The X Factor Season 2 Finale Recap: On With the Show…This Is It? [Updated]

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain of chest hair — or the Neilsen ratings, for that matter — The X Factor is the biggest singing competition in the world!

It’s got its own season-finale red carpet filled with teenagers who will keep screaming in the hopes that they’ll achieve their lifelong dreams of seeing their own faces on network television and a bunch of production assistants dressed up to look like paparazzi. READ MORE

The X Factor Performance Finale Recap: Anything Could Happen, So Let It Be [Updated]

You can’t believe everything you hear on television, or so our mothers told us. But tonight’s X Factor Season 2 performance finale drove home that message loudly, grinningly and cacophonously.

Lest you think I’m exaggerating, let me present a selection of the bald-faced lies that dropped during the course of a strange, though not entirely un-entertaining two-hour telecast: READ MORE

The X Factor: The Inside Story on Season 2′s Wildest Production Numbers

As Creative Director for The X Factor, Brian Friedman has to keep a lot of people happy: the show’s quartet of mentors, their various contestants and a demanding viewing audience. The key to his success, he says, is picking his battles. READ MORE & VIEW PHOTOS

Reality Check: Beatles Beaten on X Factor, Voice! Plus: Fifth Harmony's Surge, Mario Lopez's 'But'

Paul McCartney may have been a guest on Saturday Night Live this past weekend, but the real Beatles-related joke was hearing The X Factor‘s L.A. Reid compare biceps-centric boy-band contestants Emblem3 to one of the planet’s most commercially successful and critically revered acts ever. And alas, that was just one of several blows directed at the Fab Four on reality singing shows over the past seven days.

But wait! There’s even more ridiculousness …READ MORE & WATCH VIDEO

The X Factor Semifinal Results Recap: Did the Right Act Walk the Plank?

It’s time for another game of “Finish! These! Sentences!” starring your X Factor hosts Khloe “Oh em gee! It’s a shiny object!” Kardashian and Mario “would you get a load of my sex-ayyy reflection in that there mirror?” Lopez!

First, we’ll go with a direct quote from Mario: “Not only will next week’s winner walk away with a $5 million recording contract, buuuuhhhhtttt like so many global pop stars including One Direction and our very own Britney Sprears, they’ll also become*: READ MORE

The X Factor Semifinals Performance Recap: Turn the Beatles Around [Updated]

Tonight, 911 hotlines across the nation experienced system overloads as L.A. Reid committed first-degree blasphemy on The X Factor, lying to boy band Emblem3 that “you actually are teen heartthrobs like the Beatles.” READ MORE

Reality Check: How'd Trevin & Terry Go Top 4 on The Voice? Plus: X Factor's Emblem3 Exposed!

After long, intense seasons with a few too many inscrutable exits, The Voice and The X Factor are down to their respective Top 4 performance shows this week.

But how exactly did Terry McDermott and Trevin Hunte block the amazing Amanda Brown from making it to the semifinals on NBC’s reality singing competition? And how …READ MORE & WATCH VIDEO

The X Factor Top 6 Results Recap: Did the Right Acts Get Sent to the Guillotine?

It’s never a good sign when the host of a reality competition series kicks off an episode by promising an “agonizing” hour ahead, but hey, Mario Lopez just reads what’s on the teleprompter, okay? If some X Factor production assistant tells him to promise a performance by “the sensational Ke$ha,” then don’t expect him to improvise a more accurate adjective. (Although, while we’re on the subject, “tragic,” “Auto-tuned,” “terrifying” or …READ MORE

The X Factor Recap: Unplugging Away

This just in (my brain only): Simon Cowell was so happy with the results of The X Factor‘s Pepsi Challenge — during which viewers weighed in on contestants’ songs, hairstyles, wardrobe and staging — that he wants to extend the intiative for the rest of Season 2. The first of next week’s viewer polls will read as follows:

What change would you like to see behind the judges’ table? READ MORE