Strictly (Musicals) Results

[shallowness]

My immediate response was: best pro dance of the year!

That’s saying something, considering Jason came on and said this was a last-minute addition – although I think he meant at the end of the prep time/rehearsals before the series started, because Luba was teasing this routine on ITT weeks ago, but it still means it was more impromptu than some of the other routines. Also, the producers can’t have known they’d have movie!Elphaba in the studio and the singers must have been all ‘gulp’/’we’ll show her’. They won me over by dancing ut the song, that it was almost balletic, and then they used flying!Luba beautifully. So, even after my first flush of excitement has settled, I still think it was probably the best.

I liked Tess’s outfit, Claudia was not in black, Shirley went for a nice very dark blue, Motsi went for metallic, which is predicatble, but not as much as Anton, while Cynthia dialled it down to be demure.

Recap, and it was a chance to take in that the male celebs were all at the bottom (so they got mixed comments) while their female counterparts were on top, and appeared as per their ranking, with sweet, sweet victory for Tilly, and an appreciation thaof what AJ had achieved, which was overshadowed by the potential of someone others overtakin her – Rose certainly could have.

Really striking that there are so few of them left as only two couples (the top two, fair enough) were called safe. Rhys was in the dance-off aain, but seemed more resilient about it. AJ was less emotional in this talk with Claudia, while Kai’s Anton impression was better than his Shirley – and I can’t believe they waited until then to reveal that the waltz had been the first dance Kai had learned.

Run-of-the-mill song with extra backing singers, and the dancers definitely weren’t Dianne and Neil who should probably be the only ones allowed to do this style. Also Karen. They weren’t quite in sync like the best pro-ams are, so the second go was better.

In hindsight, the fact they talked about all the guys bar Dan in the contractually obligatory judges’ debrief was telling, but they didn’t add much. They might as well have got Craig on Zoom.

Rose was called safe and then it was tense. Ugh, Dan got called safe again. I know he’s improving, and Rhys made a mistake, Tom underperformed and John was arguably stagnant, but Dan is still the worst dancer. Stop voting for him, people. John got unnecessarily tortured (or did he?) while Amy was a dramah empress.

And then Tom was under the red light. Cynthia was all ‘dance for your sister!’ Whatever, Rose did some hilarious Gio impresonations.

Dance off: I thought both Rhys and Tom took the advice onboard, but they were such different dances! The other contestants could cheer Rhys on in the jive in a way they couldn’t for Tom, who did give it more emotional welly, to the point that there was danger he couldn’t pull off the moves. (His comments about finding that tough because Marius was meant to be stand-offish, because the song is about unrequited love, and the judges Didn’t Get It takes me back to my riginal thought that this was a weird choice for a routine that was meant to show them off as a couple, and Tom more than Amy, so it would have been a better fir for a lady celeb. Also, Tom and Amy were sniffy about getting a 7 from her, but this and maybe the Matilda routine were probably the styles she knew most about. Who knows what Craig would have made of it?)

Cynthia probably wasn’t having such a good time at this point. The three first judges saved Rhys (Shirely disagreed, and I think she’s over him.) Amy ‘wasn’t ready for this’ even thouh Tom was in the bottom two, and with Tilly safe, at least one of the couples was bound to be in the bottom two for the first time. Still, thinking about, ooh Tom’s paso and Dan’s, I’m exasperated by the voting public’s continued support for Dan, but what can you do?