The annual Jeopardy Teen Tournament is on before SYTYCD and I’m watching it, both because i like Jeopardy and because I’m eating my dinner (which is a salad today) and I am pleased to report that these kids – who were effortlessly nailing all the answers and generally doing everything but wearing signs saying “One Day Soon I’m Going To Be Pretty Fucking Important And You’re Lucky That’s The Case” – did not know a single answer in the “Teen Choice Awards 2008” category. Like, not one of them at all. Multiple wrong guesses on every question.

Isn’t that terribly encouraging? I think that’s encouraging.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Your judges this week are Nigel, Mary, and L’il C, and dare I say all the jokes made at the expense of L’il C’s vocabulary are really annoying and pretty patronizing to boot?

Top three guys: contemporary. Sonya’s routine here was clever and danced well by all three; I think Shorty got a little more credit than he deserved for the routine (he was easily the weakest of the three), but he at least managed to keep up with Brandon and Ade, which is no small achievement on his part.

Jeanine and Ade: samba and hip-hop. I thought Ade was much better in the samba than Mary gave him credit for; yes, the rolls were atrocious, but they were atrocious because of both dancers, and beyond the rolls I thought Ade did a perfectly reasonable job. Jeanine was on fire for this one and really worked her part to the utmost. I note that apparently “stick” is now a dirty word worthy of being censored. Hopefully it will make future choreographers reconsider using Lady Gaga for anything.

The hip-hop… well. First off, Jeanine, stop goddamn mugging so hard. Second off, this was one of Napoleon and Tabitha’s better routines this season, except for their insistence on making Jeanine and Ade dance in those boxes. Seriously, who the hell thinks that’s a good idea? First putting dancers in chains, and now making them have box feet? Are Napitha and Taboleon actively trying to handicap people, or what? Anyway, this routine was danced reasonably well, although they did nearly screw up the “Jeanine does double-dutch over Ade’s legs” part.

Jeanine’s solo: Far and away the weakest one she’s performed so far.

Ade’s solo: He really likes dancing fast, but this time he at least found a reasonable element of his song to which he could dance fast (IE, the vocals), so it was all right.

Melissa and Shorty: Broadway and quickstep. Tasty Oreo returns with another crappy Broadway piece, ending his streak of good Broadway routines at one. (This ties his previous record of one.) Melissa and Shorty just don’t have a lot of chemistry with one another and this staggeringly literal “Get Me To The Church On Time” routine needs chemistry. Melissa says that she is the oldest dancer ever on this show at 29, leaving the first season’s Big Fat Alan, who was 30, to cry and go eat a cheesecake as he watches on teevee at home.

Nigel says that Melissa has been “challenged,” which – she’s danced only five partner routines out of eleven this season where her ballet training wouldn’t have come into play (IE, contemporary or jazz pieces). Out of those five, the two that were slow she danced acceptably, and she was crap in all the others. And she hasn’t danced hip-hop once all season; she could go through to top 4 without having danced a single hip-hop dance. How is that “challenging?”

The quickstep was pretty goddamn terrible and they both sucked at it.

Melissa’s solo: Felt like the first quarter of a three-minute solo. Underdanced.

Shorty’s solo: FOR FUCK’S SAKE STOP DOING THAT “AW SHUCKS” SHRUG AT THE END OF EVERY FUCKING ROUTINE.

Kayla and Brandon: contemporary and disco. Stacey Tookey is awesome. She is like Canada’s Mia Michaels except without all the baggage that Mia Michaels brings with her. (Also, Stacey Tookey is seriously goddamned hot. This has no impact on her ability as a dancer or choreographer, but… daaaaaaamn.) Her adultery routine was just brilliant and gorgeous, and Brandon and Kayla danced it just about perfectly. When I saw it, I thought “well, Kayla is blossoming at just the right time.”

And then came the disco, which started out competently enough, with the requisite amount of disco cheese that is right and proper, maybe with Brandon carrying the routine a little more than Kayla – but shortly thereafter it disssolved into the usual Doriana Sanchez nightmare of prepare-lift-prepare-lift-prepare-lift. God, what a horrible piece of work. However, the Disco Rule (“No judge shall say an obviously bad disco routine is bad”) is in effect, so.

Kayla’s solo: Not as good as last week, but perfectly credible.

Brandon’s solo: Holeeeeeee shit that was a motherfucking solo.

Top three girls: contemporary. This was there. Compared to the guys’ three-person routine, this was decidedly more lacklustre. Melissa in particular didn’t seem to connect with the routine as much as the other two.

Should go home: Melissa and Shorty.
Will go home: Melissa and Ade.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

ITEM! Marvel Comics have the rights to Marvelman! Oh my god, how amazing is that? Marvel, Marvelman, it’s like God intended this to be! Okay, so maybe Marvel doesn’t necessarily yet have the rights to the Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman stories that are the only reason anybody other than the most devoted of British comics nerds gives a shit about Marvelman, but I’m sure that twenty years of lawsuits will all go away now. And if they don’t – well, given how well the Sentry has proven that a Superman analogue character can fit into the Marvel Universe, I know I can’t wait for a Captain Marvel (Shazam, not black lady or alien guy) analogue to fit into the Marvel Universe! I totally bet Norman Osborn hires him and then WHOOPSIE Kid Marvelman rapes the entire population of Melbourne to death. And then Hawkeye will go on TV and say “see? Norman Osborn is bad.” All this and more, brought to you by the pending Marvelman creative team of Zeb Wells and Phil Jiminez!

ITEM! Longbox announced a whole new bunch of companies that make, like, one comic apiece signing on to their digital download service. Meanwhile, Marvel announced their brilliant new digital delivery content model: comics on iTunes! Well, sort of comics. They are comics with “animated panels and voice-over work from popular actors.” (I bet you didn’t know Tony Stark sounds just like Seth Green!) Given how critically brilliant that whole “Watchmen The Motion Comic” thing was, I’m sure this will be every bit as good! And come on, it’s Marvel Comics – is there a comics company with a better track record of digital delivery than Marvel?

ITEM! DC Comics has finally acquired the rights to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Dan Didio explains he’s been trying to get that done for a long time. (This may or may not explain a whole lot about DC Comics.) Apparently the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents will be brought into the DC Universe, which will be great because look how well that worked for the Milestone superheroes!

ITEM! Red She-Hulk was originally going to be Dark She-Hulk but they changed it at the last minute. This is all part of the plan for World War Hulks next year! The year after that comes Civil Wars! And then possibly Red Reigns. Says Joe Quesada: “Pluralization is the new dark. Or possibly red.” New titles from Marvel will include renaming Deadpool Redpool. He will also get a new costume, which will be even more red than previously!

ITEM! Jeff Smith does more Bone comics. (I actually have nothing sarcastic to say about this, other than possibly a potential comparison to The Silmarillion.)

ITEM! Did you know Lost and Chuck and Heroes are coming back for another season? Well, they are! I bet you didn’t know that! The producers had special panels to tell fans that the upcoming seasons would be “more awesome than ever” and that “we’ll tie together a lot of unanswered questions,” and “you’ll be blown away.” Amazingly enough, the producers of Jonah Hex, Twilight: New Moon, Iron Man 2, Avatar, Tron Legacy, and Prince of Persia all said exactly the same thing! There’s going to be a whole lot of blown away fans next year! (The producers of Glee also said all of this, but the fans just asked them where the vampire zombies were.)

ITEM! PRACTICALLY NOTHING EVER HAPPENS OR IS REVEALED AT SAN DIEGO THAT FUCKING MATTERS. THE ENTIRE FUCKING THING IS LIKE A MOVIE TRAILER THAT LASTS FOR A FUCKING WEEK!

Your guest judges for episode 99 are Mia Michaels and Ellen Degeneres, for reasons which totally escape me. But at least Ellen can tell jokes that go somewhere. Take note, Nigel.

Group number: contemporary/hip-hop thingie. This was substandard by any yardstick. Yes, yes, they’re all proud of Travis, but this was so boring – dull, predictable group choreography that felt like recital-lite with brief moments of interest when individual dancers were allowed to show off their particular stunts. (Except for Evan, because he is short and all he does that the others don’t is jump high and be charming.) Standard (and wholly undeserved) judge blowjob for Travis. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Janette and Shorty: jazz and rumba. Janette blew me away in Sonya’s jazz piece, but I can’t help but feel Shorty was terribly hard done by as regards Sonya’s choreo; the piece, I think, focused a lot more on Janette doing these awesome things and Shorty, well, carrying her around so she could do the awesome things. Which he did fine, but. Mary Murphy comments that this piece is way outside of Shorty’s area; Shorty is specifically a jazz dancer and this was a jazz dance routine. Shut up, Mary. Mia comments that Shorty is too nice to dance in one of Sonya’s Tim Burton imitations, because Sonya is dark and writes poetry in coffee houses and stuff. Shut up, Mia.

The rumba… look, we know Shorty is a white boy, but making him dance a rumba to Kris Allen is just cruel. Tony and Melanie’s slow routines almost always bore the crap out of me and this was no exception. (Where the hell is Jason Gilkison or Jean-Marc? Or Dmitri or Pasha and Anya? Where did Louis Amstel go? When did Tony and Melanie become the Tabitha and Napoleon of ballroom?) Janette was predictably excellent as this and balanced out Shorty’s boringtude; I actually think he had the attitude but didn’t quite show up with the ability. Nigel says Shorty has “heavy eyebrows,” which… what?

Janette’s solo: Well, if you use up all your ballroom tricks in one solo, I guess you go for mock-contemporary. Which wasn’t bad, albeit technically not all there.

Shorty’s solo: The air he gets on his leaps just staggers me. At some point, maybe a choreographer will actually, like, use it.

Jeanine and Brandon: waltz and pop/jazz. Jeanine was better in the waltz than Brandon, who I think was pretty obviously uncomfortable with it. Her rise and fall was quite good; his was intermittent at best, sometimes there, sometimes not. The footwork was solid; nothing amazing, but no major mistakes. They had very good chemistry, though, and the lifts were predictably good. This was perfectly acceptable ballroom by the standard of top 8 on SYTYCD.

The pop/jazz (pazz? Jop?) was sensational. I was amazed that they performed it so well that the crowd (which, let us admit, can frequently be a bit dumb) was actually able to get engaged in a dance with almost no major lifts or “hey lookit” drama bits – and then threw in those parts right at the end anyway. This was just fucking great dancing – energetic, strong, exciting – and LaurieAnn Gibson can come back anytime she likes in my book. It didn’t hurt that Brandon and Jeanine are easily the two physically strongest dancers left; they looked like they could tear shit up, and then did. (Also: Kris Allen AND Jordin Sparks in one night? HELLO WE ARE NINETEEN ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCING THIS SHOW.)

Jeanine’s solo: Just fucking great. That opening progression, with the movements paired to the stuttering piano notes? Holeeeeee shit. Jeanine is simply in a whole other league above the other girls left on this show.

Brandon’s solo: Not up to his usual standard for artistry, but insanely physical; I suspect he got a bit spooked by the Tasty Oreo contemporary piece immediately before and decided to go for stunts.

Melissa and Ade: cha cha and contemporary. Ade could probably be a pretty damn good Latin dancer with more training, but he does need more training; he’s got the natural feel for the Latin body waves but he doesn’t quite commit to them; I suspect his earlier rumba was benefited by its slow pace. Melissa made me feel like I was watching them dance this at half speed; she looked slow and cumbersome in the dance, and the routine itself had so many poses and stops that it demanded full commitment from Melissa and I just didn’t get that at all. This was extremely bad for top 8 and frankly probably would have gotten them eliminated earlier.

That having been said, I think they’re safe, because the contemporary was very good. I was prepared to loathe it because breast cancer is such an Obviously Special And Important Topic (and because, come on, Tasty Oreo), but Melissa and Ade danced it very, very well and really brought the emotions through, and I remembered that Tasty can really deliver when he leaves the Broadway area which he supposedly dominates. Don’t get me wrong; I think on terms of overall ability Melissa definitely deserves to go home before the other three, and I think Ade doesn’t necessarily deserve to make top 4 as others do. But I don’t see it happening when they made the judges cry and had the Very Important Message.

Ade’s solo: Rock solid.

Melissa’s solo: She always picks these awesome, distinctive pieces of music and then dithers around en-pointlessly and I’m really, really sick of it.

Kayla and Jason: Broadway and hip-hop. I know I mock Tasty Oreo’s Broadway on a routine basis, but this one was genuinely great: it was sultry and smooth and clever and charming, and actually felt like what “Broadway” should be, rather than just being a slightly modified jazz dance as per usual Tasty. If one needed any proof that it was Jason’s lack of chemistry that was holding him back, I think this week and last demonstrate that this was the case; with new partners he’s simply blossomed. Kayla was excellent and actually demonstrated real character for the first time in pretty much ever. Mary has a wooden steamwhistle. Shut up, Mary.

The hip-hop could have been great – that was pretty goddamned brilliant choreo from Shane Sparks, with a great concept. I can’t quite call it “great.” Maybe “good.” Jason and Kayla hit their moves cleanly enough that I can’t complain there, but the “heavy” character I wanted to see out of zombies dancing – that they were specifically instructed to include – just wasn’t there. Jason was stronger than Kayla was. Still, given how shit the hip-hop has mostly been this season, I have to admit that “okay” is a step up. But I would have preferred to see Philipchbeeb -or motherfucking TWITCH – rock this one.

Kayla’s solo: Much better than I am used to from her; actually worked very well with the music and wasn’t just a collection of stunts and tricks.

Jason’s solo: More frenetic than last week, but not as frenetic as previously and had a bit of a sense of build. Decent.

Should go home: Melissa and Shorty.
Will go home: Kayla and Shorty.

My weekly TV column is now up at Torontoist.

(And yes, I know now that The Bachelorette finishes next week, not this week. My defense is that I do not care.)

Your guest judge is Debbie Allen, and one can’t really have a truly negative opinion about Debbie Allen, so that’s good. Also, commercials for SYTYCD Canada! August 11, babeeee.

Top five girls: Bollywood. The judges worshipped this, but honestly it wasn’t that great. Randi was obviously sloppy. Melissa was frequently off the beat and also sloppy. Jeanine, Jeanette and Kayla were various degrees of solid; Jeanette was a little out of time but had the best vitality in her dance, while Jeanine and Kayla hit the moves dead-perfect (but weren’t as upbeat and “Bollywoodish” as Jeanette). Group routines tend to be more forgiving, though, so I don’t think it’ll hurt anybody.

Kayla and Short Evan Who Is Short: Viennese waltz. You know, I don’t think there’s a style that the judges are more forgiving on than Viennese waltz. It’s simply not a very difficult form of dance: it requires knowledge of the basic step pattern, the ability to rise and fall, and a little character. The hard parts are the lifts and free dance portions, and this is what inevitably happens on this show: those are the parts the untrained-in-ballroom dancers nail, and then they fuck up what’s actually the easy part. This was a case in point, because both Evan and Kayla had mediocre form (and Evan was stiff to boot) but their lifts were lovely. Given that this is Kayla’s second waltz I’m less inclined to be generous towards her mediocre performance in the basic portions of the dance. Evan’s limitations are showing up fast and furious now.

Kayla’s solo: Technically flawless but not very interesting: your standard Contemporary Assortment of Tricks, performed very competently. (What do you expect? She’s nineteen for crissake.)

Evan’s solo: Charming, clever, and well executed; he used his time very well and created not only a story but an appealing persona to win votes.

Jeanette and Ade: hip-hop. Jeanette was very definitely ahead of the beat on this dance, and it really showed towards the end when it looked like she was hitting some unison moves maybe a full quarter-second ahead of Ade. She also didn’t grind into the floor enough to really give it a proper hip-hop feel; it looked and felt cheerleader-ish to me. Ade was good, but not as good as I was expecting. I’m not sure whether that’s on him or on the Napoleon/Tabitha choreo, which I thought was average at best. Still, in a season of terrible hip-hop, this was much better than average.

Jeanette’s solo: At some point the producers will give up on this frankly stupid notion that ballroom dancers should do solos and let them do their “solos” with a partner; make the partner wear all black and a mask or something and the contestant wear sparkly clothes, hell, I don’t know. The point is that there’s really very little ballroomers can do in a one-person solo. Jeanette did about all of it, so what happens next time?

Ade’s solo: Rock solid.

Jeanine and Jason: contemporary. Well, everybody who was wondering if Caitlin was making Jason worse now has confirmation, because this routine was HOLY SHIT levels of amazing. (I am honestly amazed they haven’t let Travis choreograph until now; Benji was choreographing as early as season three.) A brilliant piece of choreo, danced near-perfectly by Jeanine and Jason. Simply a highlight of the season, pure and simple.

Jeanine’s solo: As excellent as always: what sets Jeanine apart from the other girl dancers is that her solos always have a point; they’re not just a series of contempo-tricks, but intended to establish a mood or tone.

Jason’s solo: Really good, abandoning the usual “I am desperate and here are tricks” solo we’ve come to expect from him for, again, a story within the solo.

Randi and Kupono: paso doble. See, one of the things that irked me about Kupono surviving and Philipchbeeb going is that Kupono is arguably more limited than the Chbeeb. He can do one thing well: contemporary where he is a quirky/weird character. If he’s asked to do anything else, Kupono just flops. For someone who’s supposed to be such a great ack-toah, paso should have been right in Kupono’s wheelhouse, but this was one of the great disasters in the show’s history: completely and utterly terrible with no redeeming factors. Oh, yes, Randi was terrible too. Paso should have fire and swagger and drama: this was limp and weak and slooooow and boring. How bad was it? When the judges said it was bad, nobody booed them. That’s how bad it was.

Randi’s solo: Sloppy and bad.

Kupono’s solo: Arguably the only contemporary dancer in the show who, when he gets desperate, does not do tricks, but instead does less.

Melissa and Brandon: Broadway. Tasty Oreo is BACK. This time he is ripping off blatantly imitating inspired by Twyla Tharp. This was merely okay, which given Melissa and Brandon’s various successes so far is kind of a letdown; I want to see more A+ material, not B-grade stuff like this. Melissa really needs to dance something totally unrelated to her training already.

Melissa’s solo: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Brandon’s solo: A whole lot of tricks, but Brandon’s really good at progressing his tricks to at least build momentum, which a lot of dancers don’t do.

Top five guys: African. Again, the “it’s hard for judges to critique a five-man dance well unless everybody really fucks up” rule comes into play as a lot of undeserved compliments were thrown at the guys. For me, there were two clear tiers of performance here. The first tier (Brandon, Jason and Ade) danced very competently but didn’t quite capture the fire and spirit I wanted to see in the genre. The second tier (Evan and Kupono) similarly lacked in fire and spirit but also danced poorly.

Should go home: Randi and Kupono.
Will go home: Randi and Kupono.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

LIKED

– Tales From Monkey Island Chapter One: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is the first Telltale games adventure “episode” ever that I felt really lived up to the promise of the point-and-click-and-grab-things genre. Most of their previous offerings have been marked by puzzles that fell somewhere in between “unintuitive” and “nonsensical.” But Tales‘ puzzles make sense; they’re not easy, but they’re not so obtuse as to ruin the fun of the story. (Which is fun, incidentally; the story is so far on par with the best Monkey Island games.)

– Wipeout Couples was actually even more enjoyable than regular Wipeout, which is one of the great “sit back and have a beer” teevee shows. Seeing people root for their spouses on the obstacle course (and cheer, and complain) makes it even more fun. Whodathunk?

– The Magic: The Gathering 2010 base set is just shitloads of fun. People complaining about the rules changes need to get slapped for a number of reasons. The base set has knights and dragons and genies and goblins and everything that should be in a Magic base set: the traditional archetypes and things that are awesome about Generic Fantasy Literature ™. And the new spells and cards are flavourful and well-designed.

MEH

– I know I’m going to get pilloried for this, but: Wednesday Comics. The strip quality was good to excellent overall (exceptions: the incoherent Teen Titans and the very been-there-done-that Metal Men and Demon/Catwoman strips), but a lot of the comics didn’t give me the feel of the old weekly serials they were trying to echo: they felt like first pages of short comic stories and nothing more. Which is fine and I enjoyed them, but I’m not gonna go jerking off over the thing because the first page of eleven or twelve stories is awesome; it’s just too small and early a sample for me to call it “good.”

I’d also call into question the value. People have been exclaiming how this is the same price as a normal comic, but normal comics are overpriced. The giant-size of the layout is nice, definitely, and there’s something to be said for the experience of reading a comic newspaper-style – but it doesn’t give me more story. In fact it gives me less. Yes, yes, I’ve seen multiple people talking about the “square foot of comics” measure as if that was somehow relevant (next up: “Wednesday Comics gives you 24% more wood pulp for your dollar!”). And if they were trying to echo the old serials, why wasn’t this thing printed on cheap newsprint and sold for a buck? That would have been a marketing revolution. As it is, it’s just another (admittedly novel) exercise in marketing to the hardcores, and I can’t get that excited over marketing to the hardcores, because that is what is killing superhero comics.

DIDN’T LIKE

– Lesbian Vampire Killers desperately wants to be the next Shaun of the Dead. Here is all you need to know: it is nowhere near being the next Shaun of the Dead. Avoid. Like the plague.

Cat has short (or seriously tied-up) hair this week and she looks awesome! Your guest judge is Tasty Oreo, and that is… less awesome, but not as bad as one might think.

Melissa and Ade: disco and waltz. Well, I was kind of waiting for Melissa and Ade to have a bad week, and this was more or less it. Not that you would notice, with the judges verbally jerking off the way that they do and overpraising everything to the moon, but they weren’t nearly at the quality they were previously. The disco started off very rough, and worse it was Doriana “More Lifts! More Lifts!” Sanchez returning to her worst habits, setting up giant lifts and killing whatever flow the routine possessed. Ade was much better than Melissa in this; she was seriously lacking any sense of groove for pretty much the entire first half of the routine. But she’s pretty and she shook her ass and that’s all Nigel cares about, so whatever.

Quality reversed itself in the waltz; here, Melissa was mostly in good form while Ade was incredibly stiff. When the judges talk about how strong a male dancer is at carrying people, that’s code for “I don’t want to say anything bad but there isn’t much else to say.” His footwork was bad, his rise and fall was bad, his lines were only average (and frankly at this point any contemporary dancer should be able to manage decent lines). Still, the two of them should be safe.

Kayla and Kupono: contemporary and Broadway. Boy, they sure do feel the need to challenge these two, don’t they. Anyway, the Mia Michaels piece was predictably good; I can maybe argue with the tone of the dance (I always get this sense that addiction, as a Thing, should somehow be languid and not as frenetic as she was depicting it to be), but the choreo was inventive and exciting and the performance quality was good.

The Broadway was crap. Jesus, how do you fuck up derivative West Side Story choreo? They basically did it in Vegas, for crissake. They keep trying to play up Kupono as the next Mark Kanemura, but Mark could do just about anything well: take Kupono out of his “quirky/weird” contemporary wellhouse and he just starts to stumble really quickly. (He’s also probably the least athletic dancer remaining, with the possible exception of Philip – and Philip has at least a notable skillset to set him off from the rest of the group.) Kayla is better than he is but not really that engaging as a dancer. She’ll almost certainly make top ten; he’s on the bubble.

Caitlin and Jason: foxtrot and lyrical jazz. Caitlin and Jason can talk about how much they’ll miss each other all they want: it is bullshit. Either that, or they both have the worst partnering skills I have ever seen, because watching these two dance tonight was like watching robots dance; they were technically flawless in both routines, and the sheer lack of empathy and performance quality made both routines sterile and lifeless. I think Jason might be able to get better if partnered differently; I don’t think Caitlin would.

Jeanine and Philipchbeeb: kalinka and jive. Well, the I Hate Philipchbeeb brigade over at Television Without Pity is no doubt creaming their jeans that the show spiked these two with that horrible karlinka – one of the worst routines I’ve ever seen on the show, and not particularly the fault of the dancers involved. This routine was so bad that the judges actually took the unprecedented step of blaming the choreographers.

The jive was decent, a very reasonable outing by both parties. There were flaws (and I’m not talking about the trip-up; there were a couple of tricks that didn’t finish too cleanly), but they were easily outmatched by performance quality. Jeanine is obviously a better overall dancer than Philipchbeeb – I think she’s probably the best female dancer on the show – but Philipchbeeb is extremely underrated in the performance category. Jeanine is obviously through to top ten; Philipchbeeb is on the bubble.

Randi and Evan: hip-hop and samba. I love how Nigel tries to point out the fact that Tabitha and Napoleon’s hip-hop isn’t “urban” like that’s some sort of plus. “Tabitha and Napoleon make excellent apple pie! Except they make it with bananas, and it is a cake, rather than a pie. They’re not forcing you to enjoy apples.” This reminded me of the well-known “Bleeding Love” routine from last season, which grabbed me at the time with its novelty but hasn’t aged well because it was, in fact, basically kinda shitty hip-hop. And the reason this reminded me of that routine is because a lot of this routine was a direct lift from it. Horrible, horrible routine, and Randi in particular couldn’t even dance this whitebread hip-hop with beats worth a damn. Evan was only slightly better.

The samba wasn’t as embarrassing, but – look, one of my dance teachers once told me that samba is the most exposing of Latin dances, and when I asked her to clarify she said “well, if you dance it white, you look really, really white.” Randi and Evan looked really, really white dancing this.

Carla and Turk Jeanette and Brandon: Argentine tango and contemporary. HOLY. SHIT. This season’s been pretty lacklustre for contenders for my “best of all time” lists – Max and Kayla’s samba, Philip and Jeanine’s first hip-hop, maybe Brandon and Jeanette’s hip-hop and Kupono/Ashley’s crash test dummy thing, but all at best just piercing the bottom half of the lists. But tonight, Brandon and Jeanette put together two immediate, serious contenders for both. The tango easily stands up with any ballroom performance on this show ever; right now the only question to my mind is if it’s better than Heidi and Benji’s infamous mambo. Their work on that tango was so crisp and sultry it’s mindboggling.

The Wade Robson piece was a Wade Robson piece: brilliant, with a sense of humour, and a story beyond “hey love is tough.” And they were, of course, just perfect in it.

Likely bottom three: Caitlin and Jason, Kayla and Kupono, Jeanine and Philipchbeeb.
Should go home: Caitlin and Kupono.
Will go home: Caitlin and Philipchbeeb.

My weekly TV column is now up at Torontoist.