Dear Jenny,
I'm not even going to ask if you watched last night's exciting Three-Hour Mary Murphy Event, because, as everyone knows, you have no soul, which is to say that you are not delighted by the wonders of The Dance.
A pity, because it was pretty good. OK. My attention flickered a little during So You Think You Can Dance. For me it doesn't get interesting until the auditions are really, really over and the actual performances can begin. I'm not interested in the talentless, deluded or attention-seeking freaks (which, to be fair, were mostly weeded out in the first -- but endless -- weeks of this season) and the drama around who will make the cut isn't that exciting for me, either.
Some of it is just plain annoying. They always make a big deal about who is going to be the very last dancer of each sex to make the cut. This final cut for the men was relatively compelling: two dancers I hadn't seen before took the stage, and I thought, "One is really cute, the other is whatever but has a huge neck. I'm rooting for Not-Huge-Neck," and then sort of kind of not really agonized while Nigel Lythgoe et co dragged it out. (Not-Huge-Neck won.) Then the last two of the women came out, and according to Cat Deeley they are best friends -- Katie and Natalie. The judges had apparently already decided to keep Katie and cut Natalie, but then they interviewed them. Katie admitted that if she didn't make it, she probably wouldn't audition again next year, because this was her second year auditioning and it was all just too much. Pearl-clutching ensued. "How can you give up so easily? If you're this easily discouraged, then why should we bother?" and on and on, as if So You Think You Dance were the non plus ultra of dancing, rather than not even the only televised dance competition airing that night. Then -- then! -- the judges sent poor Katie and Natalie (the latter of whom hadn't even said anything!) out into the hall while they re-cast their votes and then decided to keep Katie anyway.
On the other hand, earlier in the night, when the judges kicked another dancer off, just for being mouthy, it was kind of awesome, because that one totally had it coming.
Anyway, after that, we had the grande finale of Step It Up and Dance!, which was slightly anticlimactic. I haven't been covering this show, week to week, for whatever reason, maybe because I didn't have much to say about it. It's good, I watch it, and then it's over. From about the second week on, it's seemed to me that Cody Green was going to walk away with the whole thing. Others of the dancers are good, but Cody can do anything. While the rest of the dancepetitors had exceeded in specific genres -- notably Janelle Ginestra (of Modesto!), whose genre seemed to be "angry" -- Cody had been among the best dancers, week after week, no matter what he had to do.
Last week, though, things got a little more interesting -- underdog Nick Drago did an amazing job with a dance to Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" (so weird) while Cody endured a rain of abuse from Nancy O'Meara (the judge who uncomfortably has nicknamed some of the male dancepetitors after pastries) all hinging on O'Meara's perception that Cody is "snobby." Then, at the judges' table, Elizabeth Berkley contradicted O'Meara on the "snobby" thing, leading to a "don't interrupt me"-off between the two judges. So awesome.
This week . . . grande finale (and yes, Beserkley pronounced that phrase as if she were French -- and very dramatic). Mary Murphy. Other celebrities I didn't totally recognize. One group routine to a Fergie song that seemed to kind of suck -- the song, not the routine. The winner of that challenge won a role in a music video by some white kid I didn't recognize and don't 100% believe exists. Poor Michelle "Mochi" Camaya -- she's my favorite and she deserved a better prize than a role in an R & B video for a made-up white kid. Then individual, self-choreographed routines, each of which was actually really good, then, despite last week's blip, Cody won anyway. Yay!
Like you care,
-- Pete
