Your guest judge is an empty chair with “Paula Abdul” on it. The new stage sucks. There’s no voting this week. HOW MANY MORE WAYS CAN THEY FIND TO BE WRONG?

Channing and Philip: jive. This was mediocre leaning towards bad, particularly in the case of Philip, who frankly should be better at jive: he was sucking wind at the end, his extensions were frankly crap (which given his tap background is really just… weird) and he looked nervous. Channing was actually much better than she got credit for being; her extensions were solid and she had much better performance quality than Philip. That having been said, the responsibility for nearly fucking up their big trick lies on both of them. For a first show, this was below average but not necessarily kiss of death. The judges actually make good comments, which blows me the fuck away.

Ashleigh and Jakob: Broadway. Tasty Oreo puts together a Broadway routine that isn’t grating? Hooray for small miracles. Honestly, this was probably one of the best Broadways Tasty has ever choreo’d (which is often damning with faint praise, but not this time). Jakob was astounding in this: his transitions were just seamless and his movement just goddamn sublime. Ashleigh was okay, which for working out of genre on week one is actually not that bad. This was reasonably good!

Arianna and Peter: hip-hop. That was one of the worst hip-hop performances on this show ever: an interesting core idea, executed about as badly as I have ever seen Napoleon and Tabitha (or pretty much anybody else) ever choreo a routine. (“Hey, I got an idea! Let’s have them stand over hunched for a few seconds and just flail!” “Awesome! You know what else would be good? Lots of dead time!” “We’re killing this shit!”) Arianna was off-beat frequently: Peter was much sharper (and had the harder part to perform), but given what crap he had to work with it’s hard to praise him even so.

Russell and Noelle Melanie LaPatin: foxtrot. And here is episode seven of the “Russell can do anything and make it look amazing” show, this week managing to do what Pasha couldn’t do in season three: dance with Melanie and make it look natural and real. (Okay, so it helps that this was a refined, charming routine that worked a lot better than the wild salsa they choreo’d for Pasha.) But in all seriousness, Russell was goddamned amazing – maybe not technically brilliant but certainly possessed of fantastic performance quality – and my only quibble is Nigel saying that Fred Astaire couldn’t or wouldn’t do krump, which is bull: Astaire (and Gene Kelly) lived for new types of dance, and were known in their seventies to go out on the street and cheer on breakdancers. If krump had been around in their prime, they would have krumped. I’ll bring this back to Russell now by saying that his effortlessness in this reminded me well of Astaire and Kelly, and he’s definitely a frontrunner at this point.

Bianca and Viktor: contemporary. Something about Travis’ choreo still doesn’t quite work for me: to me this felt a bit derivative, taking chunks out of Mia Michaels’ playbook (which, admittedly, is still stealing from the best). The judges fell over themselves to praise Viktor’s embrace of the character, which is weird to me because I thought he was almost soulless in his performance, dancing like a very technically brilliant robot, and that Bianca was the one really driving the connection and emotion of the piece home. But the dancing was strong and I can’t complain about it, really.

Karen and Kevin: cha cha. Karen’s performance quality was predictably very solid; Kevin’s was surprisingly disappointing. Adam Shankman calling the end lift “a little slow” is perhaps a bit of an understatement, as I stepped away from the screen to watch Titanic and read War and Peace and then came back and it was still going. Kevin’s legwork was practically nonexistent (lots of just “standing and letting Karen do things” moments); he started out reasonably well and then just went downhill, and he tried to make up for it with “Latin face” and didn’t really manage it. Bleh. (Also, “Push It” as sung by the cast of Glee? No.)

Ellenore and Ryan: jazz. Thankfully someone took Sonya aside and told her “look, stop trying to make people be sexy, and just do dances based on your last D&D campaign like we pay you to do,” and she did. And this is fine, because she is great at that. This was really cool; Ryan and Ellenore have a good partnership here, and both danced it quite well. The tricks were all pulled off quite well (although they were more predictable than Mary thought, but then again Mary is easily surprised). I quite liked this.

Brandon and Pauline: smooth waltz. I really think the judges overcritiqued this if anything, because Brandon and Pauline had great chemistry, good lines and reasonably good rise and fall. For a day and a half’s worth of practice I think they did just fine; there have been many, many waltzes on this show that were worse than this. Many, many waltzes, and they got blowjobs from the judges all the same.

Katherine and Legacy: hip-hop. I love Dave Scott’s choreo – he’s original and fresh and does indeed have a clever sense of humour. That having been said, this wasn’t my favourite of his pieces. It wasn’t a bad piece by any means, and I thought Legacy and Katherine did a good job with it – not nearly as hard-hitting as it could have been (and dare I say the lack of hip-hop judging on this show is distressing – three judges with no hip-hop training telling us how good or bad a piece of hip-hop is? Yeeesh), but good enough and certainly better than most of season five’s hip-hop. There’s just been, you know. Better.

Mollee and Nathan: disco. Ugh. The first twenty seconds or so of this were actually really great, and I was thinking, hey, maybe Doriana Sanchez hasn’t laid yet another egg. And in fairness, I don’t think I can blame her entirely for this mess, which they did not pull off no matter how much the judges want them to succeed (and if there’s another couple getting more obvious judge-jobs than these two, I dunno who they are). After that first twenty seconds, they screwed up a lift, then came out of the lift sloppy with bad footwork, then did another lift poorly, then more bad footwork… ugh. What a goddamn mess.

And then the judges nominate Arianna, Pauline, Brandon, and Russell for some reason that makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever. And of course it’s Brandon going home because duh. And Arianna, whatever.

THREE EXAMPLES OF SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE‘S BRILLIANT “FIX WHAT ISN”T BROKEN” STRATEGY

1.) The new stage, which is large, impersonal, with a dark background so the dancers tend to fade into the background if not lit exactly right (and it’s hard to light constantly moving people exactly right) and difficult for the cameramen to shoot well, and lacks the balcony/stairwell that so many choreographers have used to good effect

2.) Switching the format so the top 20 and top 18 eliminations aren’t done by phone-in vote, but instead solely by the judges, which of course forces one to ask as to why they had anything but a top 16 in the first place

3.) Begging Paula Abdul to come on the show because god knows I need to see a washed-up drunken “celebrity” on my teevee

Is there a master plan here? Because seriously, I don’t see it.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Blake and Luther, unsurprisingly, are judges for top 4 night.

All four: cabaret. Bland Tony-n-Mel ™ routine that was pretty straightforward and therefore should have been pretty easy for the dancers to execute, which makes Everett’s weak performance here all the more glaring.

Vincent and Everett: hip-hop. Everett kicked it up a notch towards the end, which made him tolerable. Vincent was bad throughout this entire piece. I am out of synonyms for “bad” now so I will stop. It was bad on all levels, even after the fairly obvious breaks Sho-Tyme inserted into the routine to let them do “hey”-waves at the crowd and have a few seconds’ worth of not dancing. This wasn’t close to top 4 quality; this wasn’t even close to top 20 quality.

Tara-Jean and Everett: jazz. This was genuinely quite lovely and an excellent final effort from Sean Cheeseman, who’s had a great season. Everett was a forklift for large chunks of this, but at least he wasn’t a bad forklift. Tara-Jean was excellent. These two still have great chemistry, which is the only reason I think they survived the early rounds (well, that and the “they’re both from small towns” factor, which in Canada means “more votes”).

Tara-Jean and Jayme-Rae: mambo. Interesting to see them give the all-girl pairing a ballroom number, and I like the experimentation, but it came off a lot as “two girls doing the girl half of ballroom” rather than a pairing proper. Performance quality from both girls was excellent: timing, less so, as Tara-Jean frequently jumped ahead of the beat and Jayme-Rae fell behind it more than once.

Jayme-Rae and Vincent: contemporary. Stacey Tookey can do no wrong (or at least has not done so yet in two seasons plus a couple of American appearances). This was intensely sexy and danced just about flawlessly by both Vincent and Jayme-Rae; Vincent in particular deserves kudos given his lack of formal training, but Jayme-Rae’s pure sultriness is likewise deserving of mention. Just fantastic.

Tara-Jean and Vincent: hustle. At first I was all “oh god Melissa Williams” but then it turned out it was the person who choreo’d Kameron and Lacey’s hustle from season three, and that is just fine. As was this: Tara-Jean started out very weak in ballroom (which this basically is) on this show, but improved dramatically over the course of the show, and Vincent is Vincent and kills ballroom every time.

Jayme-Rae and Everett: samba. Well, if you wanted proof that Everett doesn’t belong in the top four (heck, the top ten), this is it: he was absolutely terrible in this. Just awful: stiff, awkward, barely coordinated, lacking rhythm… you name a common dance flaw and Everett exhibited it in this. Jayme-Rae was very good and made the piece watchable: she commanded attention with good technique and flair, and for the most part got it, but even she couldn’t save that horrible bridge where Everett had the tricky leg lift he really, really couldn’t do, no matter how much Tre claims otherwise.

Solos: All the usual stuff, except for Jayme-Rae, who almost stole one of Jeanine Mason’s solos outright.

First through fourth should be: Jayme-Rae, Vincent, Tara-Jean, Everett.
First through fourth will be: Tara-Jean, Vincent, Jayme-Rae, Everett.

Not as bland as season 5 (AKA “So You Think You Can Dance Contemporary And Not Much Else”), but still – it seems more than ever that female hip-hop dancers are effectively dead on this show, despite that whenever they make it top top 20 they invariably do reasonably well. (Comfort top 8 season four, Sara top 6 season three, Donyelle top 4 season 2, et cetera). I suppose that “only” eleven contemporary dancers is about as low as the show is willing to go.

I was kind of rooting for vaguely-Hispanic-looking-guy-with-moustache – I really liked his Broadway performance from last week and knew he was a hip-hop dancer – but I guess they felt they’d been adventurous enough putting through Russell, Kevin and Legacy, to say nothing of three tap dancers. (Speaking of tap dancers, what is all this “first tapper in So You Think You Can Dance” business? Sandra from season 1 was a tapper. Have we all erased her from show memory now?)

EDIT TO ADD: Oh, yeah, and there’s no way Russell doesn’t have some formal training. I’m laying odds on another Joshua-style “he’s an untrained dancer! If you don’t count the dance camps as training.”

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

A RANKING OF ALL TWENTY “TREEHOUSE OF HORROR” SIMPSONS EPISODES BY QUALITY

20.) Treehouse of Horror XVIII. “E.T. Go Home” is one of the least impressive Kang/Kodos stories; it’s forced and relies a lot on the fact that everybody loves Kang and Kodos (or, in this case, pretty much just Kodos). “Mr. and Mrs. Simpson” is just another parody of a bit of pop-culture ephemera well past its time (over two years after Mr. and Mrs. Smith came out in theatres) and not a particularly great one, although not offensive. “Heck House” is just boring and not funny and relies too much on viewer knowledge to even be decent, let alone good.

19.) Treehouse of Horror XVI. “I’ve Grown A Costume On Your Face” is a very slightly more passable rework of “Island of Dr. Hibbert,” but it still mostly sucks – and the “what if people were their Halloween costumes” idea isn’t particularly original or fresh at this point, to say the least. “Survival Of The Fattest” – with Mr. Burns hunting down all the losers of Springfield for sport – is a reasonably good entry, with funny violent gags and a basic idea that actually makes sense for The Simpsons. However, “Bartificial Intelligence” is weak, weak sauce – both because it parodies A.I. (wow, there’s a cultural touchstone) and because it has a super-pathetic twist ending to cover up the lack of an ending to the bad original gag story idea.

18.) Treehouse of Horror XVII. “Married to the Blob” is like all the fat jokes The Simpsons normally does, except cranked up to eleven in terms of emphasis and three in terms of funny. “You Gotta Know When To Golem” isn’t a bad entry by any means: it’s a perfectly serviceable “celebrity guest appearance” segment for “Treehouse” and Fran Drescher showing up as the second golem is pretty brilliant. However, “The Day The Earth Looked Stupid” is both incredibly forced and just plain insulting to one’s intelligence – the Iraq War metaphor is both forced and kind of stupid, and it wasn’t even a good vignette to begin with.

17.) Treehouse of Horror XX. “Dial M For Murder Or Press # to Return to the Main Menu” is a loose collection of Hitchock references in search of something approaching humour which fails tremendously. “There’s No Business Like Moe Business” is a weird and frankly indulgent riff on Sweeney Todd that tries to be meta-comedy and similarly fails tremendously. Luckily, “Don’t Have A Cow, Mankind” is probably the strongest zombie story the show’s done in a very long time – a bit of a silly ending, but when Apu gets frustrated as the Simpsons drive off without him, it’s pretty damn funny.

16.) Treehouse of Horror XIV. “Reaper Madness,” with Homer taking over as Death, has some really inspired – even brilliant – gags, but unfortunately has a really weak ending in the standard “well, what now” mold (Homer evades the wrath of God on a motorcycle somehow). “Frinkenstein” earns points for having Jerry Lewis play Frink Senior, but even for a “Treehouse” story the plot really makes no sense and it similarly just kind of peters out. “Stop The World, I Want To Goof Off” is a riff on Clockstoppers, no matter much how Wikipedia might claim it’s inspired by a Twilight Zone storyline, and is about what you would expect from that.

15.) Treehouse of Horror XIII. “The Island of Dr. Hibbert” is one of the worst “Treehouse” segments of all time: it’s not funny and it’s not funny for a very, very long time. (Which in a way is appropriate for a parody of The Island of Dr. Moreau, but.) “The Fright To Creep And Scare Harms,” wherein Billy the Kid and Kaiser Wilhem come back from the dead once Lisa bans all guns in Springfield, is uneven and suffers from a bad case of “and then THIS happens,” which is pretty typical from a relatively mediocre period of The Simpsons. On the bright side, “Send In The Clones” would probably make my personal top ten list of best segments: it’s got a good premise, uses violence comedically without just delivering it for the sake of “it’s a Halloween episode,” and it’s clever and sharp (even with a well-deserved jab at Family Guy).

14.) Treehouse of Horror VIII. “The Homega Man” is a pretty good story in all respects, although if anything it doesn’t go far enough in letting Homer really go nuts after the end of the world. “Fly vs. Fly” has one gag, and it’s a pretty good gag, but it wears thin by the end of the six-minute story so maybe it wasn’t that good. “Easy-Bake Coven” is weird in that it’s pretty funny right up until Marge is revealed to be a witch (which is really the entire premise of the sketch) at which point it just starts to drag; it feels poorly conceived on a number of levels.

13.) Treehouse Of Horror XII. “Hex and the City” has a terrible title, but it’s a great little story that isn’t afraid to be gruesome in the best Simpsons Halloween traditions, complete with Bart dying really gruesomely. “House of Whacks” has not one but two of the best celebrity cameos for a “Treehouse” – both Pierce Brosnan’s feature role and Matthew Perry’s single line are great – and it’s a really funny vignette to boot. Unfortunately, the show ends with “Wiz Kids,” an absolutely terrible Harry Potter parody that feels forced and obligatory in just about every way you could imagine – even the great bit with the giant vomiting frog-mutant can’t save this one.

12.) Treehouse of Horror I. Maybe it’s a bit unfair to compare the first “Treehouse” to the others, as they were still finding their voice at this point (and trying to justify the Halloween episode as being in-continuity by claiming the vignettes were for-real stories). But nonetheless – “Bad Dream House” is inspired if a bit dated. “Hungry Are The Damned” certainly gains points for introducing Kang and Kodos, but they had better days ahead of them. And the retelling of “The Raven,” while certainly earning extra credit for being classy, isn’t really all that great.

11.) Treehouse of Horror IV. “The Devil and Homer Simpson” – wherein Homer sells his soul to Satan Flanders for a donut – is probably one of the most beloved “Treehouse” vignettes of all time, and rightly so. However, “Terror at 5/12 Feet” doesn’t have nearly enough gags to keep up the pace established by the first episode, and spends too much time with Bart getting frenetic about the gremlin and not nearly enough time coming up with good jokes. “Bart Simpson’s Dracula,” while certainly solid, suffers from a mediocre “huh?” ending and then a corny “g’night everybody” second ending.

10.) Treehouse of Horror XV. “The Ned Zone” shows that Flanders is in fact a pretty good Halloween story protagonist, and has probably some of the tightest plotting in any “Treehouse” segment ever – plus it’s really funny as both a Dead Zone parody and as a Homer/Ned vignette. Which is why it’s so weird to see it paired up with “Four Beheadings and a Funeral,” an average-at-best mishmash of Victorian sight jokes and Sherlock Holmes references, complete with tacked on twist ending. However, this “Treehouse” rebounds with “In The Belly of the Boss,” a Fantastic Voyage riff involving a trip into Mr. Burns that’s pretty entertaining on all levels – not one of the true greats but definitely solid.

9.) Treehouse of Horror IX. “Hell Toupee” is ludicrously silly, but fun. “The Terror of Tiny Toon” doesn’t quite have the payoff that the long-awaited-at-the-time Halloween story featuring Itchy and Scratchy should have: I mean, it hits all the beats (complete with chase through television channels), but just seems a bit lacking somehow. “Starship Poopers” is perfectly enjoyable, but at times I think that Kang and Kodos combined with Jerry Springer should have somehow been even more frenetic and crazed than it was. I may be ranking this one a bit low based solely on failure to meet expectations.

8.) Treehouse of Horror XIX. “Untitled Robot Parody” is a pretty standard parody segment – this time it’s Transformers – but it’s competent if nothing else, and has the right sort of dark ending (the heroic robots and evil robots decide to make peace – and then conquer mankind) that works in a “Treehouse.” “How To Get Ahead in Dead-Vertising” tries to shove a lot into six minutes and doesn’t quite make it, although the Rip Taylor cameo is perfect. Even though these two are reasonably good, they’re completely outshone by “It’s The Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse,” which isn’t just a very funny “Treehouse” segment (which it is) but almost a work of art in its own right, thanks to the complete redesign to try and make The Simpsons look like Peanuts.

7.) Treehouse of Horror X. “I Know What You Diddily-Iddily-Did” is pretty good right up until the ending, where Flanders reveals he’s a werewolf for no apparent reason. (However, it’s forgivable, because of Homer’s extended reaction and then the flash pan to the rest of his family running away.) “Desperately Xeeking Xena” has a bit of a convoluted setup but mostly justifies it with a lot of really dedicated geek humour. (And Lucy Lawless is great. “Wizard!) The standout here, though, is “Life’s a Glitch And Then You Die,” which is a wonderful sendup of Y2K hysteria and has one of the best endings in Simpsons Halloween history and a great cameo from Tom Arnold.

6.) Treehouse of Horror II. “The Monkey’s Paw” is probably still the gold standard for Halloween vignettes on “Treehouses” – so memorable that it inspired a pretty great webcomic, and “Enslave humanity, willya?” is one of my favorite lines from the series ever. However, “The Bart Zone” and “If I Only Had A Brain” can’t hope to match the heights of “The Monkey’s Paw” – the former is good but not amazingly so, and the latter strictly average.

5.) Treehouse of Horror VI. “Attack of the Fifty-Foot Eyesores” is definitely one of my personal favorites, if only for the enormous Kent Brockman monster killing the actual Kent Brockman and the best Kang and Kodos cameo of all time. (“Remember our cover story: we’re newlyweds on our way to Earth Capital.”) “Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace” is mostly decent with occasional flourishes of genius like the lousy Smarch weather. “Homer³” is perhaps more notable for the technology than the paper-thin excuse of a story to use it, but earns goodwill for being entirely willing to admit it’s a gimmick and nothing more, and in doing so with style.

4.) Treehouse of Horror III. “Clown Without Pity” is really great for the simple reason that an evil version of Krusty the Klown just seems natural somehow. “King Homer” is a bit broad at times, but it’s funny and it doesn’t ever drag. And of course, “Dial Z for Zombies” is one of the show’s classic Halloween bits, full to bursting of quotable moments. “You killed the zombie Flanders!” “He was a zombie?”

3.) Treehouse of Horror XI. “G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad” is one of the better “somebody dies” sequences in a “Treehouse,” if only for Homer’s excuse that Agnes Skinner was “the next Hitler!” “Scary Tales Can Come True” is one of the better alternate-universe-Simpsons riffs, and the fairytale-inspired gags are generally pretty sharp. But the standout here is “Night of the Dolphin,” which is just a brilliantly insane concept (the dolphins invade – and they’re pissed!) and executed just about perfectly every step of the way: it’s easily one of the best single “Treehouse” vignettes and a strong contender for the best one ever.

2.) Treehouse of Horror VII. “The Thing and I” isn’t one of the most-quoted Simpsons Halloween stories, but it should be: Dr. Hibbert’s explanation of Hugo and Hugo himself are chock-full of comic genius. “The Genesis Tub” is a very strong entry and often overlooked unjustly as well; the deification of Lisa is hilarious, as is the fleet of tub-men in their little space-laser ships attacking Bart. But these two get overlooked for a reason: “Citizen Kang” is the definitive Kang and Kodos story, and one of the high points of Simpsons satrical coverage of political culture for the series as a whole. “Go ahead. THROW your vote away!” is one of the most memorable lines of the entire series, not just the Halloween episodes.

1.) Treehouse of Horror V. Unlike all the other “Treehouses,” this one ties itself together and feels more like a complete episode rather than three unconnected vignettes (or going to the “we’re telling stories” well), even though those vignettes are unconnected, mostly because they pointedly kill Groundskeeper Willy in each one. “The Shinning” is probably the best Halloween-themed parody the show has ever done; “Time and Punishment” starts out being an alternate-universe story but then perfectly expands into something much, much crazier; and “Nightmare Cafeteria” is probably the darkest and blackest comedy the Halloween episodes have ever given us. Easily the best single “Treehouse.”

Your guest hosts are Mary Murphy and Rex “FEEL THE GLAM” Harrington.

Tara-Jean and Vincent: salsa and contemporary. The salsa was probably the strongest single ballroom performance Tara-Jean’s done, which makes it… pretty good. Seriously, I’m glad Tara-Jean improved and all, but she was oversold hella strong during the first half of the season with mediocre dance after mediocre dance being praised to the moon for reasons that completely escape me. That having been said, the judges’ unending hardon for TJ was at least merited this week, because this was a damn good salsa; TJ’s performance was decent enough on the fundamentals that it didn’t detract from the big tricks (which were ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSANE and Gustavo Vargas deserves a couple of slots’ worth of choreo on the American show at this point) and Vincent was as predictably excellent at this as you would expect.

The contemporary was just excellent. Stacey Tookey is fantastic. Other than a bit of a weak slow vault for Vincent at the beginning (I thought his extension was a bit… not there), I thought this was just about perfect.

Tara-Jean’s solo: Interesting choice in that she eschewed tricks and went for a more character-based performance instead. I thought this was good.
Vincent’s solo: They really need to let ballroom dancers “solo” with a partner somehow, because watching someone as good as Vincent have to half-ass a “ballroom solo” is just dumb.

Melanie and Everett: jazz/rock and hip-hop. Oh, god, it’s the return of “rock” as a category. It was bad last season and it was bad this time around too. Melissa Williams is at this point actively my least favorite choreographer on any SYTYCD anywhere; her routines seem to top out at “tolerable,” when she has a couple of good ideas (I thought the stage-dive end was actually a pretty clever ending; unfortunately a lot of the rest of the choreo was pretty boring) and frequently are just awkward. Performancewise, Melanie was pretty good and Everett was just terrible in this: he was seriously behind the beat for large chunks of the piece and visibly struggled with a couple of the lifts.

The hip-hop exposed Luther Brown’s major weakness as a choreographer: he’s not good at working down to dancers’ levels if they’re not strong hip-hop dancers already. (Much like Shane Sparks, for that matter.) Hence this routine, which featured Melanie killing it and Everett… kind of standing around a lot. Well, maybe I do Everett a bit of a disservice here; he wasn’t as bad as, say, most of the male contemporary dancers trying to dance hip-hop on the fifth American season. But he wasn’t anywhere near as good as Melanie is at hip-hop.

Melanie’s solo: Probably the weakest and least defined solo of her entire tenure, and Melanie is one of my favorites and it kills me to say that.
Everett’s solo: Tapping en pointe, check. Ankle crossover, check. Desperate attempt to cover up lack of any other significant tricks and the fact that he practically dances the same solo every time, check.

Jayme-Rae and Emanuel: quickstep and jazz/funk. I kind of get the feeling Pierre Allaire tries to dumb down the quickstep for the non-ballroom-trained dancers, either intentionally or subconsciously when he works with them, because large parts of this felt like they were being danced at half-speed, and I don’t mean in terms of performance but in terms of choreography. (It’s not called “average step.”) This wasn’t good enough: Emanuel was better than Jayme-Rae, to be sure (and what a pleasant surprise Emanuel’s ballroom abilities have generally been), but even so.

Blake McGrath’s jazz/funk felt like an attempt to recapture the glory of his infamously, gloriously dirty Lisa/Nico routine from last season, but the problem is that Jayme-Rae and Emanuel don’t have particularly good chemistry together (well, that and the fact that “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas is like poison to the soul and not a sexy grindy song either). Jayme-Rae did her best and I thought she sold it as much as possible: Emanuel just felt like he’s done.

Jayme-Rae’s solo: Not her best, although I thought that ending spin was brutally awesome.
Emanuel’s solo: Better than anything else he did tonight, although licking the stage was perhaps a bit of overkill.

Top three girls, contemporary: I thought this was lovely and definitely very classical in feeling, which for Mia Michaels is a bit of a departure. Nothing else to say, really, other than I agree with Tre’s assertion that Melanie was the strongest of the three.

Top three boys, “suavo funk”: This was fun, and it’s nice to see that Gustavo can choreo more than just ballroom. The judges really talked up Everett in this piece, which is fair because he was great, but I honestly think Vincent was even better. Emanuel, on the other hand, was weak and tentative; maybe that’s because he’s not comfortable bringin da funk, or maybe it’s because his foot is injured, but either way he wasn’t on par with the other two.

Should go home: Jayme-Rae and Everett.
Will go home: Melanie and Emanuel.

…my weekly TV column for Torontoist does not pause.

LIKED

– Zombieland is exactly as good as you were hoping it would be: it’s not Citizen Kane or anything, but it’s a consistently fun horror/comedy with the emphasis on the latter half of the equation and some very solid action sequences as well, plus a number of clever visual tricks that help keep the viewer engaged and entertained. This is what B-movies should be like, and I await the inevitable sequel with bated breath.

– The Jim/Pam wedding on The Office would have actually served the series very well as a finale, as others have noticed elsewhere, but even as a portion of the series it was a particularly good episode – not just for the obvious romantic/emotional catharsis but because it was just a well-written episode of a show that’s notable because it missteps so rarely. (Also: Oscar voguing. How can you not love Oscar voguing?)

– Planetary’s conclusion was about as good as could be hoped for – a note-perfect end to a near-perfect series (that, yes, only managed to produce 27 issues over nearly a decade, but that’s why it’s near-perfect).

DID NOT LIKE

– Doctor Voodoo manages the rare feat of making Dr. Strange look like a pussy-ass loser (I mean, even more than previous Marvel comics have done so) while making Doctor Voodoo look like a self-important twat. (And in the bargain, once again makes Dormammu look like a pathetic joke.) The only character to come out of the first issue not looking like a schmuck is Dr. Doom, and let’s be honest: Dr. Doom doesn’t need any help to look cool. On top of that, the comic itself is just pretty goddamned bad: heavy, ponderous dialogue that already felt a bit outdated in the 1970s combined with art that is just ugly and murky makes for a nigh-unreadable pile of slurry. Understand that, as a Dr. Strange fan, I am ostensibly the target audience for this comic. I wanted this comic to be good. Instead, it’s probably the worst new offering from Marvel in quite a while.

(let’s see who can come up with the best The Wire reference)

Your guest judges are Mia (with buzzcut) and Dan (with no buzzcut).

Guys: musical theatre. Melissa Williams delivers a straightforward, fairly simple routine that was perfectly decent. In order of weakest to strongest: Cody, Emanuel, Everett, Vincent. Everett’s fancy trick was better than Vincent’s fancy trick, but Vincent’s overall dancing was better. Emanuel was not feeling this compared to the other routines he’s done, especially considering he works best with a character.

Tara-Jean and Vincent: rumba and krump.. Ugh, “Hero.” I hate this song. The choreographer looks like George Strombolopoulos. Tara-Jean and Vincent’s lifts are gorgeous (and some of them were spectacularly original, particularly that last one with Vincent lying down), but her form during the apart portions of the dance was somewhat lacking. But overall this was a good dance.

The krump was bleh. Tara-Jean was actually pretty good, although not on par with Melanie’s previous krump earlier in the season (probably the best single krump performance in SYTYCD history, for my money). But she hit her moves hard and I was impressed. Vincent was just soft, and the judges gave him very forgiving and nice comments for what was a weak performance, probably because krump is the real kiss of death.

Tara-Jean’s solo: Standard contemporary solo #16.
Vincent’s solo: If he makes top four it’s not gonna be because of his solos I tell you what.

Kim and Cody: hip-hop and smooth waltz. May I just say that I love that this show tries to do old-school hip-hop every so often? The US show seemingly gave up on old-school after that “Push It” routine failed in season three. Anyway, this was dead-on and managed to be old-school without coming across as corny or lame. The judges talked up Cody especially, but Kim, I think, was even better than he was.

The smooth waltz was horrendous. Cody’s rise and fall was terrible – terrible. Kim’s form was pretty bad too. (Also, what an ugly goddamn dress.) The two of them had precisely zero chemistry in this. Pierre Allaire was specifically spared by the judges and didn’t deserve the mercy; the routine was awkward and cheesy and didn’t flow well at all, and at this point he is zero-for-whatever for me because I can’t think of a single routine of his that I’ve liked thus far.

Kim’s solo: A bit frenetic for my tastes but not bad by any means.
Cody’s solo: Probably his weakest so far, with all of his bad tics and feeling fairly repetitive.

Melanie and Emanuel: contemporary and disco. OH BOY ANOTHER CONTEMPORARY ROUTINE ABOUT LOVE GOING WRONG WHERE ONE DANCER WALKS AWAY AT THE END. Well, that quibble aside, the contemporary routine was quite strong; not my favorite contemp of the season, not even close. Melanie was, as always, a goddamned beast. Dan particularly nailed it when he said that Emanuel wasn’t really in tune with the piece; it’s a shame because Emanuel’s gayness was never an issue with Kim and I really felt he doesn’t bring the same chemistry to Melanie that he does with Kim.

The disco was not my favorite thing. Melissa Williams’ disco makes me cry inside: after she talks about how fast it is, it’s always got these awkward pauses. The chemistry here wasn’t missing, but it felt a little bit forced. Emanuel in particular seemed to struggle with the footwork.

Melanie’s solo: Much stronger than she’s previously delivered in competition and reminded me why I liked her right off the bat.
Emanuel’s solo: Oh, so he has a sprained ankle? That explains a few things. But this was a better solo than last week’s trickfest.

Jayme-Rae and Everett: mambo and jazz/funk. Gustavo Vargas continues to demonstrate why he’s the best ballroom choreographer on the Canadian show. Jayme-Rae was spinning so fast that her outfit fell apart, hee – but her performance quality was just insane. Absolutely perfect on all the little things and the big things were very, very big. Everett was there and did not detract from Jayme-Rae’s performance and led her capably and there isn’t much else to say about him: this was Jayme-Rae’s routine, period.

Hey, Nico’s choreographing! And the girls all scream for him because he is Nico. This was a sexy routine and Everett, in particular, stepped forward to really embody his character. That having been said, both dancers had some crazy-ass tricks to work on in this one (that upside-down splits was INSANE) and they nailed every single one of them. “Jazz/funk” is just code for “dirty Canadians,” I am pretty sure.

Jayme Rae’s solo: A lyrical hip-hop piece, emphasis on the lyrical, Quite strong.
Everett’s solo: Bizarre: speedy stunt tapping to “Stand By Me” that was barely in sync with the music and felt completely wrong.

The girls: jazz. Oh boy another all girl routine where they get to be sultry and sexy and show their asses off. Bleh. I want asskicking from the girls, dammit. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they did it just about perfectly. But still. I expect more.

Should go home: Kim and Cody.
Will go home: Melanie and Cody.