Everybody loves stories of second chances, and Tuesday night's third episode of American Idol was chock-full of them.

One such public second chance is really a third chance for San Diego's Carly Smithson. As Carly Hennessy, the 23-year-old Irish woman tried out for Idol two years ago in Season 5. She got the call to Hollywood, only to have it revoked because of some paperwork issues related to her visa.

But that's not all. Click the hyperlink above to visit Carly's artist page on an old MCA Records Web site. My friends, that is Carly Smithson, potential Season 7 winner.

A big success already, you say? Au contraire.

MCA poured more than $2 million into Carly back in 2001 only to produce a CD that netted fewer than 400 units sold. In the realm of the pop music industry, this isn't that uncommon, but it was an unmitigated failure nevertheless.

However, with her performance of Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman" on Tuesday, Carly re-earned an invitation to Hollywood. And she showed off her new husband, covered in tattoos from face to toe, and I do mean face. He had voiced some private concern to his wife that people might not like him because of the ink on his forehead, cheeks, nose, lip, etc.

The whole tattoo thing is not my bag. In fact, I think it looks ridiculous, but I have a strange feeling his presence might actually help Carly in an odd sort of way, giving people the perception that for whatever reason, she carries an edge.

But if an edge is what Idol needs, then David Archuleta is not the guy to bring it. At 16, Archuleta told the story of being afflicted with vocal paralysis, although it was not clear when this happened.

See, it was only four years ago that young David was a finalist on CBS' remake of Star Search.

Archuleta offered a fair performance of John Mayer's "Waiting On The World To Change," netting his a trip to Hollywood. Because he's so young, David is almost assured to be this season's Sanjaya -- not because he is as bad as the Season 6 Top 12er, but because even with a modestly good voice, he just doesn't have the vocal tools and life experience to bring much to the table artistically. He's a little boy, and I think he would have fared much better if his folks would have just waited awhile.

Aside from the second-chance stories, Tuesday's Idol offering got started on the right foot, if you asked me, as 24-year-old Tetiana Ostapowych sang the standard, "Someone To Watch Over Me."

But I wasn't really paying attention to the song. This chick was smokin' hot, although her speaking voice sounded creepily, eerily like Martha Stewart's. Go back and listen, and tell me I'm wrong. I'm not.

It's not a good thing.

Perrie Cataldo, 27, of Phoenix, told his story of being a single dad, losing the mother of his child to something untoward. Nobody ever said she was killed in a drive-by or died of an overdose, just that she was at the wrong place, wrong time and with the wrong people.

Fair enough, and his version of Boyz II Men's "I'll Make Love To You" netted him a trip northward to Hollywood.

Two of my favorite singers of the night were Michael Johns and Samantha Musa. Johns, 28, hails from Los Angeles by way of Australia, and he wailed on an old Otis Redding tune, and well, I might add. Musa, 20, of Baldwin Park, Calif., gushed with her sister over Simon Cowell before doing justice to Aretha's classic, "Until You Come Back To Me."

While many of the stories tonight were better than those of these two, few auditions were. Johns' audition was so good, I would be stunned if he weren't in the Top 24, and Musa had a Katharine McPhee quality about her.

Or perhaps I'm just smitten.

Tuesday's show was devoid of the really funny, tense auditions. Sure, Monique Gibson and Christopher Baker made collective arses of themselves with delusional performances. And while Joseph and Juanita Mejia, 21 and 17 respectively, sang and mimed together to Oleta Adams' "Get Here," I'm reminded of a high school chum of mine who once said something about "nobody liking a mime."

Agreed. (Kidding) OK, the Mejia duo almost made me crack a smile.

Valerie Reyes, 20, butchered Mariah Carey, and I don't even like Mariah Carey. She bemoaned the possibility in her pre-clip interview that she could be one of the "rejects," before her voice cracked in the audition like Peter Brady's did on that episode of "The Brady Bunch" in which his voice changed.

Not even Alberto Hurtado, 28, could muster an audition bad enough for me to break out in a grin or to chuckle devilishly. However, his rendition of an original song he called, "Live," was creepy in a tragic way.

Simon asked him if the song was biographical, and Hurtado howled about tragedy, over and over, singing cliched lyrics and creeping us all out. Hurtado bore gifts to Paula, as many of the rejects do, this one a fan that I'm sure found its way to a waste basket 10 minutes after her submitted it.

But if Tuesday night was about second chances for folks like Carly Smithson and David Archuleta, it was Blake Boshnack's 12th Idol audition that got the perseverance award for the week. If you'll recall a couple years ago, Blake showed up at an audition dressed like the Statue of Liberty, garnering an immediate "no" from Simon, without the youngster singing a note.

While Boshnack didn't quite make it to Hollywood this go-round, here's hoping that he eventually makes it. Ideally, he would try out 15 more times over the next six years, and then on his last possible attempt ... the judges advance him to Hollywood.

People love comebacks. People love underdogs. And people love second chances.

I've got a sneaking feeling that a couple such chances will be storylines this season on Idol for quite awhile.