“American Idol” golden boy Adam Lambert hit a big speed bump on Wednesday night after he landed among the show’s Bottom Three vote-getters for the first time this season.

And, just when it seemed lone woman contestant Allison Iraheta was standing on thin ice, she skated handily into the next round.

Host Ryan Seacrest played up the surprise results for all it was worth, taking Lambert by the arm to join fellow low vote-getters Matt Giraud and Kris Allen, leaving Iraheta and Danny Gokey to stare at each other slack-jawed.

For Gokey, the surprised reaction might not have been completely warranted, since alpha judge Simon Cowell had nice things to say about him the night before. But Cowell had told 17-year-old Iraheta that her performance left him feeling she “could be in trouble.”

None of the judges has ever said anything that ominous to Lambert, whose ride to the Top 5 was among the smoothest of any contestant this season. After Lambert ended up in the Bottom Three, panelists Paula Abdul and Kara DioGuardi both expressed shock.

“It’s crazy,” Abdul said.

It was an unusual week, with the contestants trying their best at standards from crooner Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack, in a theme that Los Angeles Times writer Ann Powers said seemed a strange fit.

“The final five showed almost zero awareness of or interest in what Sinatra and his cronies granted pop in the autumn of their years, when the Rat Pack came to stand for fun of the most adult (and, in the background, melancholy) kind,” Powers wrote.

“Instead, the ‘Idol’ finalists mostly came across like prom dates: really adorable, precocious even, but corsage carriers nonetheless,” Powers wrote.

So, maybe this was a lost week for the “Idol” contestants.

It certainly was for Giraud, who was eliminated. Now audiences can watch if Lambert bounces back next week. Looks like things just got a lot more interesting.