Strictly - the Halloween episode
Oct. 29th, 2017 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI thought there were too many punch-lines in the opening routine, and that and the need to bring in the celebs took away from what could have been brilliance – I loved the costumes and the chandelier and how that and the formation dancing worked at times with the song.
Clothes: Tess’s dress was really quite good, with the exaggerated shoulders and rich wine colour working as a hint of a costume. In a shocking twist, Claudia wore black. Costumes: they totally made Craig the Joker for the smile, Darcey’s costume was fine (the make-up popped marvellously), while you could see why Bruno felt underwhelmed by his Beetlejuice-lite, but Shirley got the best of it, and I was amused when the Cruella de Ville persona really took over.
Jonnie’s cha cha was…variable? I saw bits that looked like Latin, bits that looked like Jack Sparrow and bits that were not so good at all. The scores were wincingly bad given last week’s glory slot and 9. We’ll see how popular he is/they are after this.
Ruth and Anton had looked like the most normcore of all the contestants in the line-up. Anton tried the same trick of grabbing the attention from Ruth on a lesser scale with his bunny-tail. Actually, there were moments of lightness to her quickstep, even if a lot of Ruth’s dancing was about as good as her nose twitch.
Simon’s American Smooth…happened. I saw very little ITT, so I didn’t know he’d been injured and had had so little rehearsal, which explained some of it. (Relatively old-fashioned treatment of a song now deemed problematic, show.)
I jotted down ‘why can’t they put on someone good?’ at this point. Fortunately, Gemma was on next to do a Buffy (the movie) themed jive. Although Aljiaz was playing Angel (if he’d been in the movie), I could have done with one or two winks that would suggest that a Buffy fan had a hand in the making of this routine. In and of itself, it was rather stylish, and more of the good than bad.
Joe looked a bit like Kevin to me in his costume. The beginning of their routine promised intensity. I thought the difference between pro and celeb was pronounced in hold – for me, he was a little too stiff. The spidery bits at the end lost me a little, I thought it ended up being a bit too much about Katya’s concept, but the judges thought Joe had stayed up (he has lost his confidence in knowing how a routine went), so maybe I can stop dubbing him inconsistent.
Was giving AJ a helium voice in his VT another dig at his youth? Mollie did pop star strutting 101 to get through the cha-cha and was certainly confident enough, although I didn’t see much hip action.
There was a lot that was good about Alexandra’s tango, a lot of rich content, but it connected less with me than I expected. Her make-up was uncanny, probably because of the one contact.
Davood’s rumba (hard for men!) was probably my favourite dance of his. Granted, it was because he had a story to tell, which helped him enormously, but he projected (an illusion of?) control. A lot of the criticism was of the choreography, and, on that, I noticed that Nadiya put in yet another spin that turned into a lift.
I would like a taster of GoT fans’ reaction to the Strictly take on it. That was such a camp dragon, copied from a travelling fairground ride (but the shadows of dragons flying overhead were really effective.) I hooted throughout, but think it could be described as Susan galumphing through a ballroom thing more than a foxtrot.
The way monster!Giovanni pronounced ‘Debbeh’ (like he was channelling Gemma) in the VT was hilarious, while 90% of the whole VT content was unfunny. This was almost a brilliant Charleston for me, but I got irked that Debbie went off and had a costume change (why not make her a flapper throughout? It’s not as if the storyline of the dance was going to win plot of the year) when she could do such fabulous content? And the lift with a hiccough did spoil things. I suppose the judges justified their 10s because Debbie had no control over them and executed her side of things rather flawlessly. Also flawless, Giovanni’s face make-up; his fussing over his mullet wig in the midst of everything was fun. Then he got ENORMOUSLY PLEASED, Debbie looked overwhelmed, her mum was there and for all sorts of reasons these two should make it into the final.
Aston was required to top that, and he did his very best. Somehow Nirvana + paso worked, the modern and traditional worked (although the pros may note that he lost out to Debbie because of Shirley docking him for purity of the dance reasons). It was, again, almost thoroughly brilliant for me, but the tapping bit didn’t quite work, perhaps because everything stopped to showcase that and you started thinking about the risk factor and getting taken out of the moment.
I didn’t vote, because Davood’s rumba was still the dance that I connected with the most (I own Evanescence’s first album, don’t you know?) I liked Gemma’s jive, and appreciated the top-three scoring dances, while thoroughly enjoying Susan and Kevin’s performance for non-dance-related reasons, which didn’t add up to justifying a vote for anyone. Hopefully, they’ll put Simon out of his, Karen’s and our misery (there are four judges, so Shirley’s Liverpudlian vote doesn’t even have to have a look-in), but it’ll be interesting to see who else is under the red lights, because you could argue Ruth and Davood are improving, while Jonnie had a bad dance and the judges are back to seeing Susan as a comedy contestant.
Clothes: Tess’s dress was really quite good, with the exaggerated shoulders and rich wine colour working as a hint of a costume. In a shocking twist, Claudia wore black. Costumes: they totally made Craig the Joker for the smile, Darcey’s costume was fine (the make-up popped marvellously), while you could see why Bruno felt underwhelmed by his Beetlejuice-lite, but Shirley got the best of it, and I was amused when the Cruella de Ville persona really took over.
Jonnie’s cha cha was…variable? I saw bits that looked like Latin, bits that looked like Jack Sparrow and bits that were not so good at all. The scores were wincingly bad given last week’s glory slot and 9. We’ll see how popular he is/they are after this.
Ruth and Anton had looked like the most normcore of all the contestants in the line-up. Anton tried the same trick of grabbing the attention from Ruth on a lesser scale with his bunny-tail. Actually, there were moments of lightness to her quickstep, even if a lot of Ruth’s dancing was about as good as her nose twitch.
Simon’s American Smooth…happened. I saw very little ITT, so I didn’t know he’d been injured and had had so little rehearsal, which explained some of it. (Relatively old-fashioned treatment of a song now deemed problematic, show.)
I jotted down ‘why can’t they put on someone good?’ at this point. Fortunately, Gemma was on next to do a Buffy (the movie) themed jive. Although Aljiaz was playing Angel (if he’d been in the movie), I could have done with one or two winks that would suggest that a Buffy fan had a hand in the making of this routine. In and of itself, it was rather stylish, and more of the good than bad.
Joe looked a bit like Kevin to me in his costume. The beginning of their routine promised intensity. I thought the difference between pro and celeb was pronounced in hold – for me, he was a little too stiff. The spidery bits at the end lost me a little, I thought it ended up being a bit too much about Katya’s concept, but the judges thought Joe had stayed up (he has lost his confidence in knowing how a routine went), so maybe I can stop dubbing him inconsistent.
Was giving AJ a helium voice in his VT another dig at his youth? Mollie did pop star strutting 101 to get through the cha-cha and was certainly confident enough, although I didn’t see much hip action.
There was a lot that was good about Alexandra’s tango, a lot of rich content, but it connected less with me than I expected. Her make-up was uncanny, probably because of the one contact.
Davood’s rumba (hard for men!) was probably my favourite dance of his. Granted, it was because he had a story to tell, which helped him enormously, but he projected (an illusion of?) control. A lot of the criticism was of the choreography, and, on that, I noticed that Nadiya put in yet another spin that turned into a lift.
I would like a taster of GoT fans’ reaction to the Strictly take on it. That was such a camp dragon, copied from a travelling fairground ride (but the shadows of dragons flying overhead were really effective.) I hooted throughout, but think it could be described as Susan galumphing through a ballroom thing more than a foxtrot.
The way monster!Giovanni pronounced ‘Debbeh’ (like he was channelling Gemma) in the VT was hilarious, while 90% of the whole VT content was unfunny. This was almost a brilliant Charleston for me, but I got irked that Debbie went off and had a costume change (why not make her a flapper throughout? It’s not as if the storyline of the dance was going to win plot of the year) when she could do such fabulous content? And the lift with a hiccough did spoil things. I suppose the judges justified their 10s because Debbie had no control over them and executed her side of things rather flawlessly. Also flawless, Giovanni’s face make-up; his fussing over his mullet wig in the midst of everything was fun. Then he got ENORMOUSLY PLEASED, Debbie looked overwhelmed, her mum was there and for all sorts of reasons these two should make it into the final.
Aston was required to top that, and he did his very best. Somehow Nirvana + paso worked, the modern and traditional worked (although the pros may note that he lost out to Debbie because of Shirley docking him for purity of the dance reasons). It was, again, almost thoroughly brilliant for me, but the tapping bit didn’t quite work, perhaps because everything stopped to showcase that and you started thinking about the risk factor and getting taken out of the moment.
I didn’t vote, because Davood’s rumba was still the dance that I connected with the most (I own Evanescence’s first album, don’t you know?) I liked Gemma’s jive, and appreciated the top-three scoring dances, while thoroughly enjoying Susan and Kevin’s performance for non-dance-related reasons, which didn’t add up to justifying a vote for anyone. Hopefully, they’ll put Simon out of his, Karen’s and our misery (there are four judges, so Shirley’s Liverpudlian vote doesn’t even have to have a look-in), but it’ll be interesting to see who else is under the red lights, because you could argue Ruth and Davood are improving, while Jonnie had a bad dance and the judges are back to seeing Susan as a comedy contestant.
