This was requested repeatedly in comments and then in email, and I didn’t have a post planned for today, and the first competition episode of season 5 is tonight, so I decided “what the hell.”

Group dances in SYTYCD follow an interesting evolution. There weren’t any group dances in the first season (beyond a very brief reunion dance in the final episode which was all too perfunctory). They arrived in the second season as Fox decided to put more money and airtime behind the show and the producers needed something to fill time on the elimination episodes – they were the natural and logical next step after the group-sings on American Idol. This attitude was fairly prevalent during the second season’s group dances, most of which were fairly bland affairs.

However, starting in the third season, choreographers started realizing that the group dances offered them opportunities for fancier, more elaborate choreo than could be put into the brief 90-second competition routines, and started to take advantage of this fact. Still, it wasn’t really until the fourth season of the American show that group dances really started to come into their own as a distinct portion of the show’s entertainment value.

continue reading "The Best Of So You Think You Can Dance, Part Five: Group Dances"

Final thoughts on So You Think You Can Dance Australia:

1.) I think everybody in the building expected person A to win, including person B (who was all but saying “you’ve got this in the bag” to A on stage), and when B won they were completely staggered. And A, to their credit, was not surprised at ALL. Best reality show win ever.

2.) After last year’s finale opening, which had the choreographers dancing with the contestants in a great group routine, I didn’t expect anything more than that (which was the best group finale routine in SYTYCD history). I certainly didn’t expect them to try and top it with a routine featuring the entire top 100 contestants. But they did. Which is why I love this show so very much.

(Okay, so it was partially pre-filmed. Big deal, it’s still visually fantastic in every way that matters.)

Good on you, Aussies! Can’t wait for next year. (And if Dom doesn’t make top 20 next year I am going to have to come down there and smack some people around.)

This bit of idiocy has been making the rounds:

Now, I understand that Red Eye is supposed to be a late night “funny” show of some kind, insofar as any show on Fox News can be intentionally funny, which is generally speaking not that much. And I note that the combined military experience of Greg Gutfield, Don Benson, Bill Schulz and Monica Crowley (the individuals in the above clip) is a whopping zero years, but certainly their combined experience as former editors of Maxim and Stuff, being a former assistant to Richard Nixon during the final years of Nixon’s life, and writing a stage play called “The Marijuana-logues” should qualify them to opine about… well, things in general, you know?

It is worth noting that Doug Benson has apologized on his Twitter feed, and in the proper “I was an idiot and I’m sorry” way, which earns him a bit of credit. Gutfield, on the other hand, opted for the non-apology apology by saying his comments “may have been misunderstood,” which is a passive-aggressive “I’m sorry you didn’t understand what I said” shot back. Jesus, Gutfield – if you’re going to be an asshole, fine, but don’t be a wimp about it. Own it.

Top comment: “chucklefucks”: I like this word. I’m going to try and use it more in conversation. — Lister Sage

(Via J-Mo.)

Top comment: The logical conclusion is that the avian is in estrous, Captain. — wyrmsine