I offer my condolences to hominysnark
This is why I don't watch that stupid show. There were at least two other seasons when the obviously wrong person won. What this proves is that either (a) the thing is rigged so as to be most dramatic, or (b) Americans are a bunch of generic-loving idiots.
Yeah, it's more likely (b) than (a). I tend to forget that I grew up in a cultural outlier region.
The good thing is that it's pretty clear yer boy Adam is going to go on to bigger and better, whereas the other kid may join the ranks of previous winners who have largely fallen out of memory.
The biggest stars to come out of that show were not the winners of their season (with two exceptions, but they are outliers for clear reasons).