Strictly

Nov. 28th, 2016 07:24 pm
shallowness: Fred and Ginger dancing in foregroud, him in tails, her in a dark gown, background a white circle (moon or spotlight) (Fred and Ginger dancing)
[personal profile] shallowness
The UK's division over Ed Balls still being in Strictly intensified. I found myself disagreeing with Miranda Hart (she wanted him to win on Friday's ITT).

Saturday’s show

Claudia kind of wore a colour?

Danny got to open. Now I’d been mildly concerned about Oti’s vision of a ‘tribal’ samba – a black South African can culturally appropriate Amazonian tribes as inappropriately as anyone, but the ‘ethnic’ stuff (her choice of adjective) wasn’t that much, and the quality of the dance made it almost moot. The slow opening was fascinating, and then when it sped up, he was great, with the hips and the travelling. No post-Blackpool comedown for him or the scoring.

I then got really confused by the running order. AGAIN. Seeing as they front-loaded the better dancers last week too. Then I realised they were giving certain dancers (definitely Ore as he was sweating like a pig) an advantage before the cha-cha-challenge, and the danger slot was the last one.

Though I was cross with Bruno for mainly going on about the choreography, I did feel it was my stumbling block with Ore’s paso. I just didn’t feel like I got enough paso content or flow, so the stylisation that was getting praised kept putting up a barriers between me and the dance. Bruno’s 10 equalised Craig’s eight (a predictable score based on his comments, which were about the dancing, BRUNO).

Louise next and she was the only one who was worried about her waltz. It did nothing for me. I felt she snatched at some movements, and the ‘story’ didn’t involve me like it did the judges. Kevin went for the spinny ending. They got good marks and plenty of time to change.

We’d finally found out what story Oksana gave Judge ‘I love teachers, me’ Rinder to survive the rumba. I don’t think I’d have got it from the dance. Which is mean of me. I thought it wasn’t a terrible rumba, but it wasn’t good either. My main problem, apart from his face, was that it did get staccato, and I was glad Bruno and Craig picked up on that. He finally went down in the scoring stakes.

Ed sort of danced a tango. The Jagger/Zoolander/posturing irritated me. I thought, like Darcey said, the first bit of tango he did was better than the second bit, and there was a bit where I was impressed by Katya’s core.

Claudia got the last spot then. There were one or two sticky bits and they sacrificed a lot of the floor-work and kicks, but the aerial work was so excellent that I didn’t mind. I thought the routine, on the whole, made the height difference work and played to her strengths, perhaps because AJ (who hasn’t danced the AT before) had nothing to do with it?

Amid the filler as the younguns changed, Len explained what would happen with the Cha-Cha-Challenge. They said he was explaining the rules, but some of them weren’t rules. In this type of scenario, I always think celeb ladies have an advantage in the pro leading them, so I was expecting Louise to do well. Certainly she and Danny caught my eye as good, while Ed was definitely bad, in as much as you could tell what was going on. So it united Danny and Louise at the top and separated Ore from Claudia, which made me change my mind about who I’d vote for.

I'd intended to vote twice (for Danny, who did my favourite routine of the night with his samba, and for Claudia because I maintain she doesn’t deserve to go yet) but I accidentally voted for Ore (who would have been my third choice for a vote) so I had to vote for the others twice.

Yes, I HAD to.

Strictly results show

Ooh, well, that’s a Charleston theme they won’t be able to do again for a little while. Pasha was particularly impressive. I wonder if they gave Gorka the ‘win’ to make up for the Blackpool incident?

Darcey’s black trousers were hideous, breaking a long run of good wardrobe choices.

The recap didn’t help much with understanding what went down in the cha-cha-challenge.

Safe? The joint top couple, which is absolutely fair enough. Not safe, for the first time, but also fair enough, Judge Rinder.

Slo-mo flattered Ore’s shaping in Len’s Lens. Claudia W pulled out ‘voice of the people’ and asked why Claudia F can’t get a 10. Sadly, she asked Darcey who wittered that it was the connection between the couple. Which is a ‘yeah, but no’ answer. I thought the clip they showed of Danny, while fun, didn’t do his full-mark samba justice.

Ellie Goulding’s outfit was dreadful – the asymmetry and the hiddy boots. Urgh. The Cliftons’ modern take on ballroom was a rum mix of styles. Excellent lifts and work at speed, but then some odd, hunched, not quite moments.

They decided to torture Claudia F, and then BEST POSSIBLE RESULT: Ed was in the bottom two.

Tess tried to do the usual stuff but they really shouldn’t have had her ask Craig to speak to Ed then, because he wasn’t going to pretend that Ed had a chance. There was an air of perfunctoriness about what followed, shot through with elation for me.

The trail for the musicals/quarter final week barely featured Louise, the singer, but did provide the Claudia = Rex Harrison analogy.

I fast forwarded through Judge Rinder’s dance, so I don’t know if he followed the advice to look at Oksana more, it was such a done deal. Ed pulled a Tameka in his final words, trying to ensure his pro will stay, and I would imagine she’ll get someone with oodles of potential as her reward.

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