesday night, Ryan would jovially introduce every contestant, expressing genuine excitement for the performance.  Until Sanjaya.  Then Ryan basically said, “Next up, that damn pig.”

Randy, Paula, and Simon watched the pig play tic-tac-toe, and the stupid thing can’t even win the game.  We’re just supposed to be impressed that it can mark off the x’s and o’s.  When it gets close to winning, we’re supposed to be more impressed, but all it is is a delay in the show.  Ryan couldn’t have been happier to move on from Sanjaya.  The subtext of his comments was, “Okay, you’ve seen the pig lose for this week, and you marveled at his shiny, new bow; let’s get back to the singing.”

All right, metaphor’s over.  Idol’s coming on in less than an hour.  Let’s see if it gives me some new material, or if the audience finally says, “You know what?  We’re sick of this ####### pig.  Let’s move on.”

And now the results show is on ...

Yep, Sanjaya’s safe.  Sorry, Gina.

The pig lives, everybody.  And if you see a spider weaving Sanjaya’s name in her web, do us all a favor and kill it.  Just smash it dead.

David L. Williams contributes three articles looking at the world of televison per week to TV Envy.