"The Season Five 'Final 5' ".  The words are spoken in reverent tones whenever American Idol fans meet, much like how baseball fans refer to the 1927 New York Yankees or wine lovers discuss 1947 Cheval Blanc.  OK, so we're exaggerating – no one we know is ready to equate Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to Taylor Hicks and Chris Daughtry, nor is there a whole lot of agreement as to which of that quintet actually deserved to win.  But there remains a fairly strong consensus on Idol boards and blogs that in 2006 – whether by design, accident, or sheer dumb luck – America got the Final 5 right for once.  Of course, the road to Rightville was riddled with potholes and hairpin curves along the way, but you can't expect a smooth ride on this crazy show....

First out in the Top 24 Girls show was Mandisa (née Hundley), a very-plus-sized, black Gospel singer from Tennessee, who naturally kicked off the season with a cover of...well, we'll give you three guesses.  Then ten thousand more, if you'd like.  Stop us when you get to Heart's Never.  But Mandisa's unexpected song choice made a strong impression on the Idolsphere, earning a 76 rating that was later matched by Paris Bennett's Midnight Train To Georgia.  Little Lisa Tucker trumped both with a 5-star rendition of I Am Changing from Dreamgirls, but Katherine McPhee outpointed them all with the anchor number, Since I Fell For You, at 82.  Regrettably, three consecutive 1-star performance in the middle of the show took much of the luster off the Girls' otherwise strong opening night.

The Top 24 Guys, by contrast, got off to a rocky start: the first five performances all came in at under 50, and the judges were getting restless.  Enter North Carolina rocker Daughtry, who woke everyone up with the week's top-rated performance, an 87 for Wanted Dead Or Alive.  Another well-traveled rocker from the South, Birmingham's Hicks, closed with a 5-star cover of Levon, while Ace Young displayed a nimble falsetto on George Michael's Father Figure, just missing 5-stars at 79.  The only other above-average approval rating of the evening was a 4-star cover of If You Really Love Me by little-hyped Elliott Yamin.

The ten advancing ladies backslid badly the next week, with an average rating of under 43 and only Mandisa and teen basketball star Ayla Brown reaching even a modest 4-stars.  Brenna Gethers and Heather Cox achieved a dubious WNTS.com milestone: they became the first pair of contestants to post back-to-back 1-star performances in consecutive weeks; both were eliminated.  The Top 20 Guys show was highlighted by a pair of memorable numbers.  First, Yamin navigated the challenging pitch jumps of Moody's Mood For Love, earning an 84 rating and prompting more than one Idolsphere reviewer to ask, "Who is this guy?"  Then, Daughtry brought down the house with Fuel's Hemmorhage (In My Hands); at 94, it was the top-rated performance of the season and among the very highest in Idol history.

Brown was a somewhat controversial elimination in the Top 16 Girls episode, though in the voters' defense she did have one of the two lowest-rated performances of the evening.  Mandisa's I'm Every Woman led the way at 88, with McPhee's Think falling just short of 5-stars.  Joining them in the Top 12: Bennett, Tucker, country-singing waitress Kellie Pickler, and underdog Melissa McGhee.  For the Guys, the gray-haired Hicks punched his Final 12 ticket with the Doobie Brothers' classic Takin' It To The Streets at 82.  Daughtry and Yamin had 4-star performances to join him, along with Young and country singer Bucky Covington.  Most reviewers felt that 17-year-old Gedeon McKinney deserved the 12th and final spot, but in a mild shocker, McKinney was edged out by another teen, Long Island's Kevin Covais, who'd posted just three 2-star performances in the semifinals.

Stevie Wonder was guest mentor for the Final 12 Episode, which didn't really pick up until the final four singers hit the stage: 5-star performances by McPhee and Daughtry (who went with the Red Hot Chili Peppers' version of Higher Ground), sandwiching 4-star numbers by Hicks and Bennett.  McGhee was the first Idol eliminated, and Covais followed her home on the Barry Manilow-mentored 1950s Night despite notching his first 3-star rating with When I Fall In Love.  It took five long years, but Mandisa's spirited rendition of I Don't Hurt Anymore became the first performance out of the dreaded leadoff slot to earn a rating in the 90s.  But Mandisa's achievement was overshadowed by the first significant controversy of AI5: Daughtry's alt-rock twist on I Walk The Line earned him fawning praise from the judges for cleverness and originality...except no one mentioned on-air that the arrangement came directly from a 2001 cover by Live.

After two weeks of golden oldies, and to the delight of much of the sick-of-elevator-music Idolsphere, the producers decided to go contemporary in the Final 10 Episode.  But as the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for, you might get it.  The 2000s theme thoroughly flummoxed the contestants – Tucker, Pickler, and Young opened the show with three 1-star performances, and it didn't get a whole lot better from there.  At 41.0, it's the lowest-rated Finals episode in our database.  Ignoring the Web reviewers' pleas for a mass elimination, only Tucker was sent home the next night.

Country Night came next, and to everyone's horror, the Idols picked up right where they'd left off.  The enormously popular Hicks made a 1-star mess of Take Me Home, Country Roads, and the usually atomic-clock-consistent Mandisa barely got to 2-stars with Any Man Of Mine.  But the remaining contestants managed to sputter into gear, sort of – none fell below 3-stars, and Pickler (who somehow snuck Fancy past the show's hypersensitive censors), Daughtry, and McPhee each squeaked out a fourth star.  A shock was in store for America the next night: Mandisa, Bennett, and Yamin all made their first visit to the Bottom 3, and Mandisa was eliminated.

After two down weeks, the last thing the contestants needed to hear was that the Final 8 Week theme would be the vocally complex catalog of Queen.  Apocalyptic predictions filled the forums, but the Idols rose to the challenge.  Six performances rated above 50, led by Yamin's Somebody To Love, while a seventh, Pickler's gutsy go at Bohemian Rhapsody, fell just short of 3-stars.  Only Young, who tried to put an odd marching-beat spin on We Will Rock You, fell flat (prejudiced, perhaps, by a deceptively-edited intro piece that incurred the ire of guest mentor Brian May the next day).  Despite a truly clever honky-tonk take on Fat Bottomed Girls, Covington was sent home.

Another ominous theme followed: songs from the Great American Songbook, mentored by Rod Stewart.  Abject boredom was forecast across Idol Nation, with one tongue-in-cheek forumist worrying that the series might get canceled by Fox in mid-episode.  Surprise!  The contestants merely turned in the second-highest rated episode of the first six seasons, a whopping 64.4.  McPhee's show-closing Someone To Watch Over Me led the charge at 89, but Bennett also hit 5-stars and Hicks, Yamin, and Daughtry each were in the 70s.  Just imagine how highly this episode would have scored had Pickler not checked in with one of the lowest-rated performances of the season: she posted an 8 for Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, a song title whose irony didn't escape the scathing keyboards of many Web reviewers.  Pickler avoided the voters' axe though, as Young was sent home instead.

Andrea Bocelli and David Foster were guest mentors on Love Songs Week, the second episode in a row led by an 89-rated performance: Yamin's near-flawless A Song For You.  Meanwhile, Pickler, whose naïve-country-blonde shtick was wearing thin on many viewers, decided to push all-in with one of the boldest song choices in the books, Unchained Melody.  From the Idolsphere, she earned an A for courage but a season-low 4 for the wobbly delivery; from the voters, she earned a ticket home to North Carolina.

And then there were five: Bennett, Daughtry, Hicks, McPhee, and Yamin.  To its fans' shock and awe, American Idol had reached uncharted territory - the five contestants that many believed deserved to compete in the multiple-song weeks had actually made it there.  Was the show actually starting to make sense?  Nah.  During Year You Were Born/Billboard Top 10 Week, McPhee and Daughtry pulled off a feat that was unprecedented and, when you think about it, almost unbelievable too.  They delivered the two top-rated performances of the night (Black Horse And The Cherry Tree and Renegade, respectively; both reached 5-stars)...AND the two lowest, Against All Odds and I Dare You.  Don't try this at home, kids.  But quadrophenia ruled the day when the voters chose to drop Bennett, who'd posted two slightly below-average ratings.

Most analysts expected Yamin to be the next one out of the competition, but the unassuming Richmond pharmacy clerk evidently never got the memo.  He busted out on Elvis Presley Week with a 4-star If I Can Dream, followed by a near-showstopping Trouble at 87.  Hicks also went 5-stars/4-stars, which put the pressure squarely on McPhee and Daughtry.  They combined for one 3-star performance, three at 2-stars, one noticeable lyrics flub (by McPhee), and one bad pair of sunglasses (by Daughtry.)  Still, while the Idolsphere generally agreed that it was an off-night for the shaven-headed rocker, they rated his two performances comfortably ahead of McPhee's.  Which made the next night's voting results all the more flabbergasting.

With the favorite suddenly out of the picture, the race for the AI5 crown was now wide open.  Most Web reviewers were unanimous as to whom they thought should've been eliminated from the Final 3 Episode: Clive Davis.  His three song assignments averaged to a 40 rating, with Open Arms becoming the first performance by Yamin to score under 50 (snapping his remarkable 14-song hitting streak.)  During the Judges' Choice segment, Simon, who'd been openly exasperated with McPhee's recent song choices, assigned her Over The Rainbow and instructed her to sing it seated on the stage with the lights dimmed, Fantasia-style.  It worked.  "Rainbow" brought down the house, prompting Simon to call it "the single best performance of the competition to date."  The Idolsphere almost agreed, rewarding it with a 91 rating, second only to "Hemmorhage".  Hicks, meanwhile, made the most palatable lemonade he could from Clive's and Randy's lemons, then closed the show with his own choice, a 4-star Try A Little Tenderness.  Just six-tenths of a percentage point separated the three contestants in the voting, with Yamin at 33.06% the odd man out.

The AI5 Finale, in the inspired words of USA Today's Bill Keveney and Edna Gundersen, was a battle between "the unusually pretty Katherine McPhee and the pretty unusual Taylor Hicks."  The first four performances were all reprises, and they were notable primarily for Hicks having an unexpectedly rough time with Levon, losing over 40 points off the original approval rating.  Most reviewers, though, cited the reliably wretched American Idol Original Winners' Songs™ as the difference-maker.  McPhee was weighed down by the drippy My Destiny, which came in at a dismal 12 rating, a record low for a Finale performance.  It's rumored that the song Hicks was first assigned was no better...but we'll never know, because after the previous week's results show, he successfully petitioned the producers to let him switch to Yamin's song, Do I Make You Proud.  Though "Proud" scored only 45, the difference was enough to inspire his Soul Patrol fanbase to put him over the top.  29-year-old Taylor Hicks, who lacked the showstopping punch of his rivals but delivered solidly and consistently all season long, became the fifth and most unlikely American Idol.