Hey! All the top 20 are back for the finale. I will say before we get started that I think the whole one guy and one girl winning this season is pretty lame. I want a winner. Personally, I’ll just default to whichever girl wins because both of the girls are better than either of the guys.
On the judge panel, we have an all star cast: Lil’ C, Adam Shankman, Debbie Allen (barf), Tyce (barf), plus the regulars, Mary and Nigel.
The opening number is a joint gig by Christopher Scott and Sonya Tayeh. That is a crazy combination. I would add that it was quite the killer combination. Really amazing with the wind, the flowing outfits, and really good music.
I don’t like Cat Deeley, as I’ve mentioned before. Tonight took the cake. She simply walks out and starts talking to the audience like they are toddlers. In a mushy voice: “Are you screaming? Yes, you are, you are screaming.” What the hell is wrong with this chick?
Guest judge for tonight is Rob Marshall who has been on before. He is a director and choreographer of some sort.
First up is Eliana and Cyrus doing a paso doble. Instead of Cyrus as the matador and Eliana as the cape, they are going swap roles. Eliana was good as usual but Cyrus was just ok. This guy has been improving all season, but the trajectory just DOES NOT point to him being in the finale. That cartwheel, the awkward stance, and the timid steps were just not up to snuff. The paso doble needs some aggression and he was just pussyfooting it. Disappoint as the paso doble is one of my favorites. Not to mention we saw a killer one earlier in the season (by Cole, I think).
I was “oot and aboot” in Canada last week so I missed out on the festivities and eliminations. Looks like Lindsay and Will went home. As for the remaining people, I honestly can’t believe Witney, Tiffany, and Chehon are still around. Although the quality of dancers this season has totally been suspect.
Guest judge for the night is Christina Applegate who is moving quickly from guest to regular. Also, Mary’s dress makes it look like her head is poking out of a vagina. Weird.
Just as a note, I’ll not be commenting on the solos, but I’ll post them in any case.
Hi guys. I’m Bethany, and I’m pinch-recapping this week for our beloved Andy, who is frolicking around Canada wearing a mountaineer hat, drinking syrup, and saying “eh” and “aboot.” We’re all very jealous.
For this pinch-recap, I’ve decided to do it stream-of-consciousness style. This is partly because I just read Let’s Pretend this Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, which you should totally read, and I’ve been inspired to try and write like her (meaning be more truthful about the things that I think in my brain but that I don’t necessarily say for fear of judgment.) and partly because I’ve decided SYTYCD is the perfect show to do a stream-of-consciousness style review.
Ready? OKAY! *cheerleader clap*
Cat Deeley looks less orange this week!
This opening number with the fans and the broken angles has to be Mandy Moore (not the singer/actress/voice of Rapunzel in Tangled/wife of Ryan Adams). Because the music sucks. But maybe it’s Sonya. There are a lot of cabrioles happening, which makes me think it’s Mandy. And also the terrible music. And use of fans as props. But does Mandy do group routines?
Also, I feel like you should all know that there’s something about Will that makes me want to punch him in the face.
What is this weird dove-like hand symbol thing they all keep doing in their intros? Should I know this? Are they a dancing gang? Like in West Side Story? If so, where the fuck is the other gang for them to dance rumble against? I NEED TO KNOW WHAT THIS NAPOLEON DYNAMITE LOOKING HAND SYMBOL MEANS. I’m sure Nigel will tell me and that will make it immediately less interesting to me since he is an enormous twat.
CHOREOGRAPHED BY PETER CHI. HE IS NEW. THIS IS WHY I WAS SO CONFUSED.
Oh they brought back the orange background. Now Cat is the same color as it. Lighting is so tricky like that.
OMG JESSE TYLER FERGUSON IS THE GUEST JUDGE AND HE IS WEARING A BOW TIE. I saw him in Shakespeare in the Park’s The Merchant of Venice two years ago, but I didn’t really appreciate it then because I was totally in awe of how short Al Pacino is and couldn’t really pay attention to anything else. As for bow ties, I am a general enthusiast of them.
Cat Deeley totally just did the “ever ever ever” thing from this Kate Nash song.
So, since we’re in the Top 8 these days, the dancers have to dance a solo and a piece with an all-star. DOUBLE TIME, BITCHES. Read the rest of this entry »
Um, so things start off weird with my arch nemesis, Tyce, dancing in the opening group routine. Ugh! His stupid face was over-acting the entire routine. Barf! I’m just going to pretend like that didn’t happen. I am posting the video for this under duress. DURESS I TELL YOU!!!
So after that abomination, I’m happy to tell you that since we are in the top 10, All Stars will now be introduced into the mix. Super happy about this because there are so many great dancers that they bring back.
Guest judge this week is some Millipede guy. I don’t know who he is but it looks like he shaved just before going to his judge seat and already has a beard. I’ll be calling him Human Millipede for the duration of this recap.
Before we get to the routines, can I just ask why everyone feels the need to celebrate the 100th birthday of people who didn’t make it to 100? They are doing Gene Kelly’s 100th tonight and everyone was gushing over Julia Childs’ 100th last week. Gotta sell more books or songs or whatever, I guess.
Apologies on the late post. I’ve been properly reprimanded, so I hope I learn my lesson. Anyway, let’s get on with it.
I was hoping that what I heard as a rumor was NOT going to be true. Unfortunately, it was made clear very quickly that it was absolutely true: The entire show was made up of Mia Michaels routines. Now I don’t straight-up hate Mia like I do with Tyce, but I still feel like her main goal in creating a routine is to just manipulate everyone emotionally. I mean, if you want to make a routine that has a touching story, that is fine. But Mia puts the whole “dancing” thing in the back seat. But what the fuck do I know – Mia’s won three
Emmys and I’ve won aproximately zero. In any case, all the routines will be Mia classics.
Guest judges are a couple of ballet dudes. No idea why they are there since they don’t watch the show.
Also, an announcement: Tabitha and Napoleon had their baby so maybe we can get some good routines out of them soon.
The opening group routine was really cool. Look at me eating my words – that dancing and hanging from the rope thing was pretty badass. It does remind me of that rope swinging routine from last year. It had huge potential but was pretty bland. Pretty disappointing. This one was actually really nicely done.
To start things off, I have some very disturbing news. It is well documented on this blog that I hate Cat Deeley. It seems to bring people together because just last week, a girl found this blog by googling “I hate Cat Deeley.” Well, it turns out my brother-in-law loves Cat Deeley. I’ve started the legal proceedings to have him excommunicated from the family.
On the judging panel, good news: Kelly Bundy is the guest judge tonight. She was a judge last season during the Top 6 and I thought she did well. She is a dancer so I feel like she has a bit more insight than some of the non-dancers but doesn’t over-analyze like some of the choreographers.
I’m concerned because it is the first group dance and my TV seems to be broken. There is no color except the red umbrella. That is a really cool effect. I really did notice though in this routine how little they probably practice the group numbers. No one was in sync and a it was a pretty easy routine. In any case, it was a good stuff. I was hoping it wasn’t Tyce. Unfortunately, it was. Ugh.
Welcome back for the third Top 20 week in a row! First it was choosing the Top 20. Then it was the Top 20 performing and not getting eliminated. Now it is the Top 20 and two guys and two girls will be eliminated.
Guest judge for tonight was Adam Shankman. He apparently has a new movie coming out and can’t stop saying “Step up – MOVIE PLUG!” after every performance. We get it Adam – you have a new movie called Step Up Revolution coming out this Friday in a theater near me. I understand that is about a group called The Mob that does flash mobs around Miami. I get that it stars Kathryn, Twitch, and Philip. But you know what? I don’t care because Batman: The Dark Knight Rises is coming out.
We start off the show with what the wife and I were convinced was a Sonya Tayeh routine involving Cyrus as a half-man/half-woman and everyone else dressed up all crazy in make up. Imagine our surprise when we found it was actually everyone’s favorite hiphop duo, Tabitha and her fetus! Love it.
Before we get to anything else, I’d like to thank Bethany for informing me that male ballet dancers are called Calvaliers although I still prefer my Ballerino. So with that being said, here is this:
I’m a dancing expert, obviously.
Guest judge for the night is Kenny Ortega aka the Taco Guy. He is such a mush mouth. I don’t know if it is just nerves or impatience, but he seems to just be talking before he actually forms a sentence and just gets all tripped up. Mary was super, extra annoying tonight. I think she realized it at one point because she was going off on a lead up to the Hot Tamale Train thing and just cut it off because no one in the audience was getting worked up.
The night got started by a Christopher Scott routine that was a hiphop Mad Men routine. It included an amazing pirouette by Dareian which subsequently got called out by Nigel later on. This is the second Christopher Scott routine that hasn’t been too heavy handed with the theme.
So last night was the So You Think You Can Dance top 20 selection show. They did it a bit different as it was a combo live show and previously recorded show. They selected the top 20 in groups by genre and then had them dance in groups.
Sitting in the guest judge chair is the ever adorkable (kill me now) Zooey Deschanel. Within the first 10 second of her talking, I knew she was going to be in the worst judge all-stars with Debbie Allen and that one pervy old lady they had on last year that wanted to take Wadi home with her (Wikipedia tells me her name is Debbie Reynolds). The wife suggested the three of them should do an all-guest-host night.
So, as typically happens, I had a number of “Who? Who? Who?” moments during this episode. People like Alexa (barf) get a ton of camera time during Vegas week for being petulant children while other dancers who were amazing, never got a second of screen time.
Below I’ve embedded the performances, but Fox has put the full episodes online behind a paywall. Basically, in order to watch an episode originally shown for free on network television, you have to subscribe to cable or satellite. Makes sense, right. Fox, get your collective heads out of your collective asses. No one signed up for cable or satellite so they can watch SYTYCD online, dummies. Basically, the embedded videos could disappear at any time. Let me know in the comments if they do.
