SAY WHAT you will about American Idol—you wouldn’t be the first to mock its inconsistent judging, the endlessly weird saga of Paula Abdul, or its responsibility for the horrendous Clay Aiken. But you can hardly denounce its ability to unearth pop music phenomena, even if it only occasionally comes up with stars the caliber of Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. (This season, for example, we were shocked to learn that 2007 winner Taylor Hicks is still alive.) Idol has pulled out the stops to make its eighth season a spectacle, hiring Jamie Foxx as a vocal coach and the exuberant-if-not-always-coherent Kara DioGaurdi as a fourth judge. But the reasons it's become must-see TV the past few weeks had nothing to do with Paula's on-stage debut, multiple cataclsymic set accidents, or the absurdly dramatic use of the new "judges' save."

Most of this season’s contestants were marginally talented, unimaginative performers, as evidenced by Simon’s perpetual glaze of boredom and increasing tendency to critique Paula's judging as coldly as he analyzed the contestants. But then we reached the top five, and somehow it felt like a different show. The remaining contestants were so equally matched that even the judges seemed at a loss, reduced to shouting their partisan advocacy and physically assaulting one another when disagreements became particularly heated. To top it off, this year saw a major expansion of the show’s text-message based interactivity: Twitter, where viewers can instantly poll the Idol electorate as the show unfolds. Once again, American Idol remained as accurate a reading of the cultural temperature as one is likely to find.

This year’s Idol is not just timely in its technological trendiness. This season comes with a side of culture clash. The final contestants, who take the stage for their big showdown this evening (8 p.m., FOX) encapsulate the America of 2009 in an eerily prescient way: it’s Kris Allen, a soft-spoken evangelical worship musician with a gentle Arkansas drawl versus Adam Lambert, a flamboyant Hollywood native with a theater background and the kind of rumors that can turn red America against you. The fact that Allen hasn’t mentioned his Christianity and Lambert has refused to discuss his sexuality hasn’t kept it out of the consideration: more than a few nasty Twitterers advise voting against “Glambert” and his imagined violations of nature, while "humble Kris" has been called a “guitar swishing, Bible thumping troubadour white boy.”

The suggestion that this “culture divide” will affect the outcome is probably more fantasy than fact—it’s doubtful it will be a sudden wave of religious fervor that might propel the more culturally safe candidate to the top. If Allen wins, and he seems to have a fighting chance, it will be because viewers finally got around to appreciating his talent, and because time and repetition made the Lambert shtick incrementally less appealing.

There is, to be fair, the chance that fans of third-place finisher Danny Gokey, an outspoken Christian, will give Allen a boost at the polls. But the timeline would be a better explanation. Lambert gets by on lots and lots of bravado—outrageous outfits, over-the-top singing, and arrangements that depend on the brute force of his formidable voice. He’s most certainly star material, but after a while his pyrotechnics and black makeup start to feel more like a cocky overkill (see last week’s all-but-murder of U2’s “One”) than raw talent. Not to mention a fawning Entertainment Weekly cover story, and Simon’s well-advertised support, which all nudged Lambert toward being “the guy we should vote against because The Man wants him to win.”

Allen has been riding an opposite wind. His taste beats Adam’s range any day, but his much more nuanced performances call less attention to themselves. Usually strumming along on his guitar, Allen takes his covers into the quieter hemisphere, making it likely that many viewers have only recently begun to pay attention to them now that the louder performers are out of the way. His subtle, masterfully creative reinventions of songs ranging from Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the Money” to Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” can hardly compete in mass-attention-grabbing with, say Adam and Allison double-barreling on “Slow Ride.” The most exquisite pieces of work don’t always have the most unstoppable momentum. But last week, he finally grabbed the world’s attention by proving even Kanye West can fall to “the Kris Allen sound.” Simon said that performance “changed everything.”

Which brings us to tonight, when the former roommates at the “Idol mansion” face off for the last time, and their fates are decided by the texting masses. I’m rooting for Kris, mostly in the same way I’ve supported every underdog team in the last ten Super Bowls. The taste of improbable, shocking victory is sweet. Adam’s stardom is already its own beast that no longer answers to American Idol—he’s headed for record deals and tabloid coverage even as we speak. You could say he deserves to run away with it just for making himself such an icon, and everyone has their money on him tonight. But who can resist hoping the little strummer boy makes it, too?