American Idol welcomed back an old friend last night, the chicly exuberant and coyly daring Adam Lambert, who exceeded most anyone’s expectations as mentor to the Season 9 Idols. Most celebrity mentors don’t want to ruffle too many feathers by being over critical of the contestants; Adam, on the other hand, is the feathers. He’s been through the reality contest’s wringer, he knows what the judges want, and perhaps most importantly, he knows that this season is pretty much hopeless. If these kids have any hope for a career once the show ends, they should approach Adam much like Beatrix Kiddo approached Pai Mei in Kill Bill 2, and refuse to get off stage until their vocal knuckles are bleeding.

Overall, Lambert’s critiques could only take this mostly talent-questionable crew so far during the evening’s Elvis themed episode. You can read my thoughts on the episode over at my liveblog of the show. No, what we really came here to talk about was:

What was up with Ryan Seacrest last night?

From his hypersexual tongue innuendo (which Lambert wasted no time in pointing out), to his odd little dance before Andrew’s performance, to — perhaps the biggest no no of them all — touching Mr. Schuester’s (Matthew Morrison’s) SACRED FEDORA, to mentioning DUNKLEMAN, something was off. Way off. We bring you video evidence of Seacrest’s odd behavior last night, and ask you to leave your guesses as to what Seacrest was on last night in the comments. Could it be the hardest working man in ho-biz is cracking? We pray no. We love Seacrest the way babies love their gay dads: A heck of a lot.