A Paragraph of Personal Confession. I'm a little grumpy about having missed the Chess concert on PBS. If I hadn't been so busy racing off to my brand spanking new gym to see if anyone was using this Fitlinxx thing (answer: not that I noticed), I might have caught Adam's mention in time to record it. Hmph. I shouldn't hmph too hmphily, though -- my new gym has all the nifty iPod stuff that is transcribing all the details of my runs directly onto the internet and letting me watch iTunes-downloaded videos on the treadmill screen (so I'm now exactly one episode into 30 Rock - yay me!), and tonight I listened to the BSG podcast for the Season 4 mid-season finale ("Revelations"), which was a lot of fun and which convinced me once and for all that one need not have a grand master plan in order to write a kickass television show. So I'm generally feeling both niftily high-tech as well as athletic, not to mention inspired to go out there and write a logically inconsistent pilot of a TV show.
/confession
But as for tonight's SYTYCD, the hmphy hmphing comes back in spades. I just wasn't all that moved tonight. There was some stuff I enjoyed, but on the whole, not so much.
Stuff I Liked.
- CAT! I didn't care for the bottom half of her dress -- the ruffles got a little carried away somewhere between her waist and the hemline -- but Cat herself was in fine form tonight, from the "three-way" to the rock-and-roll imps to the scolding of Max to the calling for a referee on the question of Phillip's knees.
- Randi and Evan: Yeah, I saw the difference in explosiveness between Randi and Evan, but who cares -- it was fun! And they were dancing to "Shake a Tail Feather," which is the most fun! song ever! And Mary Murphy stopped screaming briefly, thereby enabling her to offer up actual thoughtful instructive commentary on the dancers' technique, which is always fun!
- Caitlin: I really didn't pay much attention to Jason during this first hip hop routine, because I was so busy thinking about how cute and Britney Spearsish Caitlin was. I get that the dancing wasn't synchronized properly (for the newbies out there, a non-synchronized hip hop routine is the kiss of death on this show as far as the jidges are concerned), but I really enjoyed watching her.
- Asuka and Vitolio: I liked this one. As I observed last week, the more classic ballroom styles sometimes fade into the woodwork on this show -- not this time. But I think this was probably my favorite routine of the week, and it wasn't that good.
- Kayla: There must have been extra estrogen on the set tonight, because here's another guy (Max) I wasn't paying any attention to. Particularly at the top of the routine, I found Kayla's exploding jerky movements really compelling and magnetic. I'm not 100% sure I understand why the judges are SO pro-Kayla vis a vis some of the other dancers, but she was wonderful tonight.
- The part of the Karla and Jonathan routine where she sort of jumped squirmily into his outstretched arms and he kept his arms extended for a while: the rest of the dance didn't do much for me, but that bit was worth the price of a plane ticket to LA for new Canadian choreographer Stacey Tookey.
- The utter ridiculousness of the gobbledy-gook that comes out of L'il C's mouth. I started writing some of it down, then gave up. "Modifying your manipulation of movement"? And that was one of the ones that sort of made sense! It's like he does some sort of 20 cent word Mad Libs before he judges.
The Not-So-Much.
- Poor Phillip: Ow. It was just so . . . stompy.
- Ade and Melissa: This is the second consecutive week in which I've been left cold by a routine that the jidges fell all over themselves to praise. Is it just me? I think I'm just not getting Melissa -- I went back to watch this dance a second time, focusing purely on Ade, and liked it somewhat more.
- The partners of Caitlin and Kayla who made no impression whatsoever on me this week.
- Ashley and Kupono: I kind of liked the first part, but ultimately it was a little snoozy.
- Janette and Brandon: Yeah, it was really really really fast, and that 210 degree split in the air was insane, but what I want to know is this. How come it's an international crisis if a hip hop couple is off by a millisecond or two, but Brandon and Janette can be completely out of sync and no one cares? I would also like to reiterate the question I ask every season: is Doriana Sanchez the only disco choreographer on the planet?
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