So You Think You Can Gobble: 8.17, "Week Six: Results"
Neil Patrick Harris: “I had an absolute blast last night, you sexy little minx.”
Cat Deeley: “I never thought Doogie Howser would ever say that to me.”
Welcome…to SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE!
The night opens with a group number by choreographer Josh Bergasse, set to “Act One: On Broadway” from Smokey Joe’s Cafe: The Songs of Leiber & Stoller (Original Broadway Cast). We’ve had some great group routines this year. This one? Not so much. Verdict: forgettable.
This is it, guys. Tonight it gets real. Tonight we drop down to single digits. Seems I was either wrong or misled (I’ll go with misled) about how this elimination would work, however. I was under the impression we’d be losing one dancer tonight, and that the judges no longer had any say in who goes or stays. At this point in the competition typically the eliminations are decided solely based on viewer votes. Well, not so much this season, it seems. Tonight we will be saying goodbye to one more guy AND one more girl. And the final say remains in the hands of Nigel and his minions. Not sure if that will continue through the remainder of the season or not, and I’m not saying it ruins anything for me. Just caught me off guard.
But enough about me. Let’s get some kids on stage and figure out who is in danger. From now on, obviously, we move from the bottom three couples into the bottom FOUR dancers. So let’s get to it, shall we?
Mitchell – BOTTOM 4
Melanie – Safe
Tadd – Safe
Marko – Safe
Sasha – Safe
Clarice – BOTTOM 4
We interrupt the flow at this dramatic juncture to announce the roster of All-Stars that will be pairing up with our heroes next week.
Ivan (S2)
Jaimie (S3)
Anya (S3)
Pasha (S3)
Lauren G. (S3)
Neil (S3)
Ade (S5)
Lauren F. (S7)
Wow. Season 3 is mightily represented next week. I mean I love all those dancers (except Jaimie, just because I don’t know her), just sayin’.
Anyways, back to the drama…
Jess – Safe
Ricky – BOTTOM 4
Caitlynn – Safe
Jordan – BOTTOM 4
And now, while the dancers in danger prepare themselves for their solos, we get our first guest performance of the night. Daniil Simkin, a soloist from the American Ballet Company performs an engaging, entertaining piece to “Les Bourgeois” by Jacques Brel. I’m not bothered by these guest dance performances, for the most part, because duh, it’s a dance competition. The second guests, the musical ones, tend to… well, not be of the good. Much.
Now it’s time for the Bottom 4 to dance for their lives.
Clarice – “Let Me Think About It” by Ida Corr vs Fedde Le Grand
She shows some of that variety in movement and form that I’ve talked about recently. Not anything earth-shattering, but it’s good.
Mitchell – “Time & Space” by The Cinematic Orchestra
Great musicality to some great music. This really demonstrates his fluid yet muscular grace. Again I say I’m glad he survived past his first week injury, because it would have been a shame to miss this dancer.
Jordan – “Tonight” by Lykke Li
Wait, what? Really? The exact same song and solo she performed last night?! I’ll be stunned if this doesn’t merit a comment from the judges. I gave this four wattles the first time I saw it, but I’m deducting a wattle for the sheer laziness of it here.
Ricky – “Battle For The Beat” by District 78
A little more frenetic than he usually is. Not his best.
So now it’s time for the judges to go deliberate, and they punish us by making us endure the second guest performance of the evening. For some reason we get to watch the New Spice Girls… err, I mean Blush perform their song… something something I wasn’t really paying attention. Snoop Dogg continues his powerslide into self-parody by accompanying them for a line or two at random moments. Basically it’s an atrocity, and I am working very hard to erase it from my mind Eternal Sunshine-style.
When the judges return with their decision, Nigel leads into the announcement by stressing that these dancers are all amazing, and he reminds them that Twitch and Allison (both in the audience to confirm) landed in the bottom and came close to being eliminated more than once. They want all the dancers to feel good about the work they’ve done. They have nothing bad to say about any of them, and Nigel is sorry that two have to go home. But he looks forward to seeing them on the tour.
With that, he says they were unanimous in their decisions…
Mitchell & Clarice are going home.
So what does everyone think? Did the right two dancers get cut? Do you think it’s getting harder and harder to separate the wheat from the chaff in this competition? Did Nigel let Jordan skate by BIG TIME by not calling her out for repeating her solo? Shout it out here in the comments, or drop us a strongly worded e-mail at gobbledygeek@yahoo.com