MGK: So we’re back, watching Animalympics again.
FLAPJACKS: …I know that. Why are you saying that?
MGK: I’m setting the scene for my readers.
FLAPJACKS: It’s really annoying.
MGK: Anyway – so slalom star Kurt Wuffner is missing.

FLAPJACKS: Why is the entire search party looking for him composed of elephants? I mean, if you’re gonna pick an animal to be in an alpine search-and-rescue team, “elephant” wouldn’t even make my top thousand picks. Because elephants are big and heavy and not winter-friendly animals and aren’t really known for their mountain-climbing abilities.
MGK: They aren’t known for their gymnastics skill either, but that didn’t stop one from competing on the uneven bars! Elephants are doin’ it for themselves.
FLAPJACKS: “So we know this is a tragedy – but now, how about some bobsledding?”
MGK: And the European team – which is British – is composed of… are they beavers? They look basically like beavers. They have beaver tails. But beavers aren’t native to England.
FLAPJACKS: Immigrants.
MGK: I wonder how the Animalympicverse version of the BNP feels about beavers coming to England and takin their jerbs.
FLAPJACKS: I’m more interested in the octopus bobsledders from Italy. These are the first crustaceans/fish/insects we’ve seen competing so far, right? It’s all been reptiles, mammals and birds thus far. I think we’re seeing another facet of the dreadful class system in this universe.
MGK: Meanwhile, Kurt Wuffner is dying on a mountainside when suddenly he finds “Dogra-La.” I don’t remember if this is a real thing or if he’s just hallucinating prior to his death from exposure.
FLAPJACKS: Given that he’s turning to “the camera” to point at the sexy dog girls dressed in kimonos that all look exactly like him, I vote the latter.
MGK: But enough death hallucination! It is time for hockey now!
FLAPJACKS: The American team – for they wear USA colours – is populated by Quebecois bears, apparently. And the other team is bulls, because… I dunno, I’m out of logic to explain any of this now.
MGK: It is amusing that they are totally playing hockey up as a game where people try to murder one another.
FLAPJACKS: Well, this was the early 80s. The Broad Street Bullies era of the Philadelphia Flyers had just ended. Hockey players beat each other up all the time. It’s not like now, when they beat each other up for a purpose. They used to maim each other for fun… why is the arena exploding?
MGK: Because that’s funny.
FLAPJACKS: And because we were briefly entertained for a moment there, how about a pointless vignette featuring the coaches of the two marathon runners where silly voices are apparently supposed to be endlessly hilarious?
MGK: I blame Gilda Radner. Baba Wawa ruined things for a generation.
FLAPJACKS: This California otter isn’t really… funny in any way. Or even interesting. I mean – he’s a hippie, sorta? He drives a car, he’s a vegetarian, he surfs, he likes to hang out in a hot tub? Where are the jokes? These are just things Californians do. And not even most of them. I mean, they at least had Bolt Jenkins living in a sewer like a respectable New York alligator.
MGK: New Yorkers think making fun of California is endlessly hilarious. They will never admit it’s because of their latent insecurity issues, of course, but that’s why they think it’s endlessly hilarious.

FLAPJACKS: Hey, it’s a dolphin! Who… somehow has legs!
MGK: That freaks me out more than anything else in this cartoon so far. Including the lioness nipple flash.
FLAPJACKS: They’re so polite to not mention his horrible, terrifying mutation.
MGK: And one of the swimming contestants is a manta ray! So that makes two non-traditionally-cute animals competing!
FLAPJACKS: I like how the octopuses get drummed into multiple competitions in the Animalympics. It’s like the animators just gave up trying to think of animals to draw. “Ah, let’s just use the fucking octopuses again.”
FLAPJACKS: In proud Animalympics tradition, the Japanese athlete is named “Ono Nono.” HA HA HA it’s funny because it’s racist!
MGK: At least the American announcers are acting like American announcers and only concerning themselves with how the American athlete will do. That’s realism for you.
FLAPJACKS: And now, the “hundred-meter dive.” Which is appropriately ludicrous for a cartoon.
MGK: And the bird diver is totally cheating! He is flying! That should be some sort of disqualification, not reason to give points. This world makes no sense!
FLAPJACKS: It’s a world with talking animals that can’t remember how many continents exist. I think that was more or less a given, wasn’t it?
MGK: That having been said, the hallucination sequence that the California otter has is actually decently trippy animation and the music is fun.
FLAPJACKS: The “history of Animalympics” sequence is… weird. I mean, you know they wrote it just so the animators could draw dinosaurs doing sports, but then they have no animated dinosaurs doing sports.
MGK: Also, the “pot showing the earliest depiction of animal sports” has dinosaurs on it. That pot is therefore tens of millions of years old. It should be dust. But it is not dust. Did dinosaurs die out much later in the Animalympic world?
FLAPJACKS: Consider, if you will, that at the beginning of the movie, the Animalympic Torch is lit off fire breathed by a dragon. I don’t think it’s a stretch to have dinosaurs still be alive.
MGK: Then where are the dodos?
FLAPJACKS: Well, that would just be silly.
MGK: And we’re back to the downhill skiing and the Kurt Wuffner saga. Since Kurt Wuffner is dying on a hill somewhere, we are introduced to a boar who has been rebuilt with bionic technology “for speed.”
FLAPJACKS: Shame he wipes out early.
MGK: Okay, you know what’s bitchy? This boar is clearly suffering through a major near-death experience right now, and the announcers don’t seem to care at all. Bitchy Dog Announcer makes a joke about him being used for “spare parts.” Ah, cartoons, you are heartless.
FLAPJACKS: And Kurt Wuffner returns and wins, of course.

MGK: Here’s what I don’t get. Right before Wuffner returns, the announcers are whining about how the best time today was a “disappointing” minute-fifty-eight. Then Wuffner shows up, and finishes the course in a minute-fifty-six-point-eight-nine. That is only about a second faster. These announcers are whiny.
FLAPJACKS: Is a second a big timespan for competitive downhill skiing?
MGK: Quickly checking Wikipedia, it looks like generally the top ten skiers in a downhill real-life Olympic event usually span about two seconds’ overall difference. That would make Wuffner’s time better by a lot. I withdraw my complaints as regard realism, but maintain that the announcers are whiny bitches.
FLAPJACKS: Why is that?
MGK: Name three sports announcers you really like.
FLAPJACKS: That’s easy –
MGK: Who aren’t dead and therefore can still bore or annoy you.
FLAPJACKS: Well then. Zero.
MGK: My point exactly. They should’ve just done narrative stories instead of the fake sportscast. The most entertaining bits of this thing are always when they get away from the sportscast and focus on individual characters. I mean, the goat/lion marathon battle is weird, yes, but at least it’s interesting.
FLAPJACKS: Speaking of which, the goat and the lion are officially now in love, it seems. Despite, you know, not having talked or spoken to one another during the race.
MGK: Well, that’s how love works sometimes.
FLAPJACKS: No, it doesn’t.
MGK: True. But, on the bright side, we get to see the announcers lose their shit over the goat and the lion running hand-in-hand. “Is it an international conspiracy?” asks Henry Kissinger Turtle.
FLAPJACKS: Then the turtle orders bombing in Cambodia. Tens of thousands die over his taking offense at the goat and lion’s relationship, born in the heat of competition.
MGK: Dark!
FLAPJACKS: Only that sort of thing can distract us from the worst part of this yet, which is Billy Crystal voice-acting against Billy Crystal.
MGK: This is offensive on so many levels.
FLAPJACKS: Could this get any worse?
MGK: Sure it could. For example, Robin Williams could show up and voice-act his “look at me, I’m pretending to be a black guy” bit. Or his Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation. Or, really. anything Robin Williams does, since his characters haven’t changed since we were eight.
FLAPJACKS: Oh, man, I just realized Billy Crystal is trying to imitate Muhammad Ali. That’s so wrong.
MGK: …why do I think that Billy Crystal, as the turkey interviewing the defeated boxer who isn’t Billy Crystal, is doing a reference?
FLAPJACKS: Because he is. Howard Cosell did that thing, remember, where he called someone who lost a match of some kind or another a bum who had let down his country?
MGK: I forgot for a second Billy Crystal doesn’t so much do jokes as he does riffs on people who exist.
FLAPJACKS: “Volleyball is rapidly becoming one of the most popular sports in the world.” Really? Did I miss something?
MGK: Even the referee looks bored here. I mean, lobsters playing volleyball, you’d think that was funny, but no.
FLAPJACKS: And we’re back to the marathoners! For some reason, they have decided to ask random athletes what they think of the goat and the lion being in love. The racist penguin makes some martial arts noises. The California otter says nothing of consequence. This feels like they’re padding out the show at this point.

MGK: Bizarrely, the weightlifting competition is somewhere in between a professional wrestling competition and a beauty pageant. This makes no sense at all, and I say that in comparison to the entire rest of this cartoon. Compared to this, the rest of the cartoon is perfectly sensible.
FLAPJACKS: Even the fencing segment, which turns into a swashbuckling fight scene?
MGK: That’s perfectly acceptable, because every fencer wishes that fencing actually had jumping about the room and vaulting through the air and swinging on chandeliers and dramatic entrances and exits and punning as elements of competition.
FLAPJACKS: The turtle once again insists that the continents are “locked in a five-way tie,” ignoring that at this point they’ve identified seven different competing teams, not counting Scandinavia, which may be something else altogether. Once again, he is offended that the goat and lion are in love.
FLAPJACKS: And they win together, after a musical sequence, and the fans… I dunno. I can’t care about it any more.
MGK: And this show wraps up with some shots of the “crew” and recap sequences, because re-using footage saves you lots of money when you’re animating.
FLAPJACKS: So was this as good as you remembered?
MGK: God no. You know what? We should all be thankful for Pixar. We really should. The musical stylings of one-quarter of 10cc aside, this was mostly pretty bad.
FLAPJACKS: Nostalgia lies. Except for TRON.
MGK: Well. Actually.
FLAPJACKS: SHUT UP I WILL CUT YOU.

FLAPJACKS: So what are we watching?
MGK: “We?”
FLAPJACKS: Well, I brought back your wok, so I figure I might as well hang out.
MGK: That’s not my wok. That’s a frying pan.
FLAPJACKS: So?
MGK: You had my wok for three years.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, and now we’re watching something. Keep up! What are we watching?
MGK: Animalympics. It’s an old cartoon from when I was a kid.
FLAPJACKS: …why are we watching this?
MGK: I used to watch this all the time when I was six. I remember one time, my parents were going out for the evening, so they took me to the video store and I got it for like the fifth time, but I’d accidentally gotten it in Beta instead of VHS, so my dad actually took me back to get the right one.
FLAPJACKS: That is deeply touching. Your life is a Hallmark card. So why are we watching it?
MGK: Because I’m curious to see how bad, in fact, it actually was.

FLAPJACKS: Fair enough – wait, that announcer sounds like Harry Shearer.
MGK: Bingo! It is Harry Shearer, explaining “Mount Animalympus.”
FLAPJACKS: That sounds dirty.
MGK: There’s probably going to be a lot of that.
FLAPJACKS: So, wait, animals carry the Oly…Animalympic Torch over water? What happens if that seal drops the torch?
MGK: Overthinking it.
FLAPJACKS: Like we’re going to do anything else?
MGK: Point.
FLAPJACKS: “Featuring the voices of” Gilda Radner, Billy Crystal, Harry Shearer and… some other person!
MGK: This was originally made by NBC as a pair of specials in 1980, which explains the cast. But the summer special never aired because of the Moscow boycott.
FLAPJACKS: Did you know that at the time?
MGK: Yes, because I was a geopolitically-interested six-year-old. No, of course I didn’t know.
FLAPJACKS: …why does the announcer turtle sound like Henry Kissinger?
MGK: I have no idea.
FLAPJACKS: I see Gilda Radner is doing her Baba Wawa voice.
MGK: And Harry Shearer is doing his Kent Brockman voice.
FLAPJACKS: And Gilda Radner does a slightly different voice.
MGK:And Billy Crystal does a bad Howard Cosell impersonation.
FLAPJACKS: And… wait, are they giving us highlights of the movie in advance?
MGK: Padding for the home video market, I think.
FLAPJACKS: That’s just sad.
MGK: A “grazing-room only crowd” at the stadium.
FLAPJACKS: But what about the carnivores? Are they telling us that the Animalympics are herbivore-centric?
MGK: Are you surprised? Herbivores control the animal media, you know. They just want to make a perfectly valid lifestyle choice a crime.
FLAPJACKS: A choice? Ahem. Carnivores were just born that way.
MGK: I stand corrected.
FLAPJACKS: …okay, they really put way too much effort into making sure that rhino’s butt moved in a taut, rhythmic manner.
MGK: Are you bothered?
FLAPJACKS: No. But it’s weird. Wait, why does the “mayor of Animalympic Island” sound like a Richard Nixon impersonation? Did Rich Little need some work that week?
MGK: Dude, that Nixon is nowhere near Rich Little’s. Rich Little does quality Nixon. It’s practically his calling card.
FLAPJACKS: Okay, that sports graphic looked appropriately cheesy. I can believe this was made in 1980.
MGK: “Rene Fromage.” That is the name of the European marathoning goat. “Frenchy McFrance” was already taken, I guess.
FLAPJACKS: Oh, man. This is all gonna be things that bad comedians think kids will find funny, isn’t it?
MGK: This hails from an era where Leonard Maltin was the only man over 25 who would admit he still watched cartoons. This is not going to be sophisticated or clever, I think.
FLAPJACKS: “Kit Mambo” is, I take it, his nemesis in the film.
MGK: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: And again with the ass. Man, these animators were butt-lovers, huh?
MGK: Try not to think about it.
FLAPJACKS: And we’re over to gymnastics. Okay, so this mink is… oh, wait, no, not an athlete, another interviewer. And she’s interviewing another mink.
MGK: Oh, yes, I remember this from when I was a kid. I thought they were ripping off Bugs Bunny even then.
FLAPJACKS: Did you really?
MGK: Probably not, no.
FLAPJACKS: But wait, she visibly fucks up during the routine and still gets a perfect 10? Is this commentary on the Soviet system here?
MGK: Given that the coach is prepared to hang himself if she fails, I suspect so. Subtlety is not what you expect to find here.

FLAPJACKS: And this gymnast is a hippo who hails from “Fatgard,” competing for Europe.
MGK: Why is a hippo competing for Europe? They don’t live in Europe.
FLAPJACKS: Maybe she emigrated. Ever think of that?
MGK: But she’s teaching all those other hippos to swim. Are there German hippos we don’t know about?
FLAPJACKS: It would be just like those Germans to keep a secret hippo community hidden from the rest of the world!
MGK: It would?
FLAPJACKS: I dunno. Wait – the pommel horses at the Animalympics are actual horses?
MGK: Well, the starting gun for the marathon was a bird that they squeezed to squawk, like in The Flintstones.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, but in The Flintstones, humans are still in charge. This use of animals as tools sort of implies a slavery-based system.
MGK: So basically what you’re saying is that the Animalympics are a distraction for the masses? Distracting them from their downtrodden position through sport?
FLAPJACKS: Yes, that’s exactly it. Why is this penguin Japanese?
MGK: “Asian.”
FLAPJACKS: But he’s Japanese. He’s clearly Japanese. His name is “Kwakimoto.” That is clearly a takeoff from Japanese naming conventions. And he is initially shown in a crowd full of other Japanese penguins waiting for the subway.
MGK: Even so, in the Animalympics there are only five continents competing.
FLAPJACKS: But they’ve already identified athletes from “Asia,” “Eurasia” and “Europe,” along with African and North American athletes.
MGK: There was also a South American anteater competing in the marathon.
FLAPJACKS: Oh my god, did they blow up Australia?
MGK: Well, I don’t –
FLAPJACKS: I bet they did. Those marsupials would be like horrific aliens to these walking, talking animals.
MGK: Can’t we just go back to talking about the racist cariacature in penguin form? Listen! His martial art is called “No-Can-Do!”
FLAPJACKS: Asians love martial arts!
MGK: And Harry Shearer is doubling down on the vaguely racist mock-Asian gibberish. “Me-Washy-You-Facey.” “Say-You-Punky.”
FLAPJACKS: You had horrible taste as a kid.
MGK: It was the early Eighties. Everybody had horrible taste then.
FLAPJACKS: And I note that, after the elephant gymnast wipes out on the uneven bars, the winners in women’s gymnastics are “Eurasia” and “Asia.” My geography theory continues to be supported.
MGK: More racist penguin!
FLAPJACKS: More marathon!
MGK: You know what’s weird about the marathon? The male goat is a very typical, asexual cartoon character, and the female lion is sexualized with distinct feminine curves. It’s honestly kind of creepy if you think about it: this is training kids to accept a double standard for male and female appearance.
FLAPJACKS: Also it’s a goat and a lion. The lion is not attempting to eat the goat.
MGK: There is that.
FLAPJACKS: And in passing, a panda athlete is identified as Yu Fat Ting. This cartoon just keeps getting more and more racist!
MGK: And the tour of the commissary! There are literally big chops of meat just waiting to be eaten by carnivore athletes there. They slaughtered presumably-intelligent animals to do it. This is so fucked up.
FLAPJACKS: Wait, it turns out Animalympic Island is being powered by slave labour!
MGK: Look, we don’t know that those snakes serving as tow cables are slaves. Perhaps they’re fairly compensated. Maybe they’re union.
FLAPJACKS: What type of seniority do you need to avoid being a cable? What do you move up to? Shoelace?
MGK: THAT’S SNAKE-RACIST! Armist? Limbist? Whatever.
FLAPJACKS: Figure skating! And there’s more “Eurasian” athletes. Where does Eurasia end and Asia begin?
MGK: More importantly, why is a salamander marrying a chicken?
FLAPJACKS: They’re in love. Duh.
MGK: …OH MY GOD THIS ANIMAL WORLD HAS AN EQUIVALENT OF “PLAYBOY.” You know what this means? It is standard for denizens of this world to beat off to animals outside their species.
FLAPJACKS: Well, it happens here too.
MGK: But it’s not normal.
FLAPJACKS: Dude, are you going to start making anti-miscegenation comments now?
MGK: They’re actually different species!
FLAPJACKS: And you don’t have any idea that they even do this, you know. Maybe there is porn for every species in this world. Like, “Playdog.” And… “Playgull.” And…
MGK: “Rustler.”
FLAPJACKS: “Flank.”
MGK: “Scenthouse.” We’re too good at this. We should stop.
FLAPJACKS: Wait wait wait – the flamingo skating star skates professionally in the “Ice Parades?” Are they saying that the Animalympics doesn’t respect the difference between amateur and professional athletes? Well. I am shocked.
MGK: I’m more trying to figure out how a cobra took third in figure skating. Where does it put on the skate?

FLAPJACKS: Too slow! We have moved on to an alligator doing a John Travolta impersonation!
MGK: Ah, good old Bolt Jenkins.
FLAPJACKS: You remembered this?
MGK: Surprisingly, yes. They’re about to do high jumps of 77 feet.
FLAPJACKS: Man, they aren’t even trying to suspend my disbelief!
MGK: This is a cartoon that can’t quite remember how many continents there are, you know.
FLAPJACKS: But they can remember to play his theme music as he pole vaults 180 feet.
MGK: And then a Wheaties parody before we get a musical montage.
FLAPJACKS: Oh my god, they bothered to do a race-walking bit?
MGK: That pigeon is totally going to out-race-walk that beaver!
FLAPJACKS: These are kind of boring. They couldn’t come up with any gags for the all-skunk relay team?
MGK: Well, that elephant and that… coyote?… are hitting each other with lacrosse sticks rather than play. That’s kind of funny to a kid, right?
FLAPJACKS: Was it?
MGK: I don’t know.
FLAPJACKS: Seriously, they could just keep showing me the race-walkers. That was actually legitimately funny. Because race-walking looks silly – and now they’re back to long takes of waggling anthropomorphized animal butts.
MGK: Okay, is this an equestrian event? Or the equivalent thereof? Because it makes no sense. No sense at all.
FLAPJACKS: They totally need some guy running alongside banging coconuts together.
MGK: And apparently the no-questrian event has a deathtrap in it. That seems sort of cruel.
FLAPJACKS: Dude, they make the competitors do 180-foot pole vaults. The Animalympics depend on death-sports to keep competitors from wondering why herbivores and carnivores aren’t always at war with one another.
MGK: I’m just wondering why the organizers decided to have all the events at the same time. It looks like a lot of athletes are getting hit by hammer-toss hammers.
FLAPJACKS: And now… the 100 meter dash!
MGK: Harry Shearer’s announcer: “Ah, 46 seconds. Not bad for fatso.” Uh, no, that is a terrible time. I’m pretty sure you can do a hundred meters in an electric wheelchair in 46 seconds.
FLAPJACKS: So, competing in the dash, we’ve got an African, a “Eurasian,” Bolt Jenkins – who, I note, is an “American,” and I’m not sure if that means he’s from the Americas or if they think the USA is a continent – and a rabbit from Europe. This whole “five continents” thing still bothers me, because at this point it looks like both South America and Australia have been destroyed.
MGK: And Bolt Jenkins wins the gold medal, and then gives it away to the African runner because the other athlete was “better” than him. Uh, Bolt Jenkins, this is sports. It’s not the Academy Awards. There is no qualitiative discussion going on here. You were faster.
FLAPJACKS: I dunno. That cheetah seems quite happy to get a pity medal. He’s probably thinking “as a stereotypical African, I am probably expected to say something about how this can feed my entire village for a year!”
MGK: Ugh. Back to the marathon!
FLAPJACKS: And the goat and the lion are becoming attracted to one another!
MGK: That must be confusing for the lion to be attracted to what it, let’s face it, her prey.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, I – OH MY GOD A DISCO SEQUENCE?

MGK: Oh, yes, they needed to pad out the time somehow. I mean, come on. Disco. Who doesn’t love disco? After all, this was 1980 so it was totally cutting edge and relevant. Hey, look, it’s the racist penguin again!
FLAPJACKS: Hey, wait! I just saw a team of four platypi! That means Australia isn’t destroyed after all?
MGK: You never know. Maybe they’re refugees.
FLAPJACKS: I never thought of that. Maybe they’re protected by species-rights legislation. A distinct society. They probably can’t get jobs anywhere because they bear live young and then nurse them in pouches.
MGK: And Bolt Jenkins again! In a Travolta-style white disco suit! Just in case you didn’t yet understand that Bolt Jenkins is intended to be a John Travolta parody, it’s another hint for you!
FLAPJACKS: You know what’s interesting? That sort of joke wouldn’t work today.
MGK: I don’t think it worked then.
FLAPJACKS: No, wait, think about it. That joke depends on commonality of celebrity culture. You can get laughs parodying John Travolta in the 1980s because everybody knew Travolta. Can you do it today? Who’s a big enough celebrity that everybody will go “oh, that guy?” Will Smith, maybe? And Will Smith isn’t funny to parody because he’s Will Smith.
MGK: I get your point, but there’s also the important factor that this cartoon impersonation isn’t even remotely funny, so how would we know?
FLAPJACKS: Needs more Rich Little.
MGK: And now we see some soccer, as the Germans – okay, the “Europeans,” but come on, we know they’re the Germans – clean the clocks of the American team from New York. So this is at least realistic.
FLAPJACKS: Incidentally, the fact that they then defeat the “South American Llamas” merely upholds my belief that something is deeply weird here. We’ve been told there are five continents competing, but so far there are teams from South America, “America,” Europe, Asia, Africa and “Eurasia.” Is there some sort of civil war going on in Eurasia? Two breakaway republics?
MGK: Maybe Bolt Jenkins isn’t from “America.” Maybe he’s actually Brazilian. And New York, in Animal World, is in Chile. It could happen.
FLAPJACKS: And we still don’t know about the Aussies.
MGK: Well, they are busy going back to the marathon and the oversexualized lion who is inexplicably falling in love with a goat she should more properly regard as a snack.
FLAPJACKS: Well, the goat clearly lusts after the lion as well. That makes more sense. I would expect many goats have secret desires to sexually humiliate their predators.
MGK: Do you really want to speculate about this? I mean, you’re one step away from hardcore disturbing bronyhood at this point.
FLAPJACKS: Actually, I want to talk about his hallucination/dream sequence. Because, in this sequence, he hallucinates human women which he pointedly avoids, because he is concentrating on the gold medal of course, but still. That suggests that in this world, they knew humans existed at one point.
MGK: My god. I think you have cracked the code.
FLAPJACKS: Really?
MGK: No. I was actually more interested in the fact that they depicted him as smoking. I mean, even though he’s French, I would have thought 1980 was late enough that they wouldn’t show cartoons smoking any longer.
FLAPJACKS: OH GOD THE MEDAL HAS TURNED INTO THE SEXY LION AND IT HAS NIPPLES AND EVERYTHING.
MGK: This cartoon just keeps getting more and more disturbing.
FLAPJACKS: How did you not end up a furry if this was your favorite cartoon when you were a kid?
MGK: I’m not sure. But regardless: that is one damn demented goat.
FLAPJACKS: Okay, in the slalom skiing, we see competitors from Europe, North America, South America, and Scandinavia. Which is not a continent! My god, what is the situation in Eurasia? Have the Finns convinced the rest of the Nordic countries to go it alone?
MGK: There’s got to be some brutal war going on that we’re missing because we can’t get past Billy Crystal’s godawful “funny” Swedish accent. Billy Crystal: willing to make kids miserable since… well, forever.
FLAPJACKS: It is so bad that we almost missed Kurt Wuffner’s disappearance! After a triumphant victory in the slalom, he has disappeared while climbing a mountain!
MGK: Approximately thirty seconds later, apparently.
FLAPJACKS: This smells fishy. I believe there is foul play afoot. Why would a devoted extreme athlete decide to climb a mountain in between his two primary events? I think this stinks of Eurasian manipulation!
MGK: Certainly. After all, note that Wuffner’s disappearance gives the win to Scandinavia. Presumably the Scandinavians are rebels warring against the European regime, and Eurasia’s central committee seeks to embarrass the EU, which broke away from it, by repeating their rebellion in microcosm – at the Animalympics!
FLAPJACKS: This goes down so many layers it’s scary! But I think I need a break.
MGK: Agreed. There is only so much Billy Crystal “funny voice” schtick one can hande in a day. We’ll finish it tomorrow. After you return my wok.

Your guest judges are Luther, Blake and Mary Murphy, who I assume is now present for the rest of the season with the American show over (oh goody).

Lindsay and Christian: salsa. Lindsay and Christian have already demonstrated that they are an insanely capable pairing when it comes to salsa, and this was basically their week one routine except with more intricate floorwork and Lindsay improved in skill. The choreo at a few points dragged a bit – the big stunts felt very standy-still rather than fluidly incorporated into the routine – but this is a relatively minor complaint and certainly nothing that can really be attributed to the dancers.

Melissa and Adam: contemporary. This is one of those routines I can really respect but not especially like – amazingly physical work from these two, and simply watching it was exhausting because it was so energetic and powerful. But I didn’t especially care for the choreography, just because it felt very frenetic and hyperactive. This is a matter of taste; I can’t fault Melissa and Adam, especially when they nailed the crazy difficult choreo that I didn’t particularly like.

Denitsa and Matt: hip-hop. Mehhhhh. Good choreo from Situation, but the performance wasn’t quite there; Denitsa’s actually at that “passable” level where a good partner would disguise her weakness in the style, but Matt just isn’t; a bit behind the beat at points and just trying to compensate for lack of technique by overperforming every single move. Also, hip-hop choreographers for this show need to learn that putting a tutting section into their routine is the exact opposite of helping dancers through the routine, because nothing exposes a weak hip-hop dancer like a tutting section: you can’t just throw on a sneer and try to act street and fake your way through tutting. It just doesn’t work. Matt remains the sole dancer in the competition where I continue to wonder how he’s survived over others.

Yuliya and Shane: jive. Reasonably good. Shane actually impressed me more than Yuliya in this, for the value of “performing past what was expected” – Shane did some very good work here, and he honestly had more performance quality than Yuliya for me (although Yuliya’s technique was, of course, obviously better). Yuliya’s very… internal, I suppose, in that her dancing always feels a bit subdued to me.

Geisha and Joey: afro-jazz. This was good enough. Sean Cheeseman hasn’t put together an afrojazz of this quality in a while. Geisha was far more into it than Joey was; Joey is technically brilliant, of course, but the performance was merely okay from him tonight, I felt – a very strong opening, but then he just trailed downwards dialing it down and dialing it down and getting milder and milder, whereas Geisha had the technique and much better performance quality.

Jordan and Francois: contemporary. Very good: Francois partnered Jordan perfectly and was a very good forklift, and Jordan’s control is just insane. That having been said: I am so, so tired of contemporary routines on this show that are A) “a tribute to love”, B) “a couple find one another,” C) “somebody cheats on somebody else,” D) “a relationship ends.” FIND SOME NEW FUCKING PLOTLINES. Please.

Probable bottom three: Denitsa and Matt, Yuliya and Shane, Geisha and Joey.
Should go home: Yuliya and Matt.
Will go home:: Yuliya and Matt.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Your guest judges are Kenny Ortega and Katie Holmes, who is a human wasteland. Damn, is that a whole season without Adam Shankman? Shame. Adam’s nice, and usually tries to give reasonably good criticism. The final episode of the season is usually pretty weak because the dancers are exhausted, but let’s see what happens.

Melanie and Marko: disco. When Doriana Sanchez explains that her vision of “the best disco ever” is “lots of lifts,” I just kind of groan – and, as expected, the lifts were very, very long. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that they can spin that much without losing accuracy is impressive. Melanie and Marko were both game for the cheese factor of disco, which I appreciate, but the entire thing felt lacklustre and a little slow: they clearly weren’t comfortable with the technique and tried to get by on performance, and endless boring spins aren’t going to cut it.

Sasha and All-Star Mark: contemporary. Man, Mark got Sasha’s haircut! Anyway, this was absolutely fabulous in every single respect: the best routine Sonya has put together in… god, maybe since Alex/Allison last year? And danced perfectly. Mark is an excellent partner for Sasha – and well, yeah, he’s an excellent partner for everybody because Mark is astoundingly good at basically everything, but even in that regard he was particularly exceptional with Sasha. This was so good. Seriously.

Tadd and All-Star Joshua: hip-hop. Lil’C doing not-krump? Huh. This was interesting, because although both Tadd and Joshua danced this quite well, during the first third of the routine Joshua was hitting it harder and more accurately than Tadd, then they balanced out, and then for the final third Tadd was hitting it harder than Joshua, which almost never happens: when one partner is better than another, usually it’s consistently so or the result of one partner starting or ending a routine weakly. Nigel complains that Tadd is too nice, because

Melani and All-Star Robert: contemporary. Nigel pointedly emphasizes that Stacey Tookey is Canadian, for what reason I am not sure. Anyway, this was very good in the sort of way I expected it to be very good: in a way that didn’t particularly excite me, but the excellence of which I nonetheless appreciate.

Sasha and Marko: Broadway. You know, it’s actually really rare for an SYTYCD Broadway routine’s comedy to be something I actually find funny, but Marko’s reactions here were genuinely great, and the little beats Spencer Liff put into the routine – that paired head-turn and ankle-cock early in the routine, for example – worked very nicely.

Melanie’s solo: Perfectly decent. She’s a really great contemporary dancer, of that there can be no doubt.

Marko’s solo: Really impressive. Marko’s speed and accuracy in his solos always impresses me.

Sasha and Tadd: cha-cha. What has come to me to be standard for American SYTYCD ballroom: hit the big tricks, simply not have the basic technique. The judges destroy them for something that was rightfully terrible, throwing Tadd under the bus to give Sasha at least a little bit of protection, because after all Tadd isn’t gonna win this and everybody knows it.

All-Star Lauren (season seven edition) and Marko: contemporary. This was really quite nice, although of course Kenny Ortega hits the nail on the head when he says the routine is a “gift” to Marko, as if every dancer wasn’t given their own style to dance once with an All-Star. (Well, except for Tadd, who didn’t get a B-boy routine but rather straight hip-hop, but whatever, it’s only Tadd.) Anyway, this was lovely.

Tadd’s solo: Much more musical than I’m used to from Tadd’s solos, which generally don’t grab me.

Melanie and Tadd: jazz. I am tremendously amused that they found a way for Melanie to remove the heels within the first third of the routine. Anyway: meh. Technically competent, didn’t especially grab me in any way: Melanie is usually a really good actress as dancers go, but this just felt generic and forced, and it translated to her dancing, which I thought was laboured. Tadd was a better scoundrel and felt more comfortable, and carried the routine.

Sasha’s solo: Like Melanie, perfectly good contemporary solo.

Melanie and Sasha: contemporary. Aaaaaaand that’s 3/1 for “Melanie dancing in her style” versus “Melanie having to dance out of style” on the night, which was about what I expected. Also, I like Stacey Tookey’s choreo, but any piece about 50s housewives where Sasha and Melanie are afforded equal status just doesn’t work for me, because in the 50s Sasha would have been the help. Yes, yes, I know, they’re playing roles, but… even so, you know?

Marko and Tadd: hip-hop. True story: before this aired, I said in email to a friend that I was certain that if Tadd and Marko got to dance together, they would get buried with something impossible because since day one this season has been All About The Girls and the judges have constantly said it’s All About The Girls, and Tadd and Marko are unfortunately not girls. And I was right! A stepping routine! Incredibly hard and intricate, nowhere close to either dancer’s style, no point during the routine where you could hear the stepping and slaps which is more or less the point of stepping, and of course probably the most energetic and aerobic routine of the night is saved for dead last, so when Marko and Tadd predictably blow it and blow it hard, Nigel can sanctimoniously say “well I told you a girl was going to win.” Shut up, Nigel.

Final four order should be: 1.) Sasha 2.) Marko 3.) Melanie 4.) Tadd.
Final four order will be: 1.) Sasha 2.) Melanie 3.) Marko 4.) Tadd.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Your guest judges are Rex Harrington, Melissa Williams and Dan Karaty, and while I’m happy to see Dan two weeks in a row this show doesn’t need five judges. Jean-Marc pimps his new line of ballroom dance shoes, which actually look pretty damn nifty.

Jordan and Francois: samba. Absolutely insanely difficult choreography from Gustavo MOTHERFUCKING Vargas. Those lifts were absurdly nuts. It’s good to see Jordan getting stretched at last, and she did well enough – certainly her technique was at that level of “good enough that a skilled partner will cover any mistakes,” and Francois is certainly capable of hiding her bobbles in samba. But the thing about Jordan is that she looked very, well, young dancing this. Out of her style, she hits the big performance grin all the way through and just comes across as a bit immature, almost. Needs a little work. But you can’t fault the technique, otherwise, because she was very respectable. Francois, unshockingly, murdered it.

Geisha and Joey: contemporary. Stacey Tookey goes big with a story about a time-traveler from the future warning humanity about environmental degradation, and I must say it’s a lucky thing that futuristic time-travelers wear your standard dancing-smock. Which is to say the story didn’t really fly for me, but I liked the movement and both dancers did some wonderful work here, which is the minimum I expect from a Stacey Tookey and I was not disappointed.

Yuliya and JP: hip-hop. This is the third time JP has danced hip-hop (or, well, house, but close enough) with a partner who was dancing out of their style, and the first time he’s definitively outdanced his partner, which – well, at least it happened, I guess. Granted, Yuliya was dancing stiffly and missed the beat and tried to make the whole thing work by sneering the whole time, but JP was actually very good in this. But Yuliya was terrible.

Lindsay and Christian: jazz/funk. Entertaining routine from Blake here. Some obvious ballroom lifts shoehorned into the routine, presumably to give Christian a bit of help, but I thought this was good enough: Lindsay was excellent and Christian was… okay, I suppose. He really did have that snarl on the whole way, which is problematic, but unlike Yuliya he wasn’t dancing outright badly; just average-ish.

Denitsa and Matt: cha cha. This was… yeah, kinda bad. Denitsa was a fabulous partner, and she and Matt have good chemistry, but he was just so frigging awkward the whole way through – vast chunks of the routine allowed him to not cha-cha, and when he was cha-cha-ing it became rapidly evident why so much of the routine let him escape, because his technique was nonexistent: highstepping feet, almost stomping his way through the routine. Second time tonight a dancer was just obviously out of his depth. Judges gave him a lot of leeway, though.

Carlena and Shane: contemporary. Carlena has a really appealing quality to her dancing in this routine: very tough and forceful. Her kicks looked like kicks rather than a standard contempo-extend-the-limb, which suited her very nicely and worked within the routine, and Shane partnered her wonderfully. This was a great example of how untrained dancers can bring their own special thing to modern choreography, which is one of the best things about SYTYCD when it really happens. Jean-Marc blathers about how he hopes she won’t go home, which – Jean-Marc, you’re a judge, it’s kind of your decision.

Melissa and Adam: hip-hop. A deeply dirty Luther Brown special, and as “two contemporary dancers doing hip-hop” go, this was definitely much better than average for SYTYCD. Melissa was dead-on, just killing every step, absolutely murdering it (and in heels to boot) and Adam was… decent. Not quite great – he needed to dance further down into his center to really be great, and he was just floating up a little too much – but certainly hitting that “good enough” pocket for a jazz dancer and he was entirely respectable.

Probable bottom three: Yuliya and JP, Denitsa and Matt, Carlena and Shane.
Should go home: Yuliya and Matt.
Will go home: Yuliya and JP.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Your guest judges this week are Lady Gaga and also some dude who is not Lady Gaga. Okay, it’s Rob Marshall, who on any other night would be the Real Guest Judge, but… Lady Gaga. Come on. (They were both, unsurprisingly, much better at judging than Nigel and Mary.)

Sasha and All-Star Pasha: quickstep. There have been many worse quicksteps on this show, but this was the first time all season that I saw Sasha and thought “…eh.” This dance is one of the reasons I don’t like the All-Star concept: All-Stars only show up to dance in their genre and are usually the best the show’s ever had, and they can make otherwise perfectly-competent-for-out-of-technique dancing look bland or even bad. Sasha wasn’t bad, but her missteps and slightly less-than-ideal carriage were highlighted by Pasha being dead cert.

Caitlynn and All-Star Ivan: hip-hop. See my comments re: All-Stars outshining contestants. Again, Caitlynn danced this perfectly decently: she wasn’t dancing contemporary to beats, she was actually trying to dance with resistance and proper freezes and everything. But she’s nowhere near as good at it as Ivan is – obviously – and Ivan’s so good that it just highlights how she’s not quite managing to do what he does effortlessly, and it makes her look like less when she doesn’t deserve to do.

Jordan and All-Star Ade: jazz. I see Ade and I decide the over/under on lifts is 6: this time around, he only had to perform five! Granted, one of them lasted for like ten seconds, but stil: Ade gets to be less than 50 percent forklift for once. Anyway, the choreo was so boring that counting the lifts was basically the best part of it. Jordan and Ade were game, but Jordan just bores me as a dancer to begin with – she is blandly competent with the emphasis on bland – so she has to excel for me to care and this was just good dancing of a boring piece.

Melanie and All-Star Neil: contemporary. Has any dancer in the history of this show ever been as protected as Melanie? This is, what, the seventeenth contemporary or jazz piece she’s had to dance now? Anyway, yes, it was good (Mandy Moore going to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” aside). Possibly even great. On the verge, shall we say. But every time Melanie dances in genre now, it just irks me more and more.

All-Star Anya and Ricky: jive. Iffy. I mean, we joke about how Anya can get a quality dance out of a broom, but even Anya has an off night, I suppose, because this was messy and jittery and still somehow felt slow.

All-Star Lauren and Jess: hip-hop. Man, I was sure that if they were going to bring anybody other than Comfort as a hip-hop girl All-Star, it would be Sara from season 3, but I guess Lauren is the bottom of that well. (Not that she’s bad, but Lauren’s always been sort of… generic.) Anyway, it’s worth comparing this to Jess’ last hip-hop, because Mary was actually really perceptive in her judging when she discussed how Jess was progressing. (Granted, last time she lost her shit and proclaimed him amazing, but whatever, one out of two.) Last time, Jess wasn’t dancing hip-hop: this time, there were obvious attempts at proper technique, and he looked actually decent. (Also, as an aside, how many Tabbynaps routines are about couples who cheat on each other? Maybe they should start doing routines about open marriages or something at this rate?)

All-Star The Other Lauren and Tadd: jazz. Some might complain that Tadd got a lot of time in the routine to B-boy it up, and… well, at this point I’ve given up on stylistic purity and all I have to say is that when he wasn’t B-boying he was fine. This was Perfectly Acceptable Dancing.

All-Star Allison and Marko: contemporary. This was both a beautiful piece and wildly derivative of Sonya’s Allison/Alex routine from last season, right down to the Jeff Buckley accompaniment. If it had been more original I would have been more impressed, but I spent the whole thing thinking “was that in the last one?” (I know, I know, Sonya repeating her own work, what are the odds?) Also, Marko made Lady Gaga cry! And he said he loved his mom! And then Nigel needed to explain to everybody how amazing it was that he said he loved his mom in television! SHUT UP NIGEL.

Caitlynn and Tadd: foxtrot. Nobody will remember this in a month’s time, but it was good. Not great. But good.

Marko and Ricky: hip-hop. Now this is interesting, because this was the first Nappytabs routine in a while where they dropped all the emo bullshit and just decided to let the dancers rip it, and traditionally that produces great stuff from them, and their choreo this time was really awesome. Unfortunately, Ricky and Marko aren’t, say, Twitch and Alex – or Comfort and Mark – or… well, you get the idea. They comitted and gave it their very mostest, there’s no question about that, but I have to classify it as a noble failure. Nigel does his best to tell America to dump Ricky for him. Shut up, Nigel.

Jordan and Jess: rhumba. This was basically a mess: Jason Gilkison’s choreo was already very contemporary-friendly and Jordan in particular didn’t have any rhumba technique at all (and Jess only some), and she didn’t even have the “contemporary dancer in heels” excuse. This could have been really good and wasn’t.

Sasha and Melanie: jazz. See, here’s the thing. I agree that this was excellent choreo from Sonya and I agree that both Sasha and Melanie danced it very well, but I don’t think they danced it very well together – their unison moments weren’t in sync and their styles felt disparate: Melanie dances very heavily and powerfully, which is not a bad thing by any means but is definitely a stylistic quirk, whereas Sasha’s dancing is much lighter and quicker, and it felt like two people dancing the same routine but apart to me. Not that it wasn’t thrilling; this is my minor critique of something that I thought was otherwise wholly excellent.

Bottom four: Ricky, Tadd, Jordan, Caitlynn.
Should go home: Ricky and Jordan.
Will go home: Ricky and Caitlynn.

(Warning: mild spoilers for later books in the Song of Ice and Fire series.)

Well, technically I suppose this is also an open letter to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the producers of Game of Thrones. But if I said this was an open letter to them, everybody would just say “huh?” So it’s an open letter to George R. R. Martin instead. After all, he is The Man in this regard, I should think.

So: Game of Thrones. It’s wildly successful, a show that’s both extremely popular and critically acclaimed. HBO greenlit the second season while the first was just really starting to get going, and that’s good. I’ve got high hopes for seeing what you guys do with the big battle in A Clash of Kings, and I’m pleased to see who you’ve cast in the various major players showing up in book two. Really, I have no complaints with the show so far.

But right now, I’m thinking about your third season, when you’re more or less done with A Clash of Kings and have to move on to A Storm of Swords. I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, come on. We’re working on season two right now. We don’t even know if there’s going to be a season three. Look what happened to Rome.” And yes, this is true. But I feel that someone has to bring up something about book three well in advance. Just so you can keep it in mind if and when it comes time to start working on season three, you see. It makes sense to start laying the groundwork now.

So. The show. It’s a great show. But, if there is one criticism you can make (other than the fact that Roz, while hot, is really kinda pointless other than being hot), it’s the fact that it’s… well…

…It’s a very white show, isn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong: I know that there are conventions and expectations of the genre. I know that people, when you tell them this is a show about knights and castles and swords, think that all of that equals white people. I don’t think the fact that your cast is almost entirely white is some kind of sin at all: far from it. Westeros is one culture within the world you’ve created, and it is a culture that is mostly white people. And that’s fine. It’s maybe a little irksome that the one distinctly non-white culture you’ve introduced to us so far is the Dothraki, and the problem of television needing visual shortcuts means you had to cut down a lot of the complexities in Dothraki culture when adapting from book to screen, but it’s understandable. The Dothraki are mostly off to one side now anyway. A Game of Thrones being a white-ass show is perfectly understandable in this context.

But in A Storm of Swords, you introduce Dorne to the world stage. Allow me to quote:

The salty Dornishmen were lithe and dark, with smooth olive skin and long black hair streaming in the wind. The sandy Dornishmen were even darker, their faces burned brown by the hot Dornish sun. They wound long scarfs around their helms to ward off sunstroke. The stony Dornishmen were biggest and fairest, sons of the Andals and the First Men, brown haired or blond, with faces that freckled or burned in the sun instead of browning.

If you took out the names and replaced them appropriately, this would describe the population of Iran well enough. Or most Arabic countries, for that matter, or northern African, or… well, you get the point. I’m sure I didn’t need to make it, G.R.R.M. After all, you wrote it. The point being: the Dornishmen are brown people. You describe Oberyn Martell as “saturnine, with thin arched brows above large eyes as black and shiny as pools of coal oil,” and later explicitly mention that his skin is dark. So that’s the point of this letter: when you’re casting season three, bear in mind that Dornishmen are, for the most part, brown folks. Cast accordingly.

And you might say “well, why do you need to tell me that? After all, I wrote the damn books. I know what Oberyn Martell looks like.” And that’s fair. But Hollywood has a track record in these sorts of affairs, and the track record is not good. Let us remember the debacle that was the live-action adaptation of Avatar, where white kids were hired to play characters that were distinctly not-at-all-white? (Worse, they were white kids of middling to little talent, which was just insulting to anybody who gives a damn about this sort of thing.) It’s common knowledge that nonwhite people other than Will Smith need not apply to be heroic protagonists in Hollywood these days.

And really, asking to let Dorne be Dorne isn’t pushing too hard against those preconceptions. The series is not called A Song of Ice and Dorne. House Martell may be pretty awesome, but they’re minor players in the story and we all know that. I’m just saying that you wisely decided that in your books, some of the noble houses of Westeros would be non-white. It would be a valuable thing, then, to extend that to the HBO series, and let people see that knights can be brown too.

Also, most importantly, it would let this dude be the Red Viper:

Right? Right? Of course I’m right.

Didn’t have time to blog last week’s USA show, mostly because I saw it two days late and other than Sasha and Twitch’s UNBELIEVABLE hiphop I was largely apathetic to it. At some point, Nigel is going to realize that the All-Star concept fundamentally hurts his show by making the current group of performers look like the junior league – and the fact that the vast majority of All-Stars are from the earlier seasons doesn’t help. (Hint: the reason Pasha keeps performing all the All-Star ballroom routines is because they’ve only had one other high-quality male ballroom dancer since season 3 – Ryan in 6 – and that’s the same reason Comfort is the only female hip-hop dancer they keep bringing back.)

Anyway. Tonight’s twist: new partners! Your special guest judges are Luther, Nico Archambeault, and Mary Murphy, who has been a special guest judge every week so far. She’s so special!

Jordan and Christian: paso doble. Francis and Natalli are, incidentally, an example of what former dancers on the show should be doing: choreographing to help promote and extend their careers in dance. The choreo was exceptional in this: that last lift was just a complete “holy shit” moment, and the judges were right to applaud it as Jordan and Christian did it perfectly and it was obviously crazy difficult. That having been said, Jordan did bobble a couple of times in her footwork (that double promenade looked particularly shaky), but these were not major flaws and complaining about them is purely minor quibbling. This was an excellent start to the night.

Denitsa and Matt: contemporary. This routine felt very… adolescent. That’s not a criticism of it, really: I’m trying to characterize the emotion that it was danced with and how it was designed, and on that level it was very flaily and aggressive and wild. But it was also exciting and felt honest, so I think on balance Sabrina Matthews (who is having a very good season so far) has a winner here. Denitsa danced this really, really well – she really threw herself into it, and her lack of technique was simply overcome by her passion for the dance. Matt… still not feeling it, to be honest. He’s a Perfectly Acceptable Dancer but I don’t see him winning, you know? But this was good enough that they should be safe.

Carlena and Kevin: hip-hop. Okay, on the one hand Carlena has danced hip-hop or related every single week so far, and it is past time that she danced something other than that. On the other hand, this was a fabulous routine from Sho-Tyme, who was hit this week rather than miss (seriously, with Sho-Tyme it’s almost always a 50/50 chance that the choreo will be amazing or cheeseball), and Carlena danced it perfectly. Kevin did not, but at least his failure wasn’t “I’m going to dance contemporary to hip-hop music,” but instead trying to dance hip-hop properly and only succeeding for about half of the routine, which is much, much more respectable: at times he was carrying the beat in his bones just dead-on, and other times he got a bit lost and needed a second to get back into his groove.

Lindsay and Shane: disco. Melissa Williams breaks her four-year-long streak of mediocrity and delivers choreography that is not half bad! MY WORLD IS COMING APART. Okay, maybe it wasn’t superb, but it was decent and that’s enough for me to applaud. Shane and Lindsay danced this well enough: they were into it and having fun, and if at times they felt a bit flaily and offbeat, they always got themselves back into sync quickly enough. This was surprisingly good! I like being surprised! Probably the best disco on any SYTYCD since season three of the US show (Sara/Neil), which admittedly is not a high bar to pass, but there you go.

Geisha and Adam: jazz/funk. …..ehhhhhhhh. Geisha tried and only partially succeeded. Adam was just sort of there, and Blake’s choreo really requires 100 percent commitment or else it just ends up looking sort of dorky, and that wasn’t there from either dancer tonight. This was not really very good.

Yuliya and Francois: mambo. Two ballroomers in their element – granted, doing street mambo rather than classical competition mambo, but outside of that slightly bobbled last lift you wouldn’t tell – and speaking of dancers being protected, Yuliya has gotten two ballroom routines and a Broadway that was ninety percent jive, so put her on the “time to dance something else” list along with Carlena. But it was fun to see two ballroom dancers doing what they do at peak performance, which is something you practically never get to see on SYTYCD (I think the last time it happened was, what, Benji/Heidi in season two USA?), so that was fun.

Shelaina and JP: Bollywood. I am pretty sure that the choreographer’s full name is “Longinus Fernandes Choreographer Of Slumdog Millionaire” because Leah Miller says that every single time she mentions him. This was perfectly all right. Could it have been better? Yes, a bit: JP in particular was a bit sloppy in his movement. But their unison was dead-on and their performance quality was decent enough.

Teya and Boneless: krump. I can count the number of krump routines I have liked on SYTYCD on the fingers of one hand and have several fingers left over, so this was handicapped going in and didn’t really surpass the handicap, unfortunately. Lil C made the… interesting choice of choosing musical accompaniment where it was actively difficult to find the beat, and that just made the dancing more awkward-looking even when they were on-time (which they were, almost entirely). Neither Boneless nor Teya krumped badly, but krump just doesn’t translate to the SYTYCD stage well, never has, and it’s a bottom-three dance almost by default. Shame.

Melissa and Joey: contemporary. Judges called this the routine of the night, but it didn’t really do anything for me. I concede its technical excellence, certainly, but it felt empty – a bunch of moves for the sake of doing pretty moves. And again: protected dancers, as neither Melissa nor Joey has had to dance once in a style where their technical training was not a specific asset.

Probable bottom three: Teya and Boneless, Geisha and Adam, Carlena and Kevin.
Should go home: Teya and Adam.
Will go home: Teya and Boneless.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Your guest judges tonight are Mary Murphy and Rex Harrington, who is Mary’s gay best friend who lives in Canada.

Lauren and Rodrigo: hip-hop. I love that Luther knows that a good hip-hop routine doesn’t have to have a storyline, and I really liked his choreo here. Rodrigo was predictably excellent here, just straight-up killing it for ninety seconds solid. Not a step wrong for him. Lauren was much better than I expected she would be: there were a few moments where she wasn’t hitting it at all and was just going through the motions and looking a bit awkward, but there were more where she was dancing perfectly good hip-hop. Given that Lauren and Rodrigo have superb chemistry together, a few flubs on Lauren’s part were easily ignored, though. Strong opener.

Lindsay and Christian: contemporary. Blake explains that his routine is about how nice it is to touch people, which is barely an explanation of what it’s about and that suits me just fine. Lindsay was very good in this, as should surprise nobody. This was a seriously forklifty routine for Christian, what with the approximately 5000 lifts he had to perform, but he did them quite nicely – my only complaint, actually, is that one point he had to take a few steps away and then turn and his hips just fell into a Latin promenade-and-swing-around, which looked absolutely ridiculous (in context, it made him look like he was doing a hip-cock “look at my ass!” moment – especially given his dramatic expression at the time) and took me out of the routine for a second. But other than that, this was good.

Denitsa and JP: jive. While I’m glad to see Tiny Hugh Jackman Danny back to choreo, this felt lacklustre, and I feel like some of the blame has to JP on this: the entire thing felt about 3/4 speed, just a hair too sluggish to be really enjoyable. His extensions on his kicks weren’t terribly impressive either. Denitsa tried her best, but… yeah. Not enthralling. Not terrible, mind you, not actively bad or anything. Just… not riveting. It was an average dance on a show that’s at present wildly above average.

Carlena and Boneless: dancehall. Okay, here’s the thing: by any objective standard, Carlena did a standout job on this routine: she hit every move just about perfectly and flowed with the dance as she should have done, and brought her personality to it as well. But the problem is that she was dancing with Boneless, and Boneless was so fucking good in this routine that he actually made Carlena look a little less good just because he was working well above her already extremely high level. In other words, this was amazing. (Hearing Mary imitate Tre’s Caribbean patois was less amazing.)

Teya and Kevin: Viennese waltz. Sadly, this was not even remotely close to good. I was really rooting for Teya and Kevin to nail this, but Teya in particular just had no technique whatsoever: at times it appeared as though she was actually stumbling through her moves rather than dancing at all and at least once I was certain that she was about to fall down. Kevin at least had a little rise and fall, but only a little bit, and he didn’t execute the lifts anywhere near sufficiently. The judges call this “not bad,” which in SYTYCD Canada judgespeak means “this was atrocious.” Just terrible.

Geisha and Francois: hip-hop. I liked Tucker Barkley’s choreo a lot more than I liked his choreo last week, but I didn’t like the dancing as much as the judges did. I thought Geisha was good – not great, as she started off softer than I would like, but good overall – and Francois was borderline acceptable at best, the absolute minimum of what a competent hip-hop performance should be – I particularly think he sacrificed a lot of technique to match the routine’s speed. However, the judges gave him more props than they gave Geisha, which is just sort of wrong. Then Rex Harrington exclaims that he is using so much hip-hop jargon that he will become black by the end of the night, which – no, Rex Harrington. Just no.

Yuliya and Adam: samba. Gustavo MOTHERFUCKING Vargas explains that this is a Brazilian samba, which apparently means that he can blend capoeira moves into it as he sees fit, which protects Adam a lot because Adam’s actual samba was only passable at best – but he was quite good at capoeira-style flipping and leaping, and the choreo blended that in with Yuliya’s insane hipwork extremely smoothly, and Adam and Yuliya were much better at partnering each other this week than last week when they were a bit stiffer. Which is to say: I don’t know if this was especially good, but I know that I enjoyed it.

Melissa and Shane: contemporary. A really astounding bit of work from Sabrina Matthews here, who is really impressing me so far this season. Yes, granted, it was a Very Special Dance (about contracting HIV), and some of the lifts didn’t really make sense to me (if Melissa is supporting Shane, why is he lifting her?), but generally my response to that was “so what” because the dancing was really just excellent and powerful on multiple levels here by both Melissa and Shane. This was just very, very good, and there is not much more to say than that.

Shelaina and Matt: hustle. Although I’m always happy to see hustle on SYTYCD, this didn’t especially thrill me: the lifts were big and epic, and I can’t fault the dancers on that score, but the floorwork just left me wanting more commitment: it felt tentative, lacking confidence, and the quick reverses didn’t snap as they should have done. This was disappointing. Not outright bad, but… mediocre, let’s say, or bland.

Jordan and Joey: jazz. The plot of this Sean Cheeseman routine is “girl doesn’t want guy to kiss her,” which given that Joey seems very doubtful to be interested in the ladies is a bit ludicrous, but Jordan and Joey do their best to go over-the-top with Jordan making ridiculous pouty faces and Joey… kinda looking like a goldfish? But, that aside, the movement here was insane, just what-the-hell choreo, every move done absolutely perfectly. An excellent ending routine to the show.

Probable bottom three: Shelaina and Matt, Teya and Kevin, Geisha and Francois.
Should go home: Teya and Kevin.
Will go home: Teya and Kevin.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

I just got back from watching the first episode of Torchwood (a local British-pub style bar and restaurant hosts a monthly Doctor Who showing, and this month was ‘A Good Man Goes to War’ and ‘Miracle Day’), and I have to admit, as someone who was never really grabbed by Torchwood the way I was by Doctor Who, this one was pretty good. Russell T Davies really seems to have hit on something with the idea of making the entire season one long multi-part story, centered on a single big worldwide phenomenon that the Torchwood team investigates. (Of course, by this time it’s the Torchwood duo…one of the other things I admire about the series is that they don’t pretend Torchwood is actually all that special at their job. They are not the best of the best of the best, they are bloody-minded and too curious for their own good.)

This time, for those who haven’t heard, the big phenomenon is that people have stopped dying. All over the world, the morgues are emptying out as they stop getting new customers. It’s not that people are magically healing or anything; one of the new characters, a CIA agent played by Mekhi Phifer, has a hole in his chest that was briefly filled by a piece of rebar. But they’re staying alive, a fact which is taken as evidence of a miracle…until people start realizing that we don’t have the resources to take care of a population that gets old and sick and wounded and hungry but never ever dies.

At which point, Jack and Gwen, formerly of the Torchwood Institute, begin to get involved. It’s an interesting hook, and while we’ll have to see where it goes, the first episode is sharp and clever and has lots of interesting bits. (It also has one transcendently silly bit where a child murderer is set free because he claims that he was executed and hence has served his sentence, which I will chalk up to RTD being a British TV writer and not an American lawyer.)

On the whole, I’m interested enough to keep an eye out for Part Two; for one thing, I’m curious to see whether my crazy theory about why everyone’s immortal is correct. (Crazy theory: Jack’s immortality has been siphoned out, as part of a murder plot against him, and has wound up being distributed among the rest of the world’s population.) For those of you who liked previous seasons of Torchwood, this one’s good too. For those of you who, like me, tuned out after the first three episodes and never went back, this is better than those were. For those of you who’ve never seen Torchwood, this is a pretty cool mini-series so far.