My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Tonight: each couple dances once to live music. Such a simple little innovation, but a genuinely good idea; you probably couldn’t sum up why the Australian version of this show is the best any more easily than that, as well as why Nigel Lythgoe’s desperate flailing to remake the American version is so wrongheaded.

Top three girls: hip-hop. I am deeply, deeply over girl/girl hip-hop routines where the girls are bitchy fabulous divas. I like girls to dance hip-hop and kick ass, not be flirty extras in a Ke$ha video or something. That having been said: the opening with the backlit screen was visually really impressive, and Jessie in particular seemed to me to be underdancing here; if Jess hadn’t clearly had a major misstep right at the end she would have been totally outclassed. Still: this was just kind of boring, like every other Jet Verne hip-hop this season has been.

Ivy and Nick: contemporary and lyrical jazz. I have trouble listening to “The Flower Duet” without thinking of yoghurt commercials. That is my only criticism of this otherwise flawless little piece. Ivy’s feet speak motherfucking volumes, and although I have been critical of Nick quite a few times this season, he definitely pulled it out full stop. And the live vocals really only made the piece even better.

The lyrical jazz was enjoyable, but that was almost all Ivy; Nick’s fuckups were numerous (and worse, obvious), and he just wasn’t dancing up to par when compared to just about everything else tonight. Also, Ivy is slightly miscast as a total innocent because she just, well, isn’t. (She’s got too much cleverness in her face to really pull it off.) But, even with all of that, it was still okay.

Jess Hip-Hop and Robbie: hip-hop and jazz. I love that Jesse Rasmussen has, over the course of a single season, become one of this show’s go-to hip-hop choreographers (mostly because I love the groove and imagination he puts into his routines). This was probably the best hip-hop Robbie has danced all season; it’s been really amazing to just see him get steadily better with every hip-hop routine he’s danced this season, because his first couple of routines were just clumsy and now he’s hitting all his moves so sharply and his freezes are just great and goddamn, did he seriously just do that drop spin better than Jess did? Jess was predictably good in her specialty. This was honestly a lot better than the judges gave it credit for.

The jazz piece was just fucking spellbinding, every single bit of it, the concept (happy clown’s best clown friend is dying), doing it to a live strings duet version of “Heart’s a Mess,” the dancing was just perfect – new pick for me for “best routine of season,” and I am totally eating crow about everything I said about Robbie earlier in season because seriously holy shit guys.

Jessie Contemporary and Philippe: tango and contemporary. Wow, seriously? Everybody else gets to dance in their comfort zone (Nick and Ivy get to do it twice) and Philippe and Jessie get tango, which is probably the second hardest ballroom style to pull off after quickstep? Sometimes, this show is just not a level playing field. That having been said: compared to some of the butcheries that tango has been on SYTYCD, this was fine. It wasn’t Mark/Chelsie from US season 4 or Brandon/Jeanette from US season 5 or even Talia/Ben from last year’s Aussie show, but it was workmanlike, and if they were a bit stiff in the first fifteen seconds or so after a bit they settled into their movements and pulled it off quite respectably. It was still just dancing rather than being a full-on performance, to be sure, but the judges acted like this was a trainwreck and it simply wasn’t.

The contemporary was quite good, and Philippe really deserves full credit for dancing contemporary as well as he has all season: I wouldn’t name another hip-hop dancer in any season ever who’s danced contemporary and jazz as well as Philippe has (not even Joshua). It was excellent; maybe not as showy as some of the other pieces tonight, but just good in all ways, and there’s not much else to say about that, as there so often is not much to say about routines on this show.

Top three guys: contemporary. This seemed designed to be the ultimate “make the teenaged girls scream” piece of choreography ever. Not to say that it wasn’t good; it was really excellent, and all three dancers were just so fucking solid. But it is what it is, you know? (And of course Philippe gets stuck doing all the lifts.)

Should go home: Jess and Nick.
Will go home: Jess and Philippe.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist, and because of it, I am now finally in Wikipedia until somebody edits it or something.

Jessica P. Ballroom has a bad back and has to leave the competition, but luckily they have Jess H. to replace her, which is great because that way nobody even has to remember different names too much. (Also, Natalie Bassingthwaite is wearing an incredibly ugly dress. Is she pregnant? That could explain the dress.)

Jessie Contemporary and Nick: hip-hop and cha-cha. The hip-hop felt cheerleaderish to me; moves too far ahead in the beat, and both Nick and Jessie are capable hip-hop partners in that they’re good enough that were they paired with a hip-hopper nobody would have noticed the jazzy flowiness of their moves where sharper urban freezes would be required. However, they weren’t paired with hip-hoppers this week, but each other, which served to reinforce each other’s flowiness and make it stand out. I really liked Jesse Rasumussen’s choreo (he builds his routines really well), but this was merely average at most.

The cha-cha felt stiff. Great choreo (it’s Gilkison, come on), and I didn’t get the chemistry between Nick and Jessie at all: it seemed forced rather than natural, and so did everything else about this routine. The technique wasn’t bad, but Nick in particular seemed to be thinking through his steps.

Jess Hip-Hop and Kieran: foxtrot and contemporary. The foxtrot was so angry it almost felt like a rhumba, which is odd, but Jess and Kieran danced it just about perfectly for all of that: the lifts appeared just effortless despite their obvious level of difficulty and the entire piece felt organic and unchoreographed. Other than a bit of a bobble on the unison in their opening promenade, this was dead-on.

Australian Dance Theatre! I love ADT, they’re so fucking awesome. This was actually a bit more relaxed as ADT pieces go, but it was just good. Not the best ADT outing on SYTYCD – it didn’t have that sense of power that ADT routines usually have, and there were some lines that were not quite there – but it was okay.

Carly and Philippe: contemporary and jazz. I didn’t like the contemporary. This isn’t a commentary on the skill of the dancing, which was quite good (and Philippe’s emerging skill as a contemporary dancer is really impressive). It’s not a commentary on the choreography either, because I can’t say that the choreo was bad. It just wasn’t for me. It happens.

The Ken-and-Barbie jazz was funny and clever and danced just fantastically well. The final big lift was a bit clumsy, but I don’t care because I enjoyed all the rest of it so much (especially Philippe’s hilarious “Ken face”). Definitely one of the highlights of the entire season for me.

Ivy and Robbie: Broadway and hip-hop. Man, when ninety percent of your Broadway intake on SYTYCD normally consists of Tasty Oreo rehashes you forget how enthralling it can be when it’s choreographed and danced really well, and this was danced and choreographed really well. Jason’s comment that Robbie came across young strikes me as unfair, because “Cabaret” needs a vampish, powerful girl and a hesitant male lead.

The hip-hop was cute (although I HATED the opening with the bathrobes, but everything post-bathrobes was fine). Robbie’s mostly in the same category as Jessie and Nick in that when he’s partnered with a better hip-hop dancer his flaws (mostly his freezes; he tends to stay right on the beat rather than rushing it) are minimized; however, unlike Jessie and Nick, he was paired with Ivy, who’s proven herself to be much more credible at hip-hop than the average contemporary dancer. This was decent.

Should go home: Jess and Nick.
Will go home: Jess and Nick.

So apparently a format that was easy to understand and follow and which made a show quite popular isn’t good enough any more, so the SYTYCD Powers That Be are fucking around with the show’s format again, presumably because season six was such a huge success and all.

Hopefully the Canadian and Australian versions of the show will continue their track record of ignoring this stupid bullshit.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist. A while back someone asked me to weigh in on Hiccups and Dan For Mayor, and I am doing so this week.

Carly and Matt: jazz and hip-hop. Occasional guestblogger Karen often accuses me of being a 14-year-old girl when I like certain routines, but the jazz was 14-year-old girl personified: hyperdramatic and extremely emotional. Jason complained about Matt looking “too determined” when he one-hand-lifted Carly, but I’m gonna go ahead and suggest that it wasn’t “determination” and portraying the character correctly so much as it was Matt trying not to let his arm collapse when he was doing a one-handed lift. Carly was a bit thrashy at times. Those minor quibbles aside, this was quite good.

The hip-hop I enjoyed greatly, partially because it’s always great to see Supple (whose choreo is traditionally so difficult and intricate that they never bring him out before top 10) and because seeing voguing on SYTYCD is awesome and fun. This wasn’t quite top-quality voguing, though. It started out really sharp and with lots of attitude, but as it progressed Matt stumbled on a couple of moves and Carly lost a bit of energy in the middle. So it wasn’t perfectly fantastic, but I still really liked it, because voguing!

Jessie Contemporary and Robbie: hip-hop and contemporary. The hip-hop was just about completely rock-solid, which is a first for Robbie (who’s had a lot of trouble in this area) and Jessie (who hasn’t had a really good hip-hop performance thus far). There were a few touches where hits could have been slightly harder or glides slightly more elegant, but only a few, and the unison was dead on throughout the performance – that double aerial cartwheel was fucking sick. This was really, really good.

The contemporary was wild and fun and visually really entertaining, what with the way they used those alien-spinny-chairs and the way Jessie’s hair was done up and everything else. It looked great, and with the exception of a few bobbles (Robbie’s stumble while lifting Jessie, Jessie spinning a bit out of place at one point) it was dead-on. This was great.

Jessica P. Ballroom and Nick: contemporary and quickstep. As much as the idea of a Fifth Element-themed contemporary appeals, this was really bad. It’s understandable that Jessica wanted to protect her back given the back injury she’s suffering, but she looked like the sort of dancer who gets flunked out during the SYTYCD audition process here: sloppy, ugly-looking leaps, slow cumbersome transitions, et cetera. Nick was technically better, but he had next to no performance quality apart from looking vaguely worried.

The quickstep choreo was… both obviously difficult and somehow underwhelming? I didn’t see any point where they were dancing steps clumsily, but I also didn’t see any point where the choreo that they danced mostly on point was particularly in sync with the music. It felt lackadaisical and lazy, and a quickstep should never feel that way. I put this more on the choreo than the dancers.

Jess H. Hip-Hop and Kieran: samba and hip-hop. The samba was reasonably strong. One of the reasons I love the Australian judges so much is that they can sum up what dances should be concisely and accurately – witness Jason Gilkison starting out by saying “samba is really a ladies’ dance” and it is, and that explains why the samba was good but not great – because Jess, while looking confident and dancing reasonably well, didn’t quite get up to the level that it needed to be. Close, but she was a little hesitant in sections, like she was thinking “okay, now it’s Part B,” and then getting into Part B, and then “okay, now time for C” and so forth. But, those gaps aside, she was decent. Kieran was as strong as you’d expect.

The hip-hop bored me. It wasn’t danced badly – Kieran was certainly whitebread, but not as bad as some have been, and Jess was as good as you’d expect – but the choreo was just so fucking boring. I watched the entire routine and ended up thinking “wait, is that it?” Juliette Verne again. Go figure.

Ivy and Phillipe: contemporary and jazz. The contemporary was very good and there really isn’t much to say about it other than that it was very good and danced near-perfectly and that Ivy is now one of my favorites in the entire competition.

The jazz was exactly what you’d expect from Project Moda: big jokes and high-energy choreography throughout. (Not many choreographers would end a routine with the male partner accidentally throwing the female partner off the stage, but Project Moda would.) It was fine. Not the best performance of the night, but not the worst either: in the happy middle.

Should go home: Jessica and Nick.
Will go home: Jessica and Nick.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Ivy and Robbie: contemporary and Bollywood. The contemporary was a nice little piece that the two of them danced well and which was both exuberant/joyful and not really surprising – it was exactly what it promised to be and there were no revelations or anything, but it was very fine for all of that. Bonnie noted rather astutely that both dancers communicated the concept of “openness,” which worked well very nicely with the theme. This was really quite good and I think I’m underselling it a bit with this very mild criticism.

The Bollywood was more a Bolly-jazz fusion than a pure Bollywood, but enjoyable on its own merits. Robbie looked somewhat ill-at-ease whenever he was into the more Bollywoodish portion of the routine; I strongly suspect that short sharp movements and especially tutting (and a lot of Indian dances resemble tutting) are his Kryptonite and he’s scared of them. Everywhere else, he was good. Ivy was absolutely tremendous the entire way through.

Jessica P. Ballroom and Heath: Broadway and hip-hop. I love how Broadway is suddenly so far away from contemporary and jazz ballet when ninety percent of Broadway is fucking jazz ballet. Anyway, choreo to Mary Poppins is definitely going to win votes because who the fuck doesn’t love Mary Poppins, and both dancers did a more than capable job here: Heath’s dancing was better than Jessica’s, but his Dick Van Dyke impression wasn’t quite as strong as Jessica’s Julie Andrews. Solid, though.

There was nothing about the hip-hop that wasn’t a disaster. Terrible costumes. Unison frequently nonexistent. Soft-sauce when they were hitting all the moves (Jason nailed it when he said it looked like a jazz routine), and they missed a lot of them. Choreography didn’t impress me, but maybe if it had been danced properly it might have been entertaining, I dunno. This was bad, bad, so goddamn bad. Probably the worst routine of the entire season so far.

Renee and Phillipe: hip-hop and rhumba. Renee was rushing a good chunk of the hip-hop, and unlike their first hip-hop routine in week one she didn’t look nearly so comfortable doing this piece. Phillipe was insanely good. The judges mostly let Renee go because “not quite as good as Phillipe” is still pretty decent for a dancer not really trained in hip-hop, but: she wasn’t as good as claimed.

Anya and Pasha rhumba! (Are they moving down under or something?) Choreo was intensely good and dramatic, and I was extremely impressed with Phillipe, who not only sold the chemistry as he did last week but whose carriage had exactly that precise Latin strength to it that the rhumba needs. (He did botch one lift quite badly and made Renee look bad, so points off.) Renee had the dance quality but not the performance: she looked just nervous too often to sell it.

Jess H. Hip-Hop and Nick: lyrical jazz and jive. The jazz was weak sauce: Jess looked incredibly uncomfortable at the beginning and although she got better and less stiff as the routine progressed, and Nick didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to do. As routines go, this was one of the less difficult ones of the evening, and they didn’t sell it.

The jive was hit and miss, more hit than miss. The last lift was really bad, but I chalk that more up to the choreo than the actual dancing. Their kicks flicked back pretty nicely for most of the routine, but when they went into their assisted spins they lost momentum every time and needed a second or two to get back into the routine. Still, not bad.

Carly and Kieran: salsa and hip-hop. This is the third year in a row that this show has used a new Potbelleez single for a salsa routine. Huh. Anyway, the salsa was mediocre at best and “at best” is probably unfair because Kieran was reasonably strong and Carly was just plain bad: her ass-shaking wasn’t that great (it was really loose and thrashy) and it was the best part of her dancing in this. She blew a couple of spots (notably her shimmy over Kieran) and whenever she wasn’t shaking it, her footwork was either clumsy or stiff. Disappointing.

The hip-hop is what more experimental hip-hop should be: original and clever and for the most part executed very well, taking hip-hop out of its genre without losing the sharp movements. Carly’s moves were occasionally a bit softer than I would have liked (her float up was laboured as well) but mostly were quite decent. Kieran’s moves were gorgeously clean. This was really a nice surprise.

Jessie Contemporary and Matt: contemporary and jazz. The contemporary was fucking excellent. That is all. No, really, that is all. Christ. what a great performance. (If music rights allowed I’d post a Youtube of it, but no. Fucking Warner Music Group.)

The jazz piece was just underwhelming because “When I Grow Up” has been used on both of the other SYTYCDs in jazz routines much like this one and this one wasn’t nearly in the league of, say, Nico/Lisa dancing Blake McGrath’s jazz/funk from SYTYCD Canada season 1. I think they danced it quite well; I just think what they were given to dance was kind of boring.

Probable bottom three: Jessica and Heath, Jess and Nick, Renee and Phillipe.
Should go home: Jess and Nick.
Will go home: Renee and Nick.
(And actually it is: Renee and Heath.)

I’ve been enjoying Parenthood thus far, but wasn’t sure how true the portrayal of the kid with Asperger’s Syndrome was, so I asked a friend of mine who has kids with Asperger’s to watch it so I could get her opinion. This is it.

A few people emailed me after the last time I had an open call for post requests asking me to “rip into” George R.R. Martin for taking such a long-ass time finishing the A Song of Ice and Fire books, which… no. I mean, just no. Even if we could get around the amazing hypocrisy of me calling someone out for taking a long time to finish a creative work, it’s something I just wouldn’t do regardless, because writers work at their own speed and it’s not a uniform process that’s the same for everybody so expecting Martin to crank out books on a yearly basis like Terry Pratchett does is silly and also Neil Gaiman said stuff I agree with. And so forth.

But I will say this: by getting HBO to sign on to a Game of Thrones series, Martin has – intentionally or not – set himself a deadline. And he’s set himself this deadline for one reason: he’s written a series which features young characters which is now being converted into an ongoing telefilmic series. In order for that series to work, it needs to film itself as quickly as possible. (It can be released on whatever schedule HBO likes, but that’s a different thing entirely.)

Think about it for a second. People complain quite frequently that the young actors in the Harry Potter movies have aged too quickly to portray the characters effectively. Now, granted, this is a pretty stupid complaint given that the first movie started production in 2000, when Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were all eleven (just like in the book), and thanks to a fanatical devotion to cranking the movies out on a schedule that would probably be considered near-slavery if it weren’t for the enormous salaries involved for everybody working on it, they’re just about finished shooting the double-film adaptation of Deathly Hallows now, ten years later. Filming seven years’ worth of progression in ten years is honestly pretty amazing – and people still complain that Radcliffe, Watson and Grint have aged too much.

But the Harry Potter experience is nothing compared to what awaits production on A Game of Thrones and so forth, because the latter is a series of novels where young protagonists go through much more in an even shorter timespan: as of the end of the fourth book, they’ve covered in between two and a half and three years. Assuming that the rest of the series follows this pace, that’s seven novels covering about five years and change. Given that some major characters – Bran and Arya Stark, for example, as well as lesser characters like Thomen Baratheon – are out-and-out little kids (not even tweens), these series are going to have to film relatively close to one another, even faster than release times in order to keep from aging the younger characters too fast onscreen. (Especially considering that it’s been made clear that the show plans to produce one season per novel.) If they don’t, the show has the danger of pulling a Walt-from-Lost, where they have a young character clearly aging faster than the timeline of the show he’s on can handle.

Now, this isn’t impossible to film. Difficult, yes, but certainly not impossible – especially given HBO’s production budgets and the likely enormous return on investment. But all of this difficulty puts Martin’s back up against a wall, because up until now it was just his ass on the line if he got further delayed in finishing the books. Now it’s not just him: it’s everybody working on these shows. Previously the only other people affected by Martin’s slow writing speed were maybe a few people at a publishing company and some fans with an enormous sense of entitlement. Now, though, it’s a horde of people who are completely dependent on him finishing the books so they can produce the TV shows.

I don’t know if Martin can handle that pressure or not. I hope he can. I just know that I wouldn’t want it.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Your guest host is Kelley Abbey. She is pretty.

Top seven boys: Broadway. I was kind of meh on the whole idea of a top seven boys’ performance because there didn’t seem to be any reasonable way to choreo a routine that would showcase all of them equally, so I figured they’d end up just doing a sort of bland bit that would showcase them all equally not-at-all, and I was unfortunately correct about this. I also nailed both Broadway selections for just going with the most predictable options (in this case, West Side Story for the boys). I love the Australian show for tinkering with format, but this is one of their failures.

Issi and Don: “funky street Latin.” This was probably the best Issi and Don have danced together so far: Issi finally had performance quality when not dancing in her genre and Don was dead on the beat throughout and not rushing. Both had a few weak bits – Issi mostly at the start, Don a bit after her – and the confidence was occasionally lacking (Jason’s comments about “finding Broadway versions of yourselves” was actually pretty brilliant) but on the whole this was danced reasonably well for something that’s about as far from being a formal genre as possible.

Jessica P. Ballroom and Heath: contemporary. Killed it, again – which is not surprising because these two have danced contemporary, jazz, one tango and now back to contemporary. I’d really like them to do anything else at this point, but I can’t say this wasn’t good.

Ivy and Robbie: paso doble. Okay, Robbie needs to have facial hair pretty much forever, because it ages him about five years. Actually, since he normally looks about fifteen, maybe ten years. Anyway, Jason Gilkison is brilliant, but even with Gilkison I was skeptical that a prop cape would fly. But it did, because he’s brilliant. This is Ivy’s second paso (I can’t remember the last time one dancer danced paso twice in a single season) and the improvement was massive; Robbie finally danced well enough to convince me that he’s not just a great soloist. That double développé was fucking insane. Fantastic work.

Carly and Kieran: contemporary. Other than Calry maybe overemoting a bit in a couple of sequences, there’s nothing to say other than: yes, another excellent contemporary performance. See, this is the problem with recapping this show: so much of it is just good and there’s nothing for me to say except banana monkey hamburgers and pretend that it is meaningful.

Jessie Contemporary and Matt: jazz. Clever concept with a ton of character and danced excellently by both of them. I’d really like to point out that Jessie’s leaping split into the catch by Matt was a total moment of trust on her part, which says a lot about this partnership. (I know that this is a very SYTYCD Judge thing to say, but I’m not saying it about a basic lift but instead about a pretty difficult stunt. I don’t think, as Bonnie did, that Jessie outshined Matt; she had the showier role but Matt danced just as well as she did.

Renee and Phillipe: Viennese waltz. This started out with such pleasant chemistry, and indeed the chemistry was ridiculously good throughout: the looks on Renee’s and especially Phillipe’s faces were so amazingly genuine. In terms of character quality this was probably the best waltz SYTYCD has seen since Mark and Courtney’s in season four of the US show. Unfortunately, the dancing was clunky and clumsy and just plain bad, which was a massive disappointment; if it had been on par with the chemistry this would have been an incredible tour de force.

Jess H. Hip-Hop and Nick: hip-hop. My love for Tiana Canterbury knows no bounds, and especially for choreographing 90s-style hip-hop, which any hip-hop dancer who’s tried it can tell you is insanely difficult, and there were a few stretches in this routine where Nick especially was just falling behind and even Jess was clearly struggling to keep up. This isn’t to say that the routine wasn’t fun and danced relatively well, but in a field this strong it’s unfortunately second-class.

Top seven girls: Broadway. I would like to put “Cell Block Tango” on my list of Music I Never Want To Hear On This Show Ever Fucking Again. That is all.

Probable bottom three: Issi and Don, Jess and Nick, Renee and Phillipe.
Should go home: Issi and Don.
Will go home: Jess and Nick.

You know, it’s nice to know that Marc Thiessen is exactly the whiny, disingenuous little toad in desperate need of a cockpunching that I imagined him to be.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.