Cat’s dress, shiney with goldiness, made me think of a snake’s tummy. Or like some kind of Incan armor. The wife says it looks like one of those collapsible camp cups. YOU decide!

Favorite line I’m going to try to fit into a conversation tomorrow: “Brought to you by our friends at Snuggle!” -Cat

I must also take this moment to tell you all something I’ve noticed: Mia Michaele is huge and gigantic. She is so huge that she might be a massive world-consuming galactic visitor*. She could easily fit me into her mouth along with a forkload of pasta.

Judges

Mandy Moore fills the guest seat this evening. Mandy had some pretty good dances this year, and I kinda fink I like her better than Mia sometimes. Her judging? Not nearly as entertainingly bitchy.
Mary was very easy on the lot of them this evening, showing no obvious favoritism.
And Nigel continually harped on Joshua’s supposed lack of training, which I’m pretty sure EVERYONE knows isn’t true. What agenda does this crazy bastard have?!?

Now lets talk about the dances…

Dances

Twitch and Courtney
    Hip-hop by Tabitha and Napolean danced to Church, T-Pain featuring Teddy Verseti
That’s some motor-mouthed rap going on there, and the choreagraphy was correspondingly quick-paced and intricate in spurts.
Twitch and Courtney really pulled off the characters and while the routine wasn’t as athletic as I think it could’ve been, the synchronization and partnering were really sharp and made up for it.
I must ask about Twitch’s strangely tacked-on baggy crotch. Like a pair of dress hammer pants. Also, the suspenders seemed unnecessary, especially since Twitch didn’t use them to form a makeshift mask for his crazy eyeballs at any time during the performance–the only legitimate purpose for suspenders in a dance routine ever since last week.

Joshua and Katee
    Lyrical by Wade Robson danced to Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, John Mayer
Wade was strangely absent this season, and its neat to see him back. Nigel tells us he’s been off doing a Vegas magic show, which is as good an excuse as any while still being unsatisfying in my book. Vegas is just a fairy land which I’m pretty sure doesn’t actually exist.
Anyway, the dance, with intricate and interrelated spins and manipulations, started very strong and continued on through the middle but then started to slow down for me near the end. Both these first two couples have had some really sharp partnering.

Courtney and Katee
    Broadway by Tyce Diorio danced to The Trolley Song, Rufus Wainwright
The girls wore pseudo-Late 19th-century outfits which Mandy mind-bogglingly dubbed beautiful and adorable but which I felt looked incomplete with the strange trains drooping behind the can-can skirts.
The judges in general gave them positive marks, but the whole routine was too slow, too boring and I saw almost no relationship between the two characters. In fact, the two were so identical that it was almost as if it were a Harpo Marx-style mirror routine.

Twitch and Joshua
    Russian Trepak by Youri Nelzine danced to The Nutcracker Suite, Tchaikovsky
Far more entertaining than last year’s Two Bored and Gay Goth Princes Fight dance, the thing took the form of a sort of dance competition. While I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more amazing looking tricks, I know that these Ruski moves are more technically difficult than they appear. Mary pooped out the MacGuffin again; Joshua is more than a hip-hop dancer and deserves more than an asterisk, Mary!

Twitch and Katee
    Fox Trot by Tony Meredith danced to Feeling Good, Michael Buble
In a world with both Harry Connick Jr and Colin James in it, there is no need for a Michael Buble. He is a very unnecessary singer.
And a foxtrot? Never a crowd favorite, and outside the expertise of both the dancers; it lead to a dance that was entertaining but primarily bereft of actual foxtrottery. Which is just fine, really, since this is supposed to be the finale and we all want to feel good about the dancers going into tomorrow’s elimination show.
So it was understandable that the judges gave a free pass to the two of them.

Joshua and Courtney
    Jive by Jason Gilkison danced to The Dirty Boogie, Brian Setzer Orchestra
Like the Foxtrot, the Jive is never a crowd favorite and only the quickstep comes off worse on average.
So the jive part of this jive didn’t come across so great, really. However, the athletic tricks probably worked to dazzle the viewer into ignoring the lack of jive. Courtney’s costume seemed completely mismatched next to Joshua’s, but was super-cute nonetheless.
Nigel was the only judge that called them on their jivelessness–I wonder why he didn’t hit Twitch and Katee after their similarly weak Foxtrot?

Joshua, Twitch, Courtney and Katee
    Contemporary by Mia Michaels danced to Hallelujah, Vitamin String Quartet
Mia Michaele is huge and gigantic. She is so huge that she could easily play a barbarian princess or a massive world-consuming galactic visitor. She could easily fit me into her mouth along with a forkload of pasta…did I already say that?
What about these kilts? Well, regardless of the kilts the routine wasn’t all that great to me. Seemed like a commercial for the Olympics, really. And isn’t that on NBC? For shame.
Nigel said Joshua was untrained… AGAIN. What is the game he’s playing at with this?
Hey, he spotted the Olympic feel to the piece as I did but went one better by noticing that they would, indeed, be the Scottish Olympic team.

Solos

Courtney
    They Weren’t There, Missy Higgins
Another generic contempo-girl dance? Yeah, but it was nice anyway. Courtney, like most of the girls this year, really only makes sense when dancing with a partner.
Tonight the video packages are interviews with Cat. Courtney covered her philosophy toward the show and her place on it, which was a surprisingly mature acceptance of her own relative inadequacies and how they work in her favor on a show like this. AND we get to hear that yes, Courtney still has that boyfriend who is not Gev. Plus, she’s from a screamy Long Island family. She singles out her crazy Mark dance as her favorite; a selection I wholeheartedly agree with as I personally found it intellectually interesting and sexually exciting at the same time.

Twitch
    It Was All In Your Mind, Wade Robeson
Hey! Danced to Wade! To honor his return?
Ah, but look at how delightful it was. Twitch always brings new stuff to these solos, and I never get tired of seeing them and how he finds movements that combine with the accompanying music to embetter the whole.
The judges paid homage, as they certainly should.
Meanwhile, in the lead-in video package Twitch admits to being a dancing exhibitionist in his prior life before showing some footage from his tryouts and admitting to almost joining the navy. Twitch singles out the overwrought Jean-Mark waltz as his favorite dance. I still love you anyway, Twitchy, even if Jean-Mark broke your mind.

Katee
    Danced to Hide and Seek, Imogen Heap
Another generic contempo-girl dance? Well.. maybe. But it was very captivating nonetheless, and her costume was much better than the usual baby-doll crap the girls have been soloing in since Comfort left.
In the video package, If only in flash-back form, we get to see Katee’s roommate again! While I’ve come to love Katee, I still wonder what it would’ve been like with her roommie, since she seemed almost like a female vesion of Mark in her tryouts. I really liked her wierd movement set.

Joshua
    (Not Just) Knee Deep, Funkadelic
Aside from hopping onto the judges’ dais in the middle of the routine, it was the SAME stuff he does in EVERY solo. In this way he is quite inferior to Twitch, who is nowhere near a match for him athletically. You would think he’d have a new routine with new moves for the friggin’ finale. The solos were never what Josh was about, though.
Nigel, why you sayin’ our man Josh is untrained? We ALL know he’s trained, sheesh! Let him stand on his own merits, not on the merits of the asterisk.
In the inteview vid there’s that tall hat look again. I don’t like it much, as it makes me think, “Cone-head.”
Joshua singles out the incredible Samba with Katee as his favorite. I agree again! I can’t tell you how many times I rewound and watched that dance in absolute awe of Joshua’s leg and hip movements.

Final Thoughts

Does it seem like chest popping was a bit overdone by the b-boys this year? I’ll hereby call this the season of the auto-defibrillation.

So who do I think is going to win?
Joshua is my first pick with Twitch being a close second. It’ll be really shocking if either girl gets the golden turkey**
Of the boys, Joshua is the slickest operator with impossibly glaceful movements and control. Twitch, however, is a unique and artistic performer who looks to be an even better choreographer than he is a dancer.
Who should win? Man…. I just don’t know.

* Like Galactus, but less helmeted and more bitchy
** In addition to the title of “America’s Favorite Dancer,” this year’s winner is also forced to accept a golden turkey in a humiliating public ceremony.