Justice was delivered on American Idol last night, with dreadlocked goofball Jason Castro sent packing on the heels of two disastrous performances during Rock and Roll Hall of Fame night. Though host Ryan Seacrest opened the show promising drama—no doubt sending hearts aflutter across America that a more deserving contestant would be going home—the show, thankfully, failed to deliver on that promise.

After the Idols kicked off the show singing "Reeling In the Years" (can someone, anyone, please make the Idol producers stop "choreographing" these performances? It seems as painful for them as it is for those at home), Seacrest mentioned that more than 51 million votes were received last night, an Idol record. To put it in perspective, that's more than the entire populations of South Korea, South Africa, Spain, or Colombia, and just a few million votes shy of the amount of people that voted for John Kerry in the last presidential election (around 59 million). Statistics aside, the top three vote-getters were within a million votes of each other—so it was close. And one we'd have to wait for nearly 30 minutes after "the Davids"—Cook and Archuleta, that is—were sent to the safety of the couches, leaving Syesha Mercado and Castro in the lurch and America the victim of unending Idol filler.

Enter Maroon Five and season four runner-up Bo Bice, who each performed. There were also clips of the final four taking a fan-filled trip to Vegas to see a performance of Cirque de Soleil's "Love," a Ford commercial in which all four Idols were unfortunately dressed as matadors, an annoying technical flub, information on the new Taylor Hicks stamp, and the annoying recurring Q&A session in which the Idols and Simon Cowell are asked inane questions by little girls and bored older women from across America. Eventually viewers were allowed to know whether all 51 million of those voters got it right.

Luckily, they did. To his credit, Castro was humble in his departure, saying that he chalked his collapse to his inexperience and that he was relieved to be going home, as next week, each Idol has three songs to sing and he didn't think he'd be up for that. Unfortunately, he chose to play out with "I Shot the Sheriff," but c'est la vie.

Next week, interspersed with each of the performances, expect the top three to take their requisite trips back to their hometowns, where we meet their families, see their baby pictures, and bear witness to their ticker-tape parades. Luckily, the Idol faithful only have two weeks left before being allowed to return to their normal lives.