A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

EVERYBODY HURTS: Sometimes, in the body-change genre of movies (Shrek, Nutty Professor, etc.), when the hero gets to be somebody else for a period of time, there is a moment just before the clock strikes midnight where the hero's fantasy body (and persona) starts to recede and his or her ordinary body (and persona) starts to poke through. I get the feeling that Cat Deeley is perpetually stuck in that moment. She's like a gangly adolescent nerd relishing every moment in a towering, shimmering, glamorously-dressed fantasy body with fantasy hair and fantasy shoes, with her seconds-to-midnight dorkiness endearingly piercing the illusion. She takes compliments as if surprised by them, her unguarded grin pulling her head into her neck like a turtle; she doesn't fear the wrath of the wardrobe department as she pulls sweaty dancers up to their tip-toes and into her shoulder for a hug; she squats in dangerously retreating hemlines to buckle her charges' shoes; she makes a 10-year-old joke ("pretty fly for a white guy") and then repeats it twice because she's so proud of herself. She's so vital to the show that she deserves to be at least on the ballot for our reality host of the year, but so un-self-conscious that it's not surprising that we keep forgetting her.

As for the rest of the show, it's bullets for you:

• Joshua/Katee and Twitch/Kherington are perfectly paired for almost opposing reasons. Twitch is immensely likeable, Kherington has an outsized enthusiasm, and the two have palpable chemistry. By contrast, Joshua is withdrawn, Katee is petulant, and they don't seem to like each other. Yet they seem to have a symbiotic competitiveness where neither one is willing be outdone on anything, including the energy of the performance.
• Mia: "18-year-old Kherington, it is inappropriate for you to smile through a dance about Rhett's Syndrome." Nigel: "Mia, STFU. Kherington, you give me that funny feeling, like when I used to climb the rope in gym class." Mia: "Ew."
• I didn't think Left-Dimple was all that bad. The problem with her routine with Will was that they weren't both good at the same time, so everything seemed a little off.
• Was it just me, or was Nigel unusually buffoonish this week, especially with the Tom Cruise impersonation after the Joshua-Katee routine?
• Crying tally this week: Kherrington (mild criticism), Susie (harsh criticism, lack of competence), Jessica (self-doubt), Mary (Rhett's Syndrome sympathy), Jean-Marc (agony at judicial bickering over how hot and/or smiley the girl dancing his Rhett Syndrome dance is).
• Nigel's advice to 18-year old girl, not paraphrased: "You are not sleazy enough. You need to be more sleazy."
• I think I've said this before, but this is a performing arts show, and some of the performers are going to be gay. The show (Nigel) should just get over it. There is, however, one unnecessarily gay feature of the show that it can and should dump: the constant obsessive focus on who is or isn't masculine enough. Just to be clear, by definition, trying not to be gay is gay.
• Can we all agree that Susie is the worst woman left and then there's a log-jam of pretty good women; and that the bottom tier of men is Gev, Thayne, Marquis, and the white guy who dances in Comfort's shadow?