American Idol Top 12: Elimination

Brief as possible spoilers for the first elimination show of the "American Idol" finals coming up just as soon as I pop my collar...

Thank God for DVRs, as they allow me to watch these heinous Wednesday monstrosities in 10 minutes or less. Bullet-points:

• I figured the forgettable Syesha would be in more trouble than the truly bad David Hernandez (or even Kristy Lee), but I have no problem with David's elimination. He was capable of better (his "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" was one of the stronger semi-final performances from either gender), but I didn't like his song choices, and his "I Saw Her Standing There" was a real fiasco, especially from a guy who took a college course on the Fab Four.
  
• The bulk of the 10 minutes I watched consisted of the group-sing -- the first I've experienced this season, and as heinous as I remember from seasons past. No one knows their cue (Michael Johns seemed to randomly drift from girl to girl, never sure who he was supposed to be dueting with), none of the voices blended together, and it made me want to spin up my entire Beatles collection to cleanse myself of that mess.
  
• The other five minutes or so went to Katharine McPhee's not so triumphant return. I'll forgive the contestants for muffing lyrics to a certain degree -- the producers work them like dogs and they have only a week to learn songs (many for the first time) -- but a trained veteran of sorts like Kat, shouldn't have been screwing up the lyrics to one of the greatest love songs ever written. It's "You know I believe and how," not "You I know I believe him now" (even allowing for the gender switch). The fact that she did it three different times made me wonder if David Foster or some other idiot rewrote the thing, but either way it bugged me. Also bugging me: Kat sucking all the feeling out of what is, again, a masterpiece. From what I remember of Kat during her season (when I liked her), she wasn't a belter and didn't have extraordinary tone to her voice, but she was really good when she could connect to the emotions, like her "Over the Rainbow" or even "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree." This was a Fembot version of "Something," and while Kat's pretty enough to be a Fembot, her voice isn't special enough to get away with that on this song.
  

What did everybody else think? And how awkward were all the Jim Carrey appearances I kept fast-forwarding past?