Super Bowl Update

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend, y'all. I hope everyone had a good time with family and friends and food. In the waning hours of this 4 day weekend, it's time to catch up on last week's SYTYCD before a new episode is soon upon this. This was an important week, because here's where we decide the Top 10 and who goes on the tour. And by "we" I ultimately mean the judges - but we tell them which 3 couples are up for elimination! Sure, there are two spots on the tour for an alternate guy and girl dancer, but the producers don't necessarily pick the last couple eliminated. I wouldn't be surprised if Nigel put one of the tappers back into the mix for the tour.

So Tuesday night, there are 6 couples and 2 hours of show, which initially made me cringe in fear at how much filler this would mean, but then beautiful Cat Deely let us know each couple would dance twice, reducing the filler to a minimum as we cram 12 dances into the show. Awesome.

The dancing this week was very good overall, with only 3 or 4 dances really not working for me. It seemed like the dancers recognized this would be the end of their initial partnerships and thusly gave it a little extra oomph behind the routines. Jakob and Ashleigh had another really strong week together in both routines. Legacy and Kathryn were also good in both dances. I'm giving the encore this week to Legacy and Kathryn for their Jazz routine, because I thought that was really sexy and fun.



Russell and Noelle, Ellenore and Ryan and Victor and Karen were stronger in one dance over the other. Mollee and Nathan didn't really connect with either dance. First, they had a weird hip hop routine about Alexander Bell creating the telephone. Meh. It didn't work. And they also did a can can routine from Tyce that Nigel accurately described as "twee."

Still, I was most worried for Karen and Victor who had both already lost two partners each and had just a horrible hip hop showing set to "Moving Mountains" by Usher, that had them literally acting as if they were moving mountains. Laurie Ann Gibson, what were you thinking? This bizarre routine was sloppy and low in energy and it really deserves this week's award as the Numfar Dance of Shame.

So Karen, Mollee and Ellenore were in the bottom for the girls and Victor, Nathan and Ryan were there for the guys. Apparently, I'm not a good judge of the solos, because I rarely see what the judges see, but they just love Mollee and Nathan and are content to punt their eventual ouster to a week when the voting public can shoulder all the blame. So it's goodbye to Karen and Victor, who were so close to the top 10, and yet so far.

Next week we get to see new couples chosen at random. I'm curious to see who Mollee and Nathan randomly draw from the hat. They both read as so young and several of the dancers are almost 10 years older than they are. It should be interesting. I'll see you there!