Cat, wearing some kind of toga with a glittery spiderweb on it, announces that they've found the best of the best, who are, same as last week: Ashley, Ade, Asuka, Brandon, Caitlin, Evan, Janette, Jason, Jeanine, Jonathan, Karla, Kupono, Kayla, Max, Melissa, Phillip, Paris, Tony, Randi, and Vitolio. And in case we're having trouble keeping our genders straight, the show helpfully divides them up into girls and guys for us. Kupono's name, all of a sudden, has an accent on top of the u.
Cat waves her "new babies" off the stage. I guess she's not wearing a toga at all, but it is kind of ugly. But she could wear a burlap sack if she wants. She introduces the judges, and I kind of feel ripped off that she just lets the audience say "jidges" for her all the time.
Adam joins Mary and Nigel, who sucks up to the crowd by saying the dancers need to feed off the energy that the audience is giving. Mary babbles about how she's nervous. Then Adam talks about how he's "living in airports" because in addition to doing this show, he's producing three movies including Step Up 3D, which he tells us will feature Katee, Joshua and Ivan and Twitch. Plus it's in 3D, as apparently most movies are required to be in these days. Still, not having seen Step Up or Step Up 2: Step Harder, I'm not sure I'd be able to follow Step Up 3D.
So Cat goes over how the performance show and results show work, and then we go into a montage of highlights from the past few shows set to some cheesy ballad that I can't wait to stop hearing, and we watch dancers getting told that they made the top 20. Cat tells us it's been an "amazing journey" so far. Maybe for you guys. I've just been sitting on my ass on the couch watching television.
Jeanine and Phillip are the first couple. Jeanine gets all teary-eyed when she talks about how she doesn't have the best legs or whatever, but she has passion. Phillip talks about the creativity involved in learning his popping in his bedroom, dancing to the sound of construction outside.
They're dancing hip-hop with Taboleon, and Napoleon tells us that this routine is about a couple that can't go to sleep without .... and he trails off, and Tabitha finishes, "... resolving their issues." Sounds great! Then they overshare about having issues sometime, but they "never go to sleep mad." You know, sometimes going to sleep mad is OK. You hardly ever wake up mad. Plus you get more sleep! Jeanine says she "wants to kill it so bad," but she's worried because she's terrible at hip-hop. "I think we still have a lot of hard work ahead of us," says Napoleon, because we always have to set up the "Oh my god, this is going to be terrible"/"No, wait! (S)he was really good!" suspense thing that they like to do on this show, and then Phillip and Jeanine talk about finding a connection.
They dance to "Mad" by Ne-Yo, and they start off lying on the stage, and then they get up and, just like my wife and I do when we fight, start up some synchronized popping and locking. They spin around and Jeanine jumps in Phillip's arms and they spin around, and then Phillip does some wavy arms and then they smile at each other and lie back down and then snuggle. It was OK, I guess. I wish the hip-hop didn't have to tell a story, especially since it just winds up being "We're mad at each other!" and then "We're not mad at each other anymore!" The therapeutic powers of hip-hop, I suppose.
Adam calls it "un-freakin'-real," which I think sets the bar a little bit high for this number, and he praises Jeanine for stepping it up (not in 3D though) to take on hip-hop for the opening couples number for the season, despite her lack of hip-hop experience and she's dancing with popper extraordinaire Phillip, whom Adam lauds for his generosity towards his partner and the way he's grown. Mary says, "I do hate to disagree with Adam," says Mary, like she's FOOLING ANYBODY, and then screeches, "SO I'M NOT GOING TO!" And then she babbles a whole of nonsense, and she keeps ratcheting up the pitch. I mean, she's like a tape being played on high-speed. Nigel says while Phillip's already got a following but Jeanine may have "slipped under the net" as far as being in the top 20, and I'd like to point out that maybe this show might think about wasting less time in early shows on shit like Sex, we'd know all the dancers like we know Phillip. He congratulates them both, and then, as required, praises the choreographers too. Which is kind of like Simon and Randy and Paula praises a contestant on American Idol and then adding, "Oh, and nice job, Lennon and McCartney!"
Asuka was born in San Francisco, and her mom took her to a dance studio, and she wound up sticking with ballet, until she got to college and found out about Latin ballroom. Who knew it would someday lead to Nigel making inappropriate comments about her sexiness on a national television show? Vitolio's journey has been against the odds, Cat tells us, and Vitolio tells us about his mother dying and how he grew up in an orphanage and how that was really hard.
But let's not bum everyone out too much, because we've got a Tyce DiOrio Broadway routine to rehearse! It's a silent film, Tyce tells us. Vitolio's the director and Asuka's the actress. Well, who plays the cards that show us the dialogue. Asuka says there are a lot of staccato movements and locking, which she's never done. Likewise, Vitolio said he had to really work on the locking, and he could tell Tyce was getting frustrated. Well, I don't think Tyce is really the kind to be shy about letting you know when he's frustrated. Then they all hug, so I guess Tyce isn't frustrated anymore.
So they're dancing to some frigging song or another from Chicago, and there is a fake old-timey movie camera set up on stage, and apparently Vitolio's film director dresses like Charlie Chaplin, or maybe everybody did before talkies were invented.
For some reason, she has a balloon that she lets go right away, and then Vitolio adjusts his tie and then goes out and lifts her into a splits, and they do some Broadway kicks and jumps, and then Asuka is behind the camera, and then she jumps onto his back, and I liked it more than the hip-hop routine. I mean, at least Broadway routines are supposed to be a little gay.
But Adam starts talking about the luck of the draw, and how they followed a really emotional piece with a real character piece. I don't know if I would have said the Taboleon piece was overly emotional. Anyway, Adam says the result is that their routine comes off as a little more artificial. Really? A Broadway routine? Huh. He does say they danced very well, and very clean, and it's clear they're very good dancers.
Mary tells Vitolio that he didn't disappoint Tyce like he was worried about, but she herself was a little disappointed. She feels that they just played it safe. Nigel says the same thing, that they really needed to put more of their personalities into it, but instead seemed too worried about their lines, which he does say were wonderful. "The choreographer can only do so much, and you had to bring yourself to the party, and you didn't quite make it tonight," he says, and Cat cheers them up by chirpily talking about how this is the first show, and we can all grow from here. Well, somebody's going to get cut, Cat. They can't all keep growing.
Karla and Jonathan are the couple. Karla says she's performed in two Broadway shows, but felt like something was missing and really wanted to dance all the different styles on SYTYCD. Salsa dancer Jonathan started dancing because of season one of this show. "Never did I ever think I was gonna be on the show," he says, adding that being here is incredible.
They're dancing cha-cha with Tony Meredith, who tells that the feeling is -- as with most Latin dances -- that the woman is flirting with the guy and he's out to get her. There are a couple clips of Jonathan grabbing Karla's ass and then at some point it looks like he gets his whole face down there. He also sweats a lot. He says his goal is to make Mary scream, and I can only he assume he means through his dancing. He wants Mary to scream? Why even say that? If she doesn't, then his routine's a disappointment. But if she does, then she screams. It's lose/lose!
Speaking of lose/lose, this couple is also inflicting that "Poker Face" song on us (soon to be followed up by the "Hardly Know 'Er Face" song). They're dressed in white and black and dancing in strobe lights. They get all Latiny on us. She falls backwards into his arms and he drags her across the stage. I could just think this because we already know that she has danced professionally, but she's really good, and is quite sexy at this whole sexy-dance stuff, although she does have a little bit of perma-grin head-cheerleader thing going on. Jonathan does a splits through Karla's legs, and the whole routine seems practically effortless, even though he's probably sweating like Patrick Ewing.
Adam says they were great, although he advises Jonathan to get a little more flexibility when he rolls his body -- on the replay, we can see that Karla waves like a rippling flag while he doesn't move quite so much.
Then Mary screams. Not her full-on hands-cupped-around-the-mouth crystal-shattering screech, but a lower-register, more restrained scream. Then she tries on what I assume she thinks is a saucy voice and says, "I like my cha-cha rough," and then the new button, Mary Murphy Mute, on my remote engaged and I didn't have to listen to any more. Nigel calls them another couple that have slipped under the radar up until night. "Talk about chemistry, you two just exploded on that stage!" he says, which unfortunately makes Mary scream. He says they did a fantastic job, and praises Tony for his great routine. It sounds like Adam tries to add something, but thankfully Cat's cutting him off so she can give out the digits for Karla and Jonathan.
Randi, who rocks the unitard, is paired with Evan. She talks about how she's a country girl, and the lights and the makeup and all that are very surreal to her. I'm suspicious of people who have to tell you how country they are. I mean, shouldn't Randi be dancing at a hoedown if she's that country? Broadway dancer Evan reminds us that he auditioned with his brother, and it was "bittersweet" to see his brother go home, but he's excited to get to work.
Oh no! Another Tyce piece! They're doing a jazz routine. "The piece is both physically and I would say emotionally demanding," says Evan. Randi talks about how she's married (closeup of the rock on her left hand while her hand's on Evan's back), and it's really tough for her pretend that she's in love with Evan when she's married, like GROW UP, it's called ACTING, and Evan apologizes in advance to Randi's husband, and Evan's worried because he doesn't know how big the guy is.
So they dance to "I Only Have Eyes For You" by Jamie Cullum, in blue shadows. There's a lot of running together and pulling apart, and it's emotional and everything, although the feeling seems to run out midway through the routine and it kind of looks to me like they were concentrating just to hit the steps. Evan does better as a partner then I think I expected, and lefts Randi up onto his shoulder and turns around at one point, and the piece ends with the two of them collapsed in each other's arms on the stage.
Cat asks Randi if her husband's there tonight, and he's not, so Evan's safe for now, apparently. Evan's brothers are there, both Ryan, and his other brother, who, hilariously, actually has on a T-shirt that says "The Other Brother" on it.
Adam points out that despite the fact the two of them are "vertically challenged" -- they are, indeed, dwarfed by Cat -- their lines went on forever and they danced like they're eight feet tall. Adam praises Evan: "No one saw you coming," he says, adding that he doesn't think that there's a dance style that Evan couldn't conquer. Oh, and it's one of the best pieces Tyce has ever done, apparently.
Mary says when they left Las Vegas, the two of them were "at the end of the pack" for her. But "the stars have just come out tonight," she says, and then she screams, and as usual, as soon as she screeches, I stop hearing anything she says -- or anything else -- for about thirty seconds, which is usually enough to take care of anything else she needs to say.
So how does Nigel feel about Randi's dancing? "I love your hair curled like that," is what he leads with. Oh, Nigel. Then he says the dancers' control of the routine was great, and that people are going to pick up the phone to vote for them. Cat calls them the cutest couple, and you want to put them in your pocket. It kind of looks like she really could put the two of them in her pocket.
up are Paris and Tony. Paris was in a car accident that dislocated her seat and crushed her into the dashboard, and her left leg was numb from the knee down, and she thought she'd never dance again. But then, it seems, she did! True story. Tony is a hip-hopper who played sports all his life, including, as a photo of the youngster attests, hockey! Woo hoo! In high school he was torn between sports and dance, and had a chance to play lacrosse in college, but he chose dance, which his dad didn't like. He hopes that being on this show will help open his dad's eyes a bit more.
They're doing a Taboleon hip-hop routine, which I'm sure is going to be dark and edgy. Ha ha! Tony says he feels a lot of pressure, because this is his own style that he's going to be dancing in. Would he prefer to be trying an entirely new style? I imagine then we'd have to hear the usual dancer lament of being out of their "comfort zone." From the rehearsal, it sounds like Taboleon are doing something not so happy. We know this because Napoleon says the words "hardcore" and "ghetto" and they had to tell Tony not to be so happy. So Tony shows us his "stank face."
Well, if you want some hip-hop that's ghetto and hardcore, who better than ... the Black-Eyed Peas? Oh, man. And I actually like the Black-Eyed Peas, despite their selling out to just about anyone who will have them, including, as we've seen a couple times already tonight, Target. They have headphones around their neck. I suppose that's hardcore. Herky-jerky movements, with some kicks and intertwined arms, and a lot of the locks don't seem to lock up quite tight enough. I can't watch Taboleon routines without wishing that Shane Sparks were still doing his thing on this show, but this isn't too bad. Although parts of it are hard to watch because the camera is tilted at a forty-five-degree angle for whatever unfathomable reason. The crowd goes nuts when Tony does some kind spank thing on Paris's butt. They fall backwards in tandem, bending at the knees, and then they play with their headphones and then it's all over.
Adam says he thought it was really good, in this head-bobbing way that indicates it's not going to be unconditional praise, and then says he found the costumes distracting. They're kind of like near-futuristic, in the sense of how people used to think we would be dressing now. Red and black and silver, like if the White Stripes went back to the future. Adam says that when a song has as much punch as this one does, there needs to be a little bit more rebound in the punches, but there was a little too much mush in the stops. Tony jokingly glares at him, and Adam says he doesn't want Tony to just slide by being the cute guy.
Mary says she doesn't think the routine is going to be memorable, and then she gets booed, and she says Tony was told to get more aggressive but his stank face just isn't believable yet. She thinks he's in trouble if he gets krump right now. Nigel says Paris was great, and Tony's got room to grow this season, and he's got a lot to do. He says they were just doing steps, and his "stank stank."
up are Caitlin and Jason. Caitlin says Vegas Week was very trying for her, what with dancing for her life before ending up in the top twenty. She grew up in Maryland, sailing with her family. She started as a gymnast, and then she started dancing, and then she danced all over the place, and now she's here! Great story. Contemporary dancer Jason grew up in Fresno, and played sports all the time but never thought he'd be a dancer, only now he's here, and he's a better man because of it, or something. They're doing a Bollywood routine by Nakul Dev Mahajan, and he describes it as very intense. "We have to move our feet really fast, and our hands have to be right on, and our necks have to be perfectly tilted," says Jason, and Caitlin complains about not having finger muscles.
Of course they're dancing to a song from Slumdog Millionaire, because that way all the people who say they love Bollywood but only have that soundtrack can really get into it. Cool routine, though, with a handstand and snapped movements. Whirling kicks and crouches. It ends with a kiss. Cat tells them they both look beautiful, and Nigel praises the costumes. Yep, they look Indian all right.
"You guys rocked!" yells Adam, and Caitlin and Jason freak out and Caitlin jumps into Jason's arms. He says Jason's hand work was superb, and made it look effortless. "You are going to be a little force of nature in this competition if you keep this stuff up, buddy." He says Caitlin did a great job, and talks about them being in sync, and praises Nakul.
And then Mary screams that she's glad "Bollywood came to Hollywood," like yes, OF COURSE THEY RHYME, and then she screams some more things that had my dog in pain. And then Nigel has to point out that they had a Bollywood number last year, long before the whole Slumdog phenomenon happened, lest anyone think that SYTYCD is just following the crowds, and I hate to point out that a bunch of people seeing Slumdog Millionaire hasn't exactly transformed North America into a bunch of sari-wearing Bollywood fanatics, so I don't know what his point is, but if he's so keen on having this show ahead of the curve, then maybe we could go more than two weeks without a routine set to a number from Chicago. I mean, really. And then he says "Jai ho!" and let's just go to commercial, please.
Janette and Brandon are up . Janette says she was nervous when she came to the show, because she thought there'd be lots of people doing salsa. Her family is Cuban. She never really studied the salsa, it just came naturally to her. Then we see Mary crying over how awesome Brandon was in his audition, and he tells us that really "excelled" him. And we have to revisit Mia and Lil' C sneering at Brandon's ability. He says he's here to prove Mia wrong.
They're going to be doing the foxtrot with Louis van Amstel, who says if you can imagine Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire on the dance floor, that's the foxtrot. WTF? We don't have to imagine that, that's what it is! That's like saying, "If you can imagine the New York Yankees playing a game in which teams of nine take turns batting and fielding, that's baseball." Brandon and Janette say at first they were picking it up easily, but the more complicated it got, the tougher it was for them to do.
Oh, great, the first Michael Bublé song of the year. The two of them look amazing, with Janette in a long, flowing pink dress and Brandon in a black jacketless suit with a matching boutonnière. They glide across the stage, dip and twirl, effortlessly, and the piece climaxes with an amazing -- I don't know what you call it, but Brandon lifts up Janette with arms extended and then spins around, and twirls her down around his neck onto the floor.
Adam makes a crack about America being disappointed with Brandon dancing in clothes, and I think Adam can strive for a little bit more than being the gay Nigel, and then he says he was worried that after a high-energy number like the Bollywood routine that a foxtrot would seem staid, but it was "absolutely lovely." Adam praises Brandon's character and performance, which he'd never seen from Brandon before. Cat says something about Mary raising an eyebrow and giving her verdict, and then Mary says she can't: "Too much Botox!" and everyone reacts like it's the funniest thing they've ever heard, especially Mary, who laughs harder at her own joke than I've ever seen anyone laugh at anything ever. My god. I don't know if I can take a full season of her. This screaming business gets more annoying every year. When Mary finishes screaming, Nigel praises Janette's carriage. Nigel says Brandon's big moves were terrific but he needs a little work on his tiny feet sometimes.
Then we get Ashley and Kupono. Ashley's tried out for this show four times, which taught her not to give up. Kupono started teaching, which doesn't pay the bills, so he does a lot of side jobs with his dad, like, apparently, throwing gang signs while wearing hazmat suits. He's scraped mildew off walls and assembled shopping carts, which he says are the crappiest jobs you'll ever do. I think of way worse jobs than that. I can also think of way worse jobs that wouldn't seem all that bad if you were doing them in Hawaii, too.
They're doing a jazz routine by Wade Robson, who says conceptually the piece is about crash test dummies, as in the testing devices for the automotive industry, and not the '90s Canadian folk-rock band. As usual when someone works on a jazz routine, someone makes a jazz hands joke.
And right off, I like it. Maybe it's the costumes: they're both in white costumes that simulate the look of crash test dummies, Ashley a brand new model and Kupono an old dummy with a tire tread across his torso. And they have a little robot dog! It's like a mechanical ballet, all loose-jointed in the right places, and thank god Wade resisted what I imagine would have been the temptation to have them do the robot. They hold hands and run off stage, we hear the sound of a car crash, and a tire comes rolling onstage.
Hee.
Adam doesn't say whether he likes it right away; he's too busy contorting himself to be able to pat himself on the back as part of a show that brings such a diverse array of culture into American homes. As for his actual criticism: he says their technique is exquisite and they're going to go far, and he calls Wade "one sick puppy" (in the audience, Wade points at his wife Amanda to him) like for god's sake, they were crash test dummies, not people having sex with horses. Mary babbles on about how sometimes she makes the journey with Wade and sometimes she doesn't, but here she was right there with him, and she loved it, and then she puts the dog on the Hot Tamale train, because she's only truly happy when she's babbling a lot of meaningless bullshit. Nigel spends an hour or so tongue-bathing Wade and what a genius he is before getting around to the performance. He calls it a wonderful story and performance, and the dancers took them to a different world.
We're going to see Melissa and Ade . Melissa's a ballerina, and apparently Adam called her a "naughty ballerina," and she says she's also been called the "buff ballerina" because she's very muscular. She's also, at 29, the oldest dancer in the competition, but she thinks she can hang with the kids. Contemporary dancer Ade attends Chapman University in Orange County, and he studies sound engineering, but dancing is his passion.
They're doing a contemporary routine by Mandy Moore, who says the piece is about the moment you fall in love, so there'll be a lot of sweeping movements and lifts. "I like a lot of different body parts in a lot of different places," says Mandy, and Melissa, the cougar, gets excited talking about playing dirty Twister with Ade, whose biggest concern was keeping the pick in his afro.
So this should be a sweet, tender piece, with -- oh, god, are you kidding me? You are not dancing to that ultimate '80s cheeseball ballad "Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx, are you? You are. Well, you're not wearing a white suit shirtless with the jacket open, are you, Ade? You are? Ugh. Now I'm too distracted to pay attention to the dance with, does feature a lot of sweeping and lifts. They dance it well. It's very soft and romantic, I have to admit.
Adam can't believe he's using the word "special," but he is, and says Melissa is proof that you just get better with age, like you'd think she's collecting Social Security, for god's sake, and he praises Ade's power. And then Mary screams, and I really hope that we can go from "Mary screeches" as the ultimate seal of approval on this show to "Mary offers constructive, eloquent praise" as the ultimate seal of approval. Adam calls it a testament to the power of ballet training. Nigel feels it's now safe to bust out the "what an amazing top 20 we have this year" cliche. He praises the two of them, as well as Mandy (the shot of Mandy in the crowd kinda makes it look like she's naked).
Final couple of the night is Kayla and Max. Kayla was born and raised in Colorado, and she's the one whose grandparents were with her at the audition. Ballroom dancer Max's hometown is Moscow, and he came to the States when he was thirteen. His mother brought his brothers over one by one. His younger brother died five years ago in a car accident.
They're doing a samba with Louis van Amstel, who calls Max a lucky bastard for getting to dance with Kayla. Louis says he's known Max since he was fourteen years old, but there's no explanation given for that. Max says Louis is the guy who "made it all happen" in New York. Then we watch Kayla struggle to learn the routine, since it's not something she's trained for. Then we see her being awesome at it. "I think we're going to nail it," she says.
She's in pink fringe, he's in black, and they do the steps right, and she does back kicks, and he twirls her (including a cool one where she kind of bends down and ducks under his arm), but it's all kind of boring for me, even the part where they lock their legs together and shake their chests at each other. Could be it's been a long two hours and I'm getting tired.
Adam says it was so good. He has his hands on his face like he's going to turn into the Hulk. He calls Max lucky a) for getting ballroom first, and b) for getting Kayla, who he says is proof of God. Mary stands up and screams and does her train thing, and Nigel has headphones on to block out the sound, but Mary's voice knows no barriers.
Nigel lavishes the two of them with praise, although he thinks Max could stand to be a little sharper. "You have topped an absolutely brilliant night tonight," he says.
Predictions: Bottom three: Asuka and Vitolio, Paris and Tony, and Mary Murphy's vocal cords.