The bottom three held the surprise this week: Jennifer Hudson. When she sang her song again, though, I agreed with Paula. The song is a horrible selection. I never had the chance to get into it and then it was over. She can sing, but she’ll need better song choices.

Amy wasn’t a big surprise for the bottom three. I predicted her to be the dark horse candidate for Bottom 3 this week, suffering from the classic problem of Mediocre Performance = No Votes.

I am surprised that Camile didn’t make it, and I’m already 0/1 on my predictions for the order the top 12 will be voted out in.

Leah wasn’t a surprise, really. I thought she’d prove the rule about a poor performance generating the extra sympathy votes. However, she’s never had the fan base to begin with to get those votes. She wasn’t even in the Top 3 of her original group, and only made it in on Paula’s Wild Card selection.

John Stevens, who didn’t do too well last night, has that fanbase. He’ll survive a couple of bad performances early on.

Other random thoughts:

* Seacrest did a great job in doing the live voice over on the clips package. He flubbed it a bit on LaToya’s song, but recognized the timing issue and handled the rest with professionalism. I don’t think it gets mentioned often enough, but Seacrest has a great radio voice and it translates well onto television.

* Poor John Stevens. They make him dance. Poor, poor John.

* Leah sang 10 times better tonight than she did last night. She seemed much looser, and she remembered all of the words.

* Clay was great, as always. Love “Solitaire.” I’d like to see a DVD of his concert with Kelly Clarkson.

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