Jason Castro may not have shot the deputy, but with a swift but painful rendition of a Bob Marley classic, he annihilated his hopes of becoming the next “American Idol.”

Now ask him if he cares.

The dreadlocked, easygoing Texan was sent packing from “American Idol” on Wednesday night in what was arguably the most jubilant exit of any contestant ever.

Admitting that his inexperience had gotten the better of him during the previous night’s grueling performances of “I Shot the Sheriff” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Castro appeared visibly relieved to have the pressure of the competition behind him. Having to perform two songs in one week, he said, was tough to handle.

The 20-year-old college student, who all season long seemed to take the pressure of the show less seriously than his rivals, even said he had appreciated one of the barbs sent his way after he had forgotten some of the words to “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

“Somebody told me that I shot the Tambourine Man yesterday,” he said, laughing. “I thought that was pretty funny.”

Later, host Ryan Seacrest pointed out that Castro appeared to be relieved.

“There’s three songs next week,” Castro responded. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

Castro then launched into his final performance on the show, laughing and joking his way through “I Shot the Sheriff” one more time.

All in all, Castro’s gleeful exit was a welcome change from the tears and melodrama that often accompany the ousting of an “Idol” contestant.

Still, without Castro around to remind us that dude, this is just a TV show, the competition is bound to start feeling more serious. After all, we are down to just three singers now, all of whom are formidable contestants with their eyes laser focused on taking the “Idol” throne.

Miss those dreadlocks yet?

Is there something rotten in the state of “Idol”?

Not if you ask host Ryan Seacrest.

The night after the show faced perhaps its biggest controversy so far this season, Seacrest just seemed to brush it all under the rug. Since Tuesday night’s performances episode, the show was tarnished with accusations that Abdul unfairly used pre-written notes to judge a performance by contestant Jason Castro BEFORE he even sang one of the songs she referred to. For a full rundown of the debacle, click here.

While Abdul herself explained the gaffe on Seacrest’s radio show Wednesday morning as confusion and misunderstanding , the incident was barely hinted at on Wednesday’s “Idol”  broadcast.

The moment was left out of the recap of the previous night’s show, and Seacrest took a brief moment to defend Abdul by only cryptically referring to the “gossip” he had read on the Internet.

“For the record, the rumors, they’re not true,” Seacrest said. “She’s part of our family, and we love her.”

So what “rumors” was Seacrest referring to? That Abdul might have based her notes on the rehearsal instead of the live show? Or that someone wrote her notes for her? Or, even more sinister, that the producers vet the judges’ comments to try to sway the competition in a certain direction?

There was a lot of buzz out there, and Seacrest wasn’t specific about what is and isn’t true.

On the “Idol” forums, the debate is still raging. Some fans say the issue should be dropped:

“no scandal, case closed! Top 4 here we go!!!”

Others feel shortchanged:

“Paula got caught in an obvious lie to the AI viewers, and they handled it as if she was the victim.”

How do you think “Idol” has handled “Paulagate” so far?

In seven seasons of “American Idol,” Paula Abdul has definitely had her moments.

But her gaffe on Tuesday night’s episode was either the “Kookiest Paula Moment Ever” or a sign of the judges’ apparently not-so-spontaneous evaluations of contestants’ performances.

Abdul on Wednesday sought to explain the blunder as a simple misunderstanding. “We all just screwed up everything,” she told Entertainment Tonight.

It was Neil Diamond night, and after each of the show’s five remaining contestants sang their first of two songs for the evening, the judges were asked to comment on their performances.

Randy Jackson quickly rattled off his impressions, and then Abdul launched into a lengthy analysis of contestant Jason Castro’s two performances. Yes, that’s right. Abdul remembered TWO performances. When Castro, and all of the other contestants, had only performed ONCE.

“Oh my God, I thought you sang twice,” a flustered Abdul said when Jackson gently pointed out that Castro had only performed one song so far. She added: “This is hard!”

“You’re seein’ the future baby, you’re seein’ the future!” host Ryan Seacrest said.

Abdul tried to cover for the mistake by saying she had been reading her notes from both Castro’s performance and contestant David Cook’s performances.

The flub was enough to convince some fans that Abdul must have prepared her notes on both songs before the live performance.

On the “Idol” forums, some fans pondered whether the judges’ comments were a function of who the show’s producers want to win rather than the content of the performances. Others gave the show the benefit of the doubt, saying Abdul must have taken notes at the dress rehearsals

Abdul explained on Wednesday that Idol producers had thrown the judges a last minute curveball during the show.  “I am feverishly trying to write notes for every performance,” she recounted, saying her notes got mixed up.

“I was just trying to give my critique for Jason Castro, and scribbled Jason’s name, and that was David (Cook)’s. “This is live television. This is fun!,” she said.

You have to hand it to Kristy Lee Cook.

The 24-year-old country girl and latest “American Idol” casualty hung on to her slot on the show, apparently by the skin of her teeth, week after week after week. Despite seemingly endless attacks from the acid-tongued Simon Cowell, who predicted early in the competition that she would not make it past tenth place, Cook repeatedly appeared to defy the odds.

As Cook herself noted before her offing on Wednesday night, she sure proved Cowell wrong, coming in seventh place this season. Heck, she even lasted longer than that Aussie hunk Michael Johns. Who could have predicted that after sitting through her gruelling “Eight Days a Week” performance all those weeks ago?

So, it’s back to Oregon for Cook, where she already has her next challenge cut out for her. Forced to sell her beloved horse to pay for the trip to the “Idol” audition in Philadelphia, Cook told a fan who dialed into the show on Wednesday night that she wants to buy him back. The problem is, the man she sold it to doesn’t want to sell it back to her.

After delivering the news that Cook would no longer be part of the show, host Ryan Seacrest asked the man, on live television, to sell the horse back to her. A teary-eyed Cook also appealed to him for sympathy.

“Can I go ride my horse now?” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

Call us crazy, but something tells us that the woman who not only proved Simon Cowell wrong, but also survived the show’s “bottom 3″ three times before finally getting the axe isn’t going to let one little person get between her and her horse. But maybe that’s just us.

It must have been conceived as some sort of cruel joke.

For seven seasons now, the judges of “American Idol” have repeatedly told contestants to steer clear of singing songs by Mariah Carey, ostensibly because the singing competition’s up-and-coming star wannabes could never hope to measure up to one of the great voices of pop music.

So, let’s just say it was a little strange to find Carey as the guest judge on Tuesday night’s show. Because you know what that means: the contestants were allowed to perform an old Mariah song, a new Mariah song, or any other Mariah song of their choosing.

As judge Simon Cowell predicted at the beginning of the show, the night indeed turned out to be lackluster one for the girls because of the unavoidable comparisons between them and the great Carey herself. That didn’t stop Cowell from delivering his usual barbs, however.

“It was a bit like ordering a hamburger and only getting the bun,” Cowell told Brooke White after her performance of “Hero.” “In other words the vital ingredient, the bit in the middle, was missing.”

Ouch.

The other girls — Syesha Mercado, Kristy Lee Cook, and Carly Smithson — emerged without being compared to fast food, but they didn’t get any overwhelming love from the judges.

The remaining three boys, however, put the judges in a festive mood. A leather pants-clad David Archuleta’s performance of “When You Believe” was declared the evening’s benchmark by Cowell, and David Cook’s rock take on “Always Be My Baby” received a standing ovation from judge Randy Jackson.

Later, Jackson likened Jason Castro’s take on “I Don’t Wanna Cry” to “a weird beach luau,” but Paula Abdul said it was a luau that she would “love to be at.” Cowell agreed with Abdul, saying that “the guys completely won the night.”

Boy, was he surprised.

“American Idol” delivered its first major shock of the season on Thursday with the ousting of Aussie hunk Michael Johns. The studio audience gasped when host Ryan Seacrest said Johns was being sent packing, and even Simon Cowell said he would miss Johns, who he called “a very very nice guy.” The remaining contestants, who should have been celebrating their own guarantee of another week on the show, appeared positively grief-stricken.

Carly Smithson, the Irish singer whose rendition of Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” bombed on Tuesday night, broke down in tears. Seems she thought it would be her to get the axe this week, not Johns, particularly after raising her hand when the camera focused on her, Johns and Syesha Mercado — the show’s bottom three vote-getters — and Seacrest said one of them would be going home.

But no one was as taken aback as Johns himself, who after struggling to regain his composure told Seacrest he was “definitely surprised” and had enjoyed singing Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” He had never even landed in the bottom three before. Mercado and Smithson both had.

Perhaps the biggest blow, though, was not the elimination itself, but the way it was done. After telling Johns that he received the lowest number of votes, Seacrest made the point that during the same week last year — the week of the show’s charity event, “Idol Gives Back” — the show opted not to send any of the contestants home. Then, he delivered the news that regardless of that fact, Johns would indeed be leaving the show and would have to summon the will to perform one last time.

Seacrest must be drinking the Cowell Kool-Aid lately, because that stunt was just plain mean.

At the same time, though, the brutal offing of the boy from Down Under served as a reminder to fans of just how ugly and ruthless the competition gets in its final weeks.

But isn’t that what we watch it for?

Maybe it was the stripping. Or maybe he just wasn’t up to snuff.

Either way, David Hernandez won’t be strutting his stuff on “American Idol” anymore.

The 24-year-old Arizona native, who reportedly was a stripper before making it onto the singing competition, got the boot on Wednesday night following what judge Simon Cowell called a “corny, verging on desperate” performance of the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There.”

Indeed, Hernandez’ rendition of the tune on Tuesday night’s show seemed more than just a little forced, especially as he danced his way through the mostly female audience. Once you know a guy has stripped for other men, it’s sorta tough to believe he was really digging all those girlie squeals, not to mention singing about a female object of affection.

Still, the quality of Hernandez’s performances all season had been spotty at best, so his demise didn’t come as a major surprise. As Hernandez stood on stage with the other two of the bottom three contestants, Sayesha Mercado and Kristy Lee Cook, Cowell said “America got this absolutely spot on.” For the full “Idol” elimination story, click here.