I didn't think the quality of performance was bad at all. But many skaters popped jumps and there were soo many downgrades...
I also found it rather enjoyable. Quite diverse, some really beautiful performances from Lepistö, Pöykiö...
Kostner is still the favourite to win this of course - but she needs a relatively good skate. Lepistö is leading, but I just checked the protocols from Skate America and Cup of China and Pöykiö rotated 6 Triples and a 2A in the long program, at both competitions and had the 5th best freeskate. She has all the Triples except for 3A of course, without any underrotation or edge calls so far this season. She also didn't fell at those competitions, she made a lot of minor mistakes on the jumps. Plus her PCS was criminally low.
Her PCS for the short now was already 5 points higher than at the GP-events. If she puts together a clean performance, Kostner doesn't have a large margin of error.
Lepistö only has 3 Triples (well, she landed the Triple Lutz for the first time at NHK - but I won't count on it), she doesn't really has a history of clean LPs, she often manages to do only 3 or 4 Triples overall, her 3-3 fails her in the long more often than in the short, the Loop works at least once each program - but the Salchow is often a double too.
My money is on Kostner of course - and on Pöykiö.
.
