Time for the segment on Jessica's visit home, hours away in the suburbs of San Diego. She tells Ryan about how she was homeschooled and had no friends, but then guys were chasing her car when she went home. Her "journey" home from Los Angeles started at 5 PM on Friday, when she got to take a limo to a rooftop to be picked up in a helicopter. It drops her off in the middle of Petco Park in San Diego, where she sits in the empty bleachers for a bit before taking a stretch SUV (which I assume was late) to the Chula Vista Amphitheater. She greets what looks like an entire Woodstock of fans and asks them to come out to hear her sing the next night. You can almost hear all of them saying, "Wait, what?" The next morning, she has some warm family moments with her parents and brothers, and they all ride together to the parade, where Jessica rides in the car with her little brothers. There's a huge crowd at Eastlake High School, whose name makes no sense in context to Josh's alma mater. The Mayor declares it Jessica Sanchez Day, and then the motorcade proceeds to the USS Midway, the scene of her original audition, where she sings "Dance with My Father" to a crowd of fans and sailors that includes her dad. And then it's apparently a helicopter ride back to L.A. That looks a lot like a CTU helicopter, which would have made this whole segment a lot more interesting.

Back in the studio, she's displaying the unmitigated balls to sing "Don't Want to Miss a Thing." Yes, she's performing an Aerosmith song to Steven Tyler. And I thought picking "And I Am Telling You" was immodest. She does well enough, and although she wavers on the last big note, she gets a one-man standing ovation from Steven, who says, "You just took a great song and made it greater." Although, showing more modesty than Jessica, he gives songwriting credit (or blame) to Diane Warren. Jennifer says Steven normally doesn't say anything good about people singing his songs, and Randy talks about her big old brass ones (though not in those words). Ryan comes out and rubs in the fact that the song came out when Jessica was three years old, and he asks Steven for some thoughts about hearing the other judges critique his song. Steven doesn't have much to say to that, but it's okay because Ryan clearly wasn't listening to the judges' feedback anyway.