Rankin-Bass’ The Life And Adventures of Santa Claus, probably the best one they ever did. Parts 2-5 are on Youtube as well.

Top ten week! New partnerships! No new judges! Mollee still inexplicably present!

Noelle and Ryan: hip-hop and smooth waltz. And once again, Tabitha and Napoleon choreograph what’s pretty blatantly a jazz routine, throw in a couple of chest-pumps and HEY IT’S HIP-HOP NOW. It not being hip-hop aside, both Ryan and Noelle danced this quite well. Noelle’s facial expressions were not so nearly over-the-top as they were previously, and Ryan hit his beats much better than he did for that L’il C hip-hop a couple of week ago. (Then again, this was, as I have said, not really hip-hop.) This was okay for top ten, but it made me miss Shane Sparks. This show needs a hip-hop choreographer who will properly beat the shit out of their dancers.

The waltz was really lovely with one exception: Noelle was back to total show-face. She has this incredibly insincere dance-face that she just seems to drop into all the time, and it’s not anything like her normal smile, and it is maddening because it’s this horrific “ahhhhh” face that almost always jars with her performance. (Compare to Kathryn’s facial expressions from last week during her waltz, which were so naturalistic one could not be blamed for thinking she and Legacy were really IN LURV.) However, Ryan’s technique was absolutely flawless in this and he had the bulk of the hard work, and other than her danceface Noelle carried her end of the load.

Noelle’s solo: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Ryan’s solo: Why didn’t he and Ashleigh just “solo” together?

Ashleigh and Legacy: contemporary and hip-hop. The contemporary – which was tremendous – reminded me of two moments from the first season of So You Think You Can Dance Australia. It reminded me of one routine Garry Stewart choreo’d for Demi and Jack, which was just as brutally tough and visibly difficult, and it reminded me of something Jason “Best SYTYCD Judge Ever” Coleman said of a Demi/Henry contemporary routine, where he astutely observed that Demi and Henry were both untrained dancers and that this meant that their tandem untrained leaps were perfectly in time with one another. I already thought Legacy could live up to this kind of pressure: I’m surprised that Ashleigh did as well as she did. I really liked this.

The hip-hop was one of Dave Scott’s more noticeable flops, choreography-wise, and the judges were right to criticize it. Of course, this had more dancing than a lot of the routines certain dancers got in past weeks (COUGH COUGH NATHAN AND MOLLEE COUGH COUGH WHEEZE), and any number of choreographers have bombed worse than Dave Scott did this time out, but Legacy and Ashleigh were probably supposed to be quick eliminations rather than lasting dancers (read: contemporary) so can you really blame the judges for taking this opportunity to push their agenda?

Ashleigh’s solo: Yeah, why didn’t she and Ryan just “solo” together? This would have been the perfect opportunity.
Legacy’s solo: Holy shit, that was fucking artistry right there. Goddamn. That was a tiny slice of brilliance.

Kathryn and Nathan: Broadway and rhumba. Hey, they split up Nathan and Mollee and gave them the most popular partners each of them could get! I am shocked. Cynicism aside, though, this was actually pretty goddamned great: Nathan finally entertained me for the first time all season (heck, finally convinced me he deserves to be on the show) and Kathryn was as good as she always is. And their chemistry was great, Nigel Doesn’t Know Fuck-All About Chemistry Lythgoe. Just because Kathryn is not blonde with big tits doesn’t mean she doesn’t connect to her partner.

The rhumba was… yeah. Technically okayish for Nathan, thoroughly decent for Kathryn (not her best performance but nonetheless a good one). But I was amazed when Nigel not only criticized Tony and Melanie for a boring routine, but also pointed out that Nathan had his lips pursed bizarrely through the entire routine, making it look like something out of an SNL sketch or something. Shankman (who loves everybody!) explains that Nathan is a “polarizing” dancer because he is “young” and “a bit out there.” No, Adam, Nathan is a polarizing dancer because he spent the first five weeks of the show dancing mostly badly and getting applause from you for it.

Kathryn’s solo: Perfectly acceptable contemporary solo, nothing new under the sun but nothing bad.
Nathan’s solo: Dynamic and exciting and frankly really impressive, and if he survives tonight it’s because of this solo.

Ellenore and Jakob: quickstep and jazz. I didn’t quite get the praise for the quickstep that the judges felt the need to heap on it. It was okay, sure, but there have been many better quicksteps and this one reeked of the boringness Tony and Melanie so often bring to their non-Latin choreo. Technically proficient, about as thrilling as mayonnaise. Jakob and Ellenore were both fine in this, although I didn’t get much chemistry from them: they both danced well and partnered well and Jakob especially seemed to not care whom he was paired with.

The jazz was fucking brilliant, even if once or twice it felt a bit Sonya-ish in a predictable way. Nuff said.

Ellenore’s solo: Distinctive and cool, albeit a bit sloppy in parts, but the ending was neat.
Jakob’s solo: Fantastic, but every choreographer uses everything he did in that solo, so it lacked novelty.

Mollee and Russell: jazz and jive. At some point Mandy Moore will escape the 80s and I will no longer have the opportunity to make fun of her for that, and I will be sad. Now that Mollee is paired with someone who can actually, like, lift her worth a damn, she looks a lot better all of a sudden, but the thing to watch here was Mollee’s total lack of performance: she was doing moves, nothing more than that. Good moves, to be sure, but moves, rather than dancing. Not that this stopped the judges from tonguebathing, or Nigel from once again pretending that Russell is some untrained caveman fucking stop that shit Lythgoe. (Russell was really quite good, both in technique and performance quality, but Jesus Christ am I sick of this shit.)

The jive was good choreo plus good dancing from Russell plus a log. Guess who the log was. Seriously, in a routine with a supposedly trained contemporary dancer and a krumper, who would you think would do a side aerial? It was Russell! But seriously: Mollee was stiff for good chunks of this routine and didn’t have nearly as much to do as her partner did. Nigel gets the biggest laugh of the night when he claims Mollee is a good “performer.” Whatever, Nigel.

Mollee’s solo: She’s usually given good solos if nothing else, but this was terrible: frenetic and desperate and sloppy.
Russell’s solo: Fucking tremendous. Seriously. Holy shit, that was a goddamned dominant solo. No better way to describe it than that.

Should go home: Mollee and Nathan.
Will go home: Ashleigh and Nathan.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

So far the revival of V has been fairly reliably dull and nonsensical, but this week’s episode brought the first throw-the-remote moment when Our Heroes discover that a key part of the alien invaders’ plan is… flu shots. In what may be the most needlessly convoluted plan in the history of convoluted plans, the Visitors, or “Vs” because apparently “Visitors” takes too long to say (and just FTR, Internet, it’s not “V’s”; learn to pluralize correctly and keep that apostrophe in its holster) introduce some sort of vitamin shot that promises to do all kinds of wonderful things. Our Heroes naturally are suspicious, but discover that the miracle drug is in fact just a blind for the real threat: a chemical to be added to flu vaccine that causes people to die horribly (and I mean horribly: the “test subjects” look like they’ve suffered spontaneous combustion, not a bad drug reaction.) Of course, it seems likely that after the first couple of deaths a) the contaminant will be discovered and b) people will stop getting flu shots, meaning that at best this whole elaborate plan will kill a few dozen people. Or is it actually an insidious alien plot to spread the flu and increase absenteeism, thereby hurting our productivity at this already fragile economic time?

To be honest I don’t really care, and I’m already bored of talking about V. What does interest me is the persistent fascination with vaccines among conspiracy theorists of all stripes. It’s the one thing paranoid right-wingers and paranoid left-wingers have in common: a conviction that vaccination is somehow bad, though the reasons why it’s bad vary somewhat. Now, of all the health innovations of the last few hundred years, vaccines and antibiotics have to be pretty near the top in terms of improving public health (general  antiseptics and reliable supplies of clean drinking water would be the only competition I can think of.) Vaccines are probably the more important of the two because antibiotics are primarily of use in a) curing venereal disease and b) surviving trauma and surgery — both worthy causes, but not really that significant on a population-wide scale. If you want evidence, look at the Spanish conquest of North America: the conquistadors had been more-or-less inoculated against smallpox (mostly by having survived it as children, or being exposed to it and developing antibodies while reacting asymptomatically), while the defenceless Aztecs died by the millions. Or look at the persistent use of milkmaids as icons of beauty in Western art: it’s not just because they look so fetching covered in cow manure, it’s because exposure to cowpox protected them from smallpox and the associated “small pocks” that marred the face of nearly every other person in Europe. (Next time you’re reading one of those epic fantasy novels with the embossed covers, try to imagine every single character’s face with little scars, pits and boils. Your desire for time-travel will drop substantially.)

So what is it about vaccines? Why are people so willing to believe anything bad about them, no matter how flimsy or nonexistent the evidence? (There have, it’s true, been a small number of bad or tainted vaccines distributed, but on average vaccines are still much safer than, say, cars or hamburgers.) Some of it is probably just reflexive post-’60s anti-authoritarianism — if the government, or doctors, or scientists, or any other authority figure wants you to do something, it must be bad — but vaccines are a special case. (We don’t see a similar resistance to antibiotics, for instance; in fact parents insist on getting antibiotics prescribed for children’s ear infections even though the evidence shows they have no positive effect whatsoever and help spread antibiotic resistance in bacteria.) The method of delivery no doubt has a role to play as well: taking a pill has little emotional resonance, but having something injected into you has an instinctive ick factor, with connotations of violence, poisoning and penetration. But the biggest reason, I think, is the power dynamic involved. Even though a doctor prescribes antibiotics, we control the act of ingesting them. Vaccines, on the other hand, are administered to us — and for most of us, our main experience with inoculations is as children. What inspires more terror in an elementary school than “shot day”? Unlike visits to the dentist, which are a solitary trauma, inoculations are often done in large groups, encouraging an “us” versus “them” feeling. Just as children fantasize that their real parents will someday whisk them away to the life of splendour and luxury they deserve, or that ice cream will eventually be deemed healthy and spinach poison, so too do we find it easy to believe that this awful experience — given to us “for our own good,” like so many childhood horrors — is part of some evil plot. We knew it all along.

Your hosts are the usual gang of idiots. No, not Bill Gaines and Al Jaffee. That might have been entertaining, though.

Ellenore and Ryan: Lindy hop and Broadway. Lindy hop hasn’t been on the American show since season 3 when Lacey and Neil struggled through it in the final. This was better than that was, but also had less of the frenetic energy Lindy hop should have (if it doesn’t look like a pair of squirrels on crack, it’s not proper Lindy hop in my book) – it seemed to be danced about 4/5ths speed, perhaps. Ellenore blew a couple of spots but not too badly. Ryan nailed it. This was Perfectly Acceptable Dancing for a top 12 episode and I am not offended nor disappointed.

The Broadway was honestly just excellent. Ellenore’s freezes as her “doll” character were uniformly perfect (and make me wonder why her one stab at hip-hop so far was so weak) and so obviously and intently difficult that I don’t think it would be possible to be unimpressed with her work in this. Ryan had the unenviable job of being Less Showy Partner, even with his perma-devil-sneer, and carried it off with flair and skill.

Kathryn and Legacy: jazz and Viennese waltz. Sonya needs to just stop explaining her routines because it is all “whatever” and her descriptions inevitably have nothing to do with the actual dancing. They could just record her saying “I got high last week on shrooms and this is what I dreamt” and play it before every single routine she choreos and that would be fine. Kathryn and Legacy danced this superbly and anybody complaining that Legacy got to show off some of his moves in the routine needs to shut up because I have lost count of the number of times a jazz or contemporary dancer has had the opportunity to do a jete or pirouette in a hip-hop routine for absolutely no good reason other than “they look good doing it.” Mary Murphy demonstrates that she knows absolutely dick about hip-hop by not knowing the name of a basic hand crabwalk. (It’s not some particularly etoseric B-boy move. It’s a friggin’ crabwalk.)

First off about the waltz: motherfuck can Jean-Marc crush it with the choreo or what? (The answer is “yes he can crush it.”) That was gorgeous, sweeping choreo that served to disguise a lot of Legacy’s mistakes – which, honestly, weren’t nearly so bad as half a dozen waltzes they’ve applauded. His footwork was occasionally clumsy, his rise-and-fall inconsistent – but in both these cases the knowledge was obviously there and it appears to only be a matter of requiring more practice rather than straight inability. Kathryn was just about perfect. And their chemistry was spot-on: I would put these two on par with Brandon and Jeanette from last season for chemistry as partners.

Karen and the VCTR-9000 Calibrated Dance Unit: tango and hip-hop. The judges praised Victor and Karen’s chemistry in the tango for reasons I don’t quite understand, on the basis that there was none. For the most part, Victor and Karen danced this superbly on a technical basis (Mary specifically praised the final promenade, and I though Victor was kicking up his knees far, far too much – but that’s a minor quibble), but this was the opposite of hot – this was so icy it was practically polar. Presumably Victor’s circuits extrapolated the most logical sequence by which one would dance a tango and stopped before somebody asked him “what – is – love” so he was able to continue.

LaurieAnn Gibson contributes a hip-hop routine, by which I mean something that was not even remotely hip-hop: not the music, not the moves, nothing. It was a jazz piece and the show’s continuing desperation to disguise the fact that they’ve alienated more than a few hip-hop dancers reached new heights. Karen and Victor danced this about as well as it could be danced, but it was weak choreo. Of course, the routine fulfilled its purpose, which was to provide an excuse to pitch Karen and her robot buddy should they hit bottom three, which they likely will. Because god forbid we boot Nathan and Mollee.

Mollee and Nathan: “hip-hop” and can-can. You know, every week I wonder if this is going to be the week Mollee and Nathan are not bad, and it never, ever happens. The hip-hop was about what you’d expect: dumbed down (given their repeatedly demonstrated inability to master choreo, this routine – like most of theirs – had a lot of basically standing around and jiggling) and more whitebread than High School Musical, and frankly that’s unfair to Zac Efron, given that he can actually hit a beat. All three judges admitted that this was basically bad, but still said straight-up that they loved them anyway because, whatever, it’s only a competitive reality show where people are supposed to be judged on quality and stuff.

The cancan was actually a really fun bit of choreography from Tasty Oreo and probably the best these two have been, which is to say: Nathan was decent. Mollee was almost tolerable. Together, they managed to take a bunch of ruffle-flipping and pretend it was real dancing! Okay, so I am harsh, but you don’t get to complain about the routine being super-tiring when there’s so much “stand and shake ruffle” in it. Regardless, it was not-bad enough that now Nigel has an excuse to put them through to the top ten, which is all he really wanted anyway. Perhaps Nathan will be better with another partner. I don’t think it’s possible that Mollee will be. Regardless, these two have easily become the worst pairing in SYTYCD history on the basis of sheer longevity.

Noelle and Russell: samba and contemporary. The samba really exposed Russell’s weaknesses as a dancer. This is not to say that he was bad – he was okay – but he is simply not strong enough, at least in this style, to carry someone who is dancing badly and make the routine enjoyable. And Noelle was dancing really, really badly: her footwork was laboured and, stage-grin aside, she clearly wasn’t into the spirit of the dance. If Russell had been paired with, say, Karen or even Kathryn, I think this would have been decent. As it was, however, this was quite weak. (Nigel once again goes into the “I can’t believe you haven’t had any lessons Russell” bullshit, which is so patronizing that at this point it is bordering on slightly racist.)

The contemporary was very good (Tasty is so much better when he’s not doing crappy Broadway) and the only complaint I could make is that Nigel had to interject a bit of the old-fashioned Nigel Lythgoe Brand Of Creepy when he was commenting.

Ashleigh and Jakob: jazz and cha-cha. The jazz was fine. I think it was overpraised: it didn’t seem to have any point other than that Jakob can do really amazing things with his legs, but frankly anybody watching him dance previously would have known that. Ashleigh was as basically average as she always is: not bad, not great. I have nothing else to say about this piece because we all know that Ashleigh and Jakob are making top ten easy.

The cha-cha was really good (one of the low points of the Canadian SYTYCD is that we never get to see Jean-Marc do choreo there), not only for the novelty of seeing Ashleigh dance better than Jakob for once but also because it was genuinely great. Jakob could have danced a little lower to the ground, to be certain, but he nailed his footwork and his exaggerated cha-cha face wasn’t self-parodic, so it’s easy to forgive the fact that Ashleigh was leading for most of the routine.

Probable bottom three: Karen and Victor, Mollee and Nathan, Noelle and Russell.
Should go home: Mollee and Nathan.
Will go home: Karen and Victor.

Blah blah weekly TV column blah blah Torontoist.

This current season of Survivor is shaping up to be one of the best in a long time, and it is mostly because of the presence of Russell. Russell is a bit of a sociopath – he secretly tortures other tribe members in the hopes that they will get emotionally insecure, and has absolutely zero loyalty to anybody in the game at all. Despite this, he seems like a good sort of a guy: he’s just taken the “I’m here to win, not to make friends” idea seriously.

But the reason Russell makes this season so good is that he’s illustrating a simple fact: most of the people who go on Survivor fall into two camps, namely wannabe actors/models looking to raise their profile and become the next Elizabeth Hasselbeck,1 and fans of the show who want to experience Survivor and play the game, and generally speaking none of them are any good at the game. Watching Survivor is often an exercise in frustration: it’s like watching a game of football where two members of one team are resolute in the belief that in order to score they must run backwards, and another who thinks that the opponent’s 10 is actually where they score the touchdown.

Russell isn’t like that. Russell realized right from the start that the rules of Survivor are largely in people’s heads.

Consider the immunity idols. Russell has been portrayed by the show as some sort of devious genius for finding two immunity idols without so much as a single clue. But it’s not rocket science. Russell himself explained the thought process: the immunity idols are usually around camp and within spitting distance of something that can serve as a landmark for people looking for the idol.2 Russell applied this theory, looked around camp, found visually noteworthy elements of the camp (first a craggy tree, and then a bridge), and searched, and found the idols. Granted, the magic of editing made what probably took a few hours look instead like the snap of fingers, but the principle is solid.

But why is Russell the first to do this? Because nobody else thought to do it. It doesn’t matter that the immunity idols are arguably the biggest asset anyone can have in this game, because everybody playing prior to Russell had internalized a rule which didn’t exist: You’re Not Allowed To Look For An Immunity Idol Without A Clue. Russell understood what nobody else did: not having a clue didn’t mean you couldn’t search for a hidden immunity idol. It just meant you’d have a harder time of it. Of course, that nobody would think of this before isn’t surprising, because as said: most people who play Survivor aren’t any good at it.

Witness Dave, the hairy ponytailed guy whose smug grin as his tribe of Galu won challenge after challenge was wholly undeserved, because Dave A) wasn’t actually helping anybody win anything, because he’s not a very physically skilled guy, and B) because Dave, like most of his tribe, is an idiot. Dave’s sense of Survivor gameplay is borderline disabled: after the merge, at one point he was suggesting that in order to avoid an immunity idol countering their elimination, they should divide up their votes equally and vote for two people so that they’d be sure to eliminate somebody.3 John, the only player on Galu who actually knows how to play the game,4 had to point out to Dave that they had six people, and if they divided their votes three and three to prevent immunity idol use, the four remaining members of the old Foa Foa tribe would simply all vote in a bloc as planned and Galu would win easily. (For this bit of obviousness, Dave now calls John, with absolutely no irony whatsoever, “the numbers guy.”)

But it gets better. Dave’s plan to keep Russell from getting another immunity idol this week? Follow him everywhere! (How this would stop Russell from getting the idol is beyond me. I suppose this way, at least Dave would know about it.) Now, obviously this is the wrong plan. The right plan – given that Dave knew exactly as much as Russell did about where the next immunity idol was – would be to search for the immunity idol himself, which would give him at least 50:50 odds of finding it versus Russell. But Dave instead relied on his “follow Russell” plan, which backfired because Russell, despite looking like a fat cabbie, is actually in good shape and went for a run, winding Dave and losing him. Then Russell went back to somewhere Dave had searched, but not very carefully, and found his third immunity idol.

Of course, Russell’s problem now isn’t that he’s good at the game, but that he’s visibly good at it. People who are visibly good at Survivor have to be very careful, or stupid players will start considering them “threats,” not realizing that somebody has to go with you to final tribal council. The previews for next week’s episode seem to hint that Jaison (a below-average player who thinks he’s smarter than he is) and Shambo (an above-average backstabber) are going to turn on Russell and try to blindside him. This is stupid – there is nobody you want at final tribal council more than Russell, because Russell has thus far engineered the elimination of every single member of the jury and has only the “you have to respect a great player” argument to try and win the million dollars, which historically does not work that well when compared to “hey, I might have voted you out, but you really hate this other guy more than me, huh?”

I hold out hope that Russell survives to the end. Good play is so rare in Survivor that it’s really a treat when it comes along: being able to watch this show and not feel chagrin at players’ horrible strategy is a nice change of pace.

1. Now, in fairness, Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a horrible, horrible person. But she is rich. [↩]
2. To this I would add: “and sometimes they’re buried, and those are the hardest immunity idols to find – but there’s no beach this season for Survivors to dig in, so the odds that they are buried are very low.” [↩]
3. Rather obviously copying the strategy of Yul back in Survivor: Cook Islands, except that in that case Yul A) had the numbers and B) was not a dumbass, but rather a brilliant player in the Russell mold. Additional fun fact about Yul: he is now a Deputy Chief at the FCC. [↩]
4. He’s sort of a proto-Russell, in that he recognizes the hard realities of vote numbers and basic strategy, but has yet to go beyond to disobey the “unwritten rules.” He also isn’t quite confident enough yet: witness this week, where he tried to play chicken with a potential tie and bailed. [↩]

Last week, as you may have heard, Fox cancelled Dollhouse. Also last week, as you probably didn’t hear, whatever network aired Hank cancelled it too. Neither was a surprise: they were both solidly bottom-of-the barrel performers — Dollhouse was considered a worse bet than reruns of House to run during Sweeps Week, while Hank was frequently outperformed by its competition on Spanish-language networks. What ought to be a surprise is the reaction each received: the end of Dollhouse resulted in anguished howls that reverberated across the Internet and all the spheres of nerd-dom, while Hank‘s cancellation was received by a chorus of crickets.

The easy answer, of course, is that Dollhouse was a good show while Hank sucked. But presumably the people who were watching Hank didn’t think it sucked, and on average about twice as many people watched Hank as Dollhouse (though the two were on different nights, so the comparison isn’t entirely fair.) So our question remains: why were Dollhouse fans so much noisier about its cancellation, and about the show in general, than Hank‘s fans? The answer, I think, is in the phrasing: the people watching Hank were really just viewers, while the people watching Dollhouse were fans.

“Fan” is short for “fanatic,” of course, and the qualities that distinguish fans from viewers do have some similarities to fanaticism. Fans, in general, have a personal investment in whatever text it is they are fans of: they feel pleasure when other people recognize its quality (and pain when others criticize it), they care strongly about the narrative, they think about the text when not consuming it (sometimes to the point of wanting to be part of its creation), and they identify personally with its success or failure. All of these are similar to how one relates to, say, a political philosophy or religion.

What’s interesting is that while just about all religions or philosophies have attracted their fanatics, only certain texts have typically attracted fans: what are called (by non-fans) “genre” texts and, in general, the most marginalized and despised of those genres — science fiction, fantasy and their adjacent genres such as superheroes. That marginalization probably has something to do with the strength of fan-feeling — we define ourselves as much by what we’re not as by what we are, and shared exclusion can create a strong bond — but that’s obviously not all there is to it, or we’d be swimming in Gilligan’s Island fanfic. Another factor is probably the unreality of these genres, which provides the audience with “blank spaces” they’re invited to fill. Star Trek, for example — really the classic fan-text — provided next to no detail about its universe beyond what was absolutely necessary for the story, which led to endless speculation and discussion about just how many moons Vulcan has and what happened to Kirk’s nephew and so on. More importantly, it’s impossible to treat an SF or fantasy story as a “found object”; its unreality means someone must have written it. That may explain why I’ve never met anyone who read science fiction or fantasy fan who didn’t also want to write it, at least in passing.

For a long time mass media, and TV in particular, valued viewers over fans: a show that makes fans is, by its nature, harder for the casual viewer to get into, and therefore, all else being equal, will be watched by fewer people. But recently that trend has been reversed: with new distribution channels (particularly DVD sets) and increased competition from other media, the greater commitment that fans bring makes them worth more as consumers than simple viewers, which has led to the inclusion of fandom-generating elements such as continued stories in non-genre shows. As well, the Internet has made it much easier to connect with other fans of the same show, which has had the interesting result of creating fandoms for shows that traditionally wouldn’t have them. (The prime example of this is Mad Men, which has reached some kind of pop culture singularity where there are more people discussing it online than actually watch it.) It’s an odd and perhaps surprising phenomenon — I don’t know about you, but I threw up a little in my mouth when I learned there was such as thing as House fanfic — but it reveals just why a classic laugh-track, always-return-to-the-status-quo sitcom like Hank was such a dinosaur, and died so completely unmourned.

But, you ask, what does all this have to do with Being Erica? Okay, few of you — all right, none of you — are asking that, and probably most of you don’t even know what I’m talking about. For those among us from south of the border, Being Erica is basically My Name is Earl done as science fiction: the title character meets a mysterious “therapist,” Dr. Tom, who has her write down a list of regrets and lets her travel back in time to revisit each one, trying to make it better. Except that not only is it not called science fiction, the early promotional material insisted that it was not science fiction. I can only assume this was for the same reason that Margaret Atwood claims her books which clearly are SF aren’t: because many people, and in particular many women (the core target audience of both her books and Being Erica) simply won’t consider reading or viewing something if they think it’s SF. The result has been a tightrope walk, avoiding outright science fiction while providing fandom-inducing elements. This season has introduced a key one of those elements — a mythology, as we learn more about Dr. Tom, discover that there are other therapists like him, and that they have some sort of hierarchy — and I’m curious to see what effect this will have on the show’s already shaky ratings. In the first season Dr. Tom was really just a device, but with these added elements the show has moved clearly into the realm of the fantastic. If the conventional wisdom about women and SF is correct, it might just kill the show — but on the other hand, it could make it a show people will miss.

Tonight’s theme: kiddie pictures! For some reason.

Ashleigh and Jakob: hip-hop. Nabithleontabbywhatever are just ripping themselves off at a horrendous clip these days: I think their last three out of three routines now have featured that hunched-over high step and I was seeing entire patterns of hand movements and thinking “I have seen that before, and I don’t mean in a generic sense but those specific movements in their other routines.” Jakob nailed this, however, so I am not entirely ungenerous. Ashleigh started out really, really sloppy (horrendously off-beat and weak sauce on the beats) but after about twenty seconds really settled into a decent groove and became quite watchable. She is still the Kameron to his Lacey, though.

Karen and Kevin: Broadway. This was honestly very weak (I mean, when you can’t get an audience of tweenage girls to scream at least once during your routine, you know it’s weak). Kevin looked terrified yet again and his performance was almost nonexistent as a result (and his technique was crap, even for someone with his dancing background). Karen was at best middling: I can forgive the lack of extension that only classical training or exceptional strength could really provide, but her performance quality was average and nothing more.

Russell and… uh… gimme a sec… oh right, Noelle: foxtrot. Russell’s first foxtrot was actually quite acceptable by this show’s standards but this was just an improvement by any measure: better technique, better sense of the dance itself, more comfortable. Genuinely good. Generic Female Dancer was Generic Female Dancer: perfectly acceptable within the parameters of her skillset, about as memorable as taupe. No, as memorable as the concept of taupe.

Channing and Victor: jazz. Tasty Oreo is so much more enjoyable when he is not doing horrible Broadway choreo: I really liked the choreo in this piece a lot. Channing and Victor danced it quite well from a technical standpoint: I am hardpressed to point to a single mistake. That having been said, the utter soullessness of their respective performances was horrific. They might as well have been robots set to “enjoy self while dancing” – there was no sense of character at all, and they were given obvious – stunningly easy – characters to work with. I found myself simultaneously fascinated and bored.

Kathryn and Legacy: paso doble. I really, really wanted this to be good, but unfortunately for Legacy a furrowed brow alone does not constitute proper paso attitude: his movements were all too often tentative rather than forceful, cautious rather than fiery, and Kathryn frequently appeared to be leading him during the piece – in the dance where above all the male partner has to take the lead. This is not to say that the seeds of promise are not there for Legacy’s ballroom skills, but at best they are only seeds this time around. Kathryn, on the other hand, was holy shit awesome in this and I will brook no dissent on that fact.

Ellenore and Ryan: contemporary. Probably the first routine from Travis that didn’t feel like he was just aping Mia Michaels again, and definitely the best one he’s done so far. Ellenore’s lines in this were just staggering – beautiful and precise and clean and smooth all at once. Just fucking amazing dancing. Ryan wasn’t quite at Ellenore’s level, of course, but he was damned good in this and his strength at partnering really made the piece come together as a whole. (Nigel says that Ryan is the best ballroom dancer ever to do contemporary, leading Pasha, Vincent, Heidi, Lacey and Chelsie all to simultaneously turn and say “wait, what?”)

Mollee and Nathan: dogshit pop/jazz. A major stinker of a routine from LaurieAnn Gibson this week, but maybe the producers of the show specifically told her to put together a routine with long stretches of very little movement so Mollee wouldn’t fuck it up. I mean, I can really see that happening. And yet, she was still bad, dancing like she was tired halfway through the routine after having next to no fucking dancing to do other than some little hand bobbles. Nathan was actually reasonably good in this despite the fact that he and Mollee have, like, negative chemistry, and of course this meant that the judges all went after him for not being great, because Mollee is Teh Chosen One and ne’er shall one speak badly of She Who Shall Pull The Suck From The Stone.

Probable bottom three: Karen and Kevin, Channing and Victor, Ashleigh and Jakob. (Mollee and Nathan should have the third spot. But they won’t.)
Should go: Channing and Kevin.
Will go: Channing and Victor.

My weekly TV column blah blah blah Torontoist.

This week: a thankful lack of begging for Paula Abdul’s horrific presence!

Karen and Kevin: hustle. Kevin’s performance here was certainly better than his dreadful first week cha-cha, but not nearly so good as to merit his congratulations from the judges: it was strictly technically acceptable and nothing more. His performance quality was lacking for me: the slow introduction was creaky and for a good chunk of the fast part of the dance, he looked terrified of screwing up. Mary says “it was like Karen was leading” and I am all “like?” because, you know, she was leading for practically the entire thing and it was obvious. Maybe I am being harsh here because Kevin really was much better than he was in week one. But then again, in week one he totally blew.

Ashleigh and Jakob: jazz. And I see it’s time for episode seventeen of “Mandy Moore Imagines What Her Prom Would Have Been Like In Her Dreams.” Seriously, Frankie Goes To Hollywood? That’s approaching self-goddamned-parody. That having been said, my reactions are twofold: 1.) the choreo for this routine was dramatically inferior to Mia Michaels’ superb cane routine from season one, and 2.) Jakob danced the motherfuck out of Mandy Moore’s relatively average choreography. Ashleigh was perfectly okay, but Jakob’s performance was just off the goddamn charts here: his character and elevation were just astounding. Dude is a contender, yo.

Pauline and Peter: quickstep. The first bit of this was a bit brutal, but about halfway through, Pauline and Peter really actually started to get into a good groove and their footwork actually really started to approach it being a decent quickstep. Not a perfect one, but a good one, especially by SYTYCD standards. Mary and Nigel naturally had to discuss all the little errors the two of them made because at this point they are deeply invested in the idea that quickstep is the hardest possible dance to execute on this show (which it isn’t, not even close – just because they give blowjobs to every shitty disco and krump that hits the stage doesn’t mean that the discos and krumps on this show aren’t largely shit) so they have to pontificate at length about how the dancers missed six billion tiny things.

Kathryn and Legacy: Broadway. I was gritting my teeth and preparing for Tasty, but instead I get Andy Ferrisbueller or something like that. I will take it happily. All three of the judges dinged Kathryn for being too cutesy, which is pretty much on point: she reminded me rather eerily of Betty Boop, and Betty Boop is kind of terrifying. Legacy was strong in this, albeit occasionally a bit stonefaced. I don’t think the judges mild criticisms were enough to stop the vote-juggernaut these two are forming.

Channing and Viktor: contemporary. “So let’s take two contemporary dancers and give them a contemporary routine by the best contemporary choreographer we’ve got available.” Although this routine was predictably excellent tecnically (although I think Stacey Tookey has about drained the “two lovers have a tumultuous relationship and one leaves at the end” well at this point), my antipathy for the obvious loading of the dice here is pointed. I mean, when Russell got to dance hip-hop they at least stuck him with a goddamn tennis racquet. Nigel, surprisingly, says what I thought he wouldn’t – that these two dance very well in their own style, but mostly emotionlessly and/or coldly. Which is mostly accurate.

Ellenore and Ryan: hip-hop. Mostly a toned-down krump, really. In any case: this was bad. The choreo was not bad, although now we can be sure that L’il C is of the “do the damn moves” school of hip-hop choreo rather than the “let’s be nice to everybody and do whatever and call it hip-hop” school that Nabitha and Tapoleon represent all too often. The dancing was bad. I don’t really have anything else to say: both Ellenore and Ryan were off-beat (and off-beat in different ways), neither of them hit their moves particularly hard (although Ellenore was a bit less worse than Ryan), and although the personality was there, nothing else was.

Mollee and Nathan: salsa. Oh my god, they finally get Gustavo MOTHERFUCKING Vargas on the American show, and he gives up some really great choreo, and they feed him to the vortex of suck that is Nathan and Mollee. It is like a cruel, cruel joke. This was so bad that the judges had to actually admit that it was terrible and Mollee and Nathan were terrible (although they rallied to say that they were fan favorites so it’s okay to vote for them even though they sucked, America!). Mollee is perhaps the most oversold dancer in the history of the entire show. Yes, even more than Lauren in season three.

Noelle and Russell: afro-jazz. SEAN CHEESEMAN IN THE FUCKING HOUSE oh man Canada is invading your HOUSE America and if you are not nice we will BURN IT DOWN just like in 1812. (Ahem.) Sean Cheeseman’s choreo was awesome as per usual. Russell goddamn sold it. Noelle… was okay. Not great. She is a fairly generic dancer, to be honest, and she was offbeat a couple of times – not much, but just enough to be noticeable. Nigel continues pretending that he is Michelle Pfeiffer and that Russell is all of the kids in Dangerous Minds, because Nigel is a patronizing asshole.

Probable bottom three: Mollee and Nathan, Ellenore and Ryan, Channing and Viktor.
Should go home: Mollee and Viktor.
Will go home: Channing and Viktor.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

As usual, your hosts are Nigel, Mary, Shankman, and the empty chair labeled “Paula Abdul.” (Nigel continues to be the only person in the world who thinks Paula Abdul would add anything to this show.) New stage: still sucks.

Russell and Noelle: hip-hop. Obviously a difficult routine (fast hip-hop, plus using props in unison? Ow), but let’s be honest: Russell absolutely killed this in all ways that it is possible to kill a routine like this. His moves were so clean and crisp – especially given the speed of the routine – that I was simply amazed. Noelle was okay, but she was not nearly good enough to justify keeping her from last week given her, you know, zero dancing, and more than a few times during this routine she just fell apart – including during the “here is a chance for you to do a cartwheel because you are a contemporary dancer” bit that was obviously there for her benefit rather than the entire dance’s.

Jakob and Ashleigh: Viennese waltz. Ashleigh was fine. Jakob’s carriage in this was terrible: he kept dancing on the tips of his toes for way too much of the routine and made steps that should have looked strong and forceful instead almost look prissy. Also, I am shocked, shocked, that Adam Shankman actually dared to give constructive criticism to a choreographer. That does not happen on this show, Adam Shankman!

Bianca and Victor: Broadway. Victor is all “this isn’t like my church, because nobody is calling me an evil homo sinner.” Victor danced the entire thing almost at half-speed. Bianca was better, but kept slowing down to match him. Hey, remember that time on Scrubs where J.D. imagined that Turk was a black preacher and they were all in church and then Turk started singing and they all started dancing? This was like that except not quite as entertaining. Tasty Oreo’s choreography was not at fault here and indeed I dare day that Tasty is reaching new heights of tolerability.

Mollee and Nathan: Bollywood. First thought: “hey, if they did all of Mollee and Nathan’s routines in silhouette, it might not look like they are twelve!” Second thought: Mollee is loosey-goosey in her movements and ahead of the beat for most of the routine. Third thought: none of this will matter because Mollee, like Kayla last season, can Do No Wrong, regardless of how much actual wrong she does or how much inability she demonstrates to dance her routines convincingly. Nathan, for his part, actually danced this quite convincingly and I was much more impressed with him this week than last.

Channing and Philip: samba. Both were clearly struggling with the lifts, but those were terrible lifts to insert into the routine: overly complex and looooong and not that good a payoff for the effort involved. I liked their basic dancing, though: I thought Channing in particular had really good hip-action when they were just dancing rather than doing fancy lifts, and Philip was all right although he could have danced more into the ground than he was doing. I think the lifts just wrecked this dance. Nigel stupidly claims that since Philip is a tap dancer, he should have been more able to dance samba. This is like me saying “since you are an auto mechanic, you should therefore be more able to cook a five-course meal.”

Karen and Kevin: hip-hop. This was excellent: Kevin was as predictably good at this as you might expect, but Karen was a standout, managing to do what a lot of non-hip-hop dancers just can’t do: make a Nappytabs routine look sick. (Of course, Kevin could do that as well, but unlike Karen, he wasn’t a surprise.) Incidentally, Adam Shankman’s bit of hammery aside, he is easily five times the judge Nigel or Mary are. Hell, he is five times the judge they are combined. Maybe ten. I am not sure what happened to Adam “I love everybody and you’re all the best” Shankman and where all this amazing constructive commentary came from, but I like New Adam Shankman heaps more.

Kathryn and Legacy: contemporary. I see Stacey Tookey before she’s even announced and immediately think “well, this should at least be watchable,” and was then pleasantly surprised beyond that as Kathryn and Legacy absolutely destroyed this. Legacy’s movement was simply amazing: his lines were clean and smooth, and sure maybe Stacey Tookey threw in a couple of parts where he could B-boy a bit, but if all contemporary dancers could move like B-boys, there’d be a lot more B-boying in contemporary choreography. Combine that with lightning-quick leaps and it made for a spectacular performance; Kathryn matched and exceeded him wherever she could. Wasn’t expecting much from these two initially: am more surprised with each dance.

Peter and Pauline: jazz. Wade Robson is insane, but we knew that already. This was not one of his huge artistic successes, to be honest, but it was interesting and that’s enough for me. Peter was really in the moment in this piece and fully embraced the character. Pauline was kind of there – nothing went wrong, but I think she was outdanced by Peter, and given their respective training that probably shouldn’t have happened.

Ellenore and Ryan: tango. I’m still on the fence as to whether this was slightly better than Brandon and Jeanette’s tango from season five, or very slightly less good, but it was really goddamn stupendous either way: a near-perfect connection and lines that were just superb on all levels, even considering the minor wardrobe malfunction. Mary explains that since Ryan is a Latin dancer, this really isn’t his thing, thus rendering Argentine tango into a non-Latin dance. Is Mary from Earth-2? That would explain a lot.

And then they send home Bianca and Philip and keep Victor and Noelle. Remember, kids, contemporary dancers can do anything and if you believe otherwise it is just your lying eyes.

Incidentally, the So you Think You Can Dance Social is running their second season of “Fantasy SYTYCD”, and I daresay I would have won the first time if I hadn’t predicted that Tara-Jean and Everett would get eliminated by top 14. (Curse you, Tara-Jean and Everett!) Anyhow, they’ve suggested they’d like to see an MGK.com “team,” so if you’re in the mood to play predictions, get thee hence and sign up.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.