Is Adam Lambert Gay? Does Danny Gokey Love Jesus?

So much for the revitalization of American Idol. It was rumored last year that the franchise might lose Ryan Seacrest, but instead it found songwriter Kara DioGuardi, whose relatively prolix comments wreaked havoc with DVRs. Idol also changed up its opening montage and debuted an awkward, Vegas-style judges' introduction. All this was done to facelift the franchise, which is now nearing the end of its eighth season.

The season has been notable mainly for Adam Lambert, the flamboyant screecher who last week found himself in the "bottom two," quotes necessary for reasons of semantics and irony. As Lambert's fans gasped in fear, the fearful falsetto of Matt Girard sang itself out on the Idol stage. This elimination left Lambert, Kris Allen, Allison Iraheta, and Danny Gokey as the final four.

Season Eight has mostly mirrored Season Four, where clear favorite Carrie Underwood enjoyed an inane manufactured rivalry with Bo Bice. No one has emerged from the Top Ten to threaten a presumed shoo-in or to play electric guitar with basic competence. The appearance of such a threat last year cost David "Archie" Archuleta the title. There has not been a "shocking elimination" (and this is the week for it if one is to happen) and no contestant has beat-boxed his way to the runner-up slot.

There has been no Jordin Sparks and no Taylor "Hot Tics" Hicks. Despite some statistical evidence that Allison Iraheta has an increasing voting bloc, Season Eight seems to be spooling towards an Adam Lambert/Danny Gokey finale. The bland Gokey has not been in the Bottom Three, yet is he really a threat to Lambert?

Such a showdown seems anticlimactic, and yet here is a stunning opportunity for Idol to have its most electrifying finale ever. This is the year for the Pagan/Christian Smackdown.

What a beautifully brutal encounter this would be! This is the time to let the real Adam Lambert loose upon the world. Watch as he taunts and torments the square choirboy Gokey! Finally, the flaming backdrop so artlessly deployed for Idol's "rockers" can be used appropriately.

This will be a television first, a battle so spectacular that it will rock the foundation of the whole Judeo-Christian tradition. Ratings game? They'll go through the roof. Batting his feathery wings, Gokey descends from Heaven into the pit of Hell, where Lambert squirms in abbreviated boy-shorts and does things with his tongue so outrageous that right-wing mothers grab for the phone, not to vote for Gokey but to call 1-800-DEARGOD. Meantime, those of us who have suspected Lambert of dialing back his true persona roll wildly about on our living room floors in ecstatic pornographic convulsions. If this isn't enough excitement for one evening, we thrill to Lambert skipping around with a burning Yule log. Gokey, meanwhile, realizes he has a hard act to follow and turns into a fearsome God whose most masterful acts are not those of charity but of condemnation.

Surprisingly enough, Gokey's act is every bit as terrifying as Lambert's.

It's the tightest contest ever.

The entire nation will be shocked by the daring of American Idol to venture into this controversial territory and to do so in such a bold and uncompromising manner. Initially storyboarded as a confrontation between Good and Evil or Straight Against Gay, the cagey Paula Abdul proposes that only Sanctimonious versus Satan will do. Idol has been slouching along since Season Four and now must purge itself of the past. It becomes impossible to get a ticket; it is rumored that Zac Efron has a whopping three and that Miley Cyrus has been denied admittance. Nationwide, battle lines have been drawn. Fox News goes into a pietous frenzy, as does Miss California Carrie Prejean. Mothers turn against sons, husbands turn against wives, playground battles erupt and someone sets fire to the headquarters of the National Organization for Marriage, which retaliates with the blatantly hostile commercial "Burn, Baby, Burn," featuring a close-up of Adam Lambert's crotch. Other Gokey supporters who also happen to be proponents of Proposition 8 create a bumpersticker featuring a picture of Gokey and the slogan "Setting the World Straight." It is an immediate sell-out but nowhere near the runaway success of a Lambert-themed cheeseburger dressed with wads of goopy mayonnaise.

For one brilliant night, we forget about Dick Cheney, about waterboarding, about disappointment in Obama, about swine flu and about outsourcing. We sit mesmerized in front of our televisions, our bored and restless eyes fixated on the magnificent spectacle. For the first time, some of us experience the warm throb of corruption and like it. Streets are empty. Alligators roam the sewers. Telecommunications are paralyzed by frenzied callers and non-enemy combatants take this opportunity to gently bomb the Lincoln Tunnel; this non-lethal act of violence permanently separates the West Side from Weehawken and the bilge from the boroughs, much to the delight of certain New Yorkers and those spare-the-air types. On the West Coast, the trembling of Los Angelenos causes that city and all that surrounds it to slip gracelessly out to sea, trailing Perez Hilton behind it like a jellyfish after the Titanic.

Simon Cowell makes good on his threats to quit, realizing that the show will never top itself. This is a good decision for Cowell, who understands the limits of excess. He retires to Cornwall, where he learns to make an outstanding stargazey pie. The flash-frozen mackerel savoury becomes Britain's largest food export and is responsible for saving the lives, if not the breath, of millions starving worldwide. Cowell is now a major philanthropist. Later, complaints will be uttered that Cowell has turned the humble and oily mackerel into a delicacy rivaling the fatty belly of tuna, but the Japanese have yet to voice any objection.

Randy Jackson, blinded at the finale by a small-scale suitcase bomb planted by religious fundamentalists, becomes a monosyllabic local attraction who sits outside the Kodak Theatre shouting "Aw-ight!" at uncaring German tourists. Shortly after Season Eight ends, he is forced to sign an agreement that he will never again say "You worked it out" unless he is referring to mathematical equations. If asked, he will tell you that he is happy and that the only time he uses the term "Dawg" is in reference to the errant mutts hiking on the hydrants of Hollywood Boulevard.

Kara "Who?" DioGuardi becomes a legend when she wins an Academy Award for the soundtrack to the Disney feature "Dyke Academy III, The Butch Years of Our Lives." She is invited back for the ninth season but declines due to an unspecified itch that causes her to squirm as much as she speaks.

Paula, bless her, is finally recognized for the savant she really is. Her prowess with the physics of the intergalactic medium was carefully hidden from the viewing public during her long tenure on Idol.

This is the only satisfactory finale. All memories of Blake Lewis are erased. We feel cleansed, defiled, rapturous, smutty. We are united in horror and wonder, in peace and war, in beauty and ugliness, in love and in hate. We are, for one night only, a free nation.