'American Idol' Season 11, Episode 24 Recap - Which of the Top 9 Went Home?

The show started off with a whole lot of time spent on a clip of Aerosmith performing live, which you would think means that they're going to perform on this show, but instead Steven was just announcing his tour with the band. Well, great. I'll be sure to not drop $200 on that.

Seacrest also showed us some tweets from the likes of Lifehouse and Mariah Carey, congratulating the Idols on their performances, and DeAndre was surprised by Eric Benet himself, who walked out on stage to DeAndre's joy.

Guest performances on the night included Nicky Minaj, who had a full-on pink spaceship on stage for her single "Starships." It was a mess of pastels and cleavage, as Minaj was clearly going for that elusive mermaid stripper look. Minaj also asked if she could guest judge and if JLo could "scoot over a bit" for her, which was met with half-joking resistance from JLo.

Last year's winner Scotty McCreery also returned to the stage to perform his new single, and if you're wondering, he still holds his microphone like a dweeb, but it's considerably toned down.

As for the results, Hollie was the first name read, and the first to go to the bottom three. She was joined by Heejun (after a pretty serious Seacresting by Joshua) and, shockingly, Skylar. Elise, thankfully, was safe for the week after her solid Led Zeppelin performance, and DeAndre probably narrowly avoided hitting the bottom three as well.

When it came down to the final results, Heejun was the one who had to sing "for his life" (always so dramatic, on this show). Heejun gave another great performance of the same song he sang on Wednesday, putting many of the other contestants in tears. The judges deliberated longer than usual, but decided not to use the save. Still, Heejun had a big smile on as he was let go.

Could it be that Heejun's horsing around and not taking the show seriously irked voters as much as it irked Jimmy? Possibly, but it was also clear that, even if Heejun had a good week this week, he wasn't going to last long. I, for one, will miss the mugging to the camera and the blatant mocking of Seacrest. Fare thee well, Heejun.

Eliminated: Heejun Han

Photo source: AmercianIdol.com