'X Factor': Watch Rachel Crow's Elimination and Nicole Scherzinger Crying

If you didn't see last night's episode of "The X Factor," you missed a whole lot of crying, a whole lot of booing, and the exemplary grief counseling skills of host Steve Jones.

The early voting results revealed that Josh Kracjik, Chris Rene and Melanie Amaro were all safe and automatically sent through to next week.

That meant that it all came down to Rachel Crow and Marcus Canty for the elimination, with the two singing for survival. Both of them performed well, but Rachel's rendition of "I'd Rather Be Blind" nearly brought the house down.

Here are the two survival song performances:

Marcus was great, but Rachel fought through actual tears and sang her 13-year-old heart out. The choice seemed pretty clear.

As per usual, LA Reid voted for his contestant, Marcus Canty. Simon voted for Rachel. Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger, who are already in trouble with fans for eliminating Drew over Marcus last week, had to tread carefully here. Paula chose for Rachel to stay.

Then things took a turn: Nicole blubbered her way through an overdramatic decision process, eventually deciding to vote for Marcus to stay, bringing the voting to a deadlock and leaving the elimination up to the voters at home. That meant, to everyone's surprise, that Rachel was eliminated.

Rachel fell to the floor, sobbing. Nicole started sobbing. And best of all, when Steve Jones tried to go to Nicole for a comment, the audience started booing her like crazy. TMZ reports that she spent the next half an hour crying backstage.

And she should. Rather than do her job, which is to be a judge of talent and make a decision based on the performances presented to her, she wimped out. No doubt she knew that Crow was the more deserving contestant based on the survival songs, but Scherzinger's innate need for the attention and approval of everyone at all times lead her to Pontius Pilate this one.

Watch the elimination in all its glory below.

That's good television, folks. If anything, it's good for a chuckle when Steve says "Nope."