The only joke is how Nathan Chen with a bad skate can get almost as high of PCS as Jason. Honestly he probably shouldnt even with a good skate.
If Shoma and Hanyu can be overly coddled with poor skates, Nathan's score is nowhere near out of line. The judges are definitely not showering Nathan with high PCS and high GOE the way they do Shoma and Hanyu. Plus, Nathan did not attempt more than one quad in his sp. What is it you don't recognize about Nathan's skating? He's not perfect, but he does have a unique movement quality and exceptionally creative programs. Nathan deserves higher scores than he's been receiving for composition and interpretation. There's a lot of back-blow against Nathan because he did something never done before in landing five and six quads in a program, five cleanly several times. And it apparently irks a lot of people. That's what the sport rewarded though and it was an American male skater who gave it to them unexpectedly. It upset the apple cart and took some control away from the judges, thus the rules changes. Nathan does not have soft knees like Shoma, but Nathan is a much more musical skater with more creative depth than Shoma and Hanyu.
Finally, Jason receives the kind of PCS scores he's always deserved. Is that partly due to him having Orser as his coach? Politics and strategy are just as important as talent and training in this sport. And I do think that Orser understands how to strategize for his skaters and help them bring out their talent. So much of the possibility for success resides in the mind, not the muscles. But coaching is a different process for every athlete, and even the best coaches will not work for every athlete. Orser knows that too, in the same way that Raf understands the complications of the coaching process (see the recent translated interview with Raf in GSD).
The way Jason was focused for this performance was somewhat different from what I've seen from him previously, although there is some similarity to his unreal focus before his iconic
Riverdance performance. His confidence was huge at that time because he believed in himself and trusted his coach and choreographer. It will be great if Jason has rediscovered that focus in a renewed way at this stage of his career trajectory. It will bode well if he can manage to access this kind of focus, belief and determination consistently going forward. He has always scored well when skating completely clean, but the tech and PCS scores were amped up because he had such precision and confidence, which he hasn't had for awhile. Doing everything technically clean with confidence and his usual brand of artistry, and it looks like the judges will go with Jason in a big way. But it also seems to me that judges' scores vary from event to event, and are also based on the field of competitors. There's a lot of manipulation of placements based not only on performances, but on how the judges decide to manipulate PCS and GOE.
Now, it's too bad that Jason's fp is not as boss as his sp, but let's see if he's been able to work more on improving the fp. I still don't think the opening music is right for Jason. I will never like this fp for Jason, but he did seem to feel in the moment with it better at Skate Canada than he did at Autumn Classic. So we'll see.