judemorrigan

I think Vault 31 was all the executive *assistants*. Cooper's wife presumably wound up with the actual big-wigs.

I don't think this is what it is, but it might be a case of her not realizing it was a TARDIS until she saw it dematerialize. In universe, the automatic association of police boxes with the Doctor shouldn't necessarily be as strong as it is with us.

A note: I believe the title of the episode was Breaking Brad, not Bad. Showing once again that there are few lengths the people who make these shows will not go for a cheap laugh. (That's actually a compliment, honest!)

I kind of hate that they're having Luke go all-in on the whole jedi "no attachment" thing. I mean, he spent he blew off both Yoda and Obi-Wan multiple times on Dagobah when they told him he needed to put aside his attachment to his friends and family. And as a direct result, he succeeded where they had failed spectacularly.

I like to think that Gardner Minshew will be Jason's eternal reward.

Cool. Coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool....

On a more serious (but still kind of related) note, I was surprised the Sap guys didn't compare their product to coconut water. Particularly as hard as they were trying to hit the supposed health aspects of their drinks, that seemed like an obvious point of comparison.

But the pet drink had electrolytes, it had what dogs crave!

Well, it should definitely have flow to it, but the trick is that tempo-wise - it's actually one of the fastest dances there is. So it's *very* easy for it to become hectic. For what it *should* look like, I heartily recommend looking up some pro smooth on youtube. Emerald always puts up high quality video. I'd recommend starting there.

Oh, I don't know. I think I'd argue that making the "Alive in Tuscon" signs back in the pilot was the single smartest thing anyone's done in the entire series. Which, mind you, is damning with faint praise. Tandy may be the most annoying, but the whole crew are kind of a pack of idiots.

I hate people trying to fake latin hip action so very much. For the record, Bonner's lines were fine in the dance-off, but his hip action was *not* good. At all.

That, of course, is the difference. Despite the way Len would grouse, they do smooth Viennese on this show. If you watch what is being danced competitively these days, smooth couples tend to not spend all that much time in closed hold. My own open Viennese has lots of shadow and alternative hold, but literally no closed hold at all. (My other three dances have a fair bit of it though, for the record.) Val's vwaltz choreography always seems very silver-ish to me. Which I consider a compliment.

I assumed he's been spending too much time with Riker.:-P

That was regrettable.

Peta and Keo's dance was unequivocally a cha cha, despite what the screen said. For the record.

That was a very strange dance by Riker. There were bits where his dancesport background was very obvious. (A star utilizing their lats in a Latin dance? That's unpossible.). But overall? Yeesh.It's a terrible shame he's not working with a ballroom pro.

I'm pretty sure the Pirates of the Carribean theme is actually in 12/8. I'll say that I've seen people who know what they're doing choreograph Paso to that piece. To clarify on Val and Rumer's samba, I didn't really have a problem with the content. I was just singularly underwhelmed by the execution and technique. But again, the stars' samba technique is *always* underwhelming at the best. And I am admittedly holding her and the other contenders to a separate standard. Which may or may not be fair.

I spent a lot of time last week defending Val and Rumer's faux-waltz as only being faux because of the music. This week though, I have to say that I loved the concept and fact that Rumer's choice of character way more than I did the dance itself. In their defense, the sambas on this show have all been pretty much uniformly terrible. And she had her moments in the dance. But overall, I wasn't seeing much samba technique from her. And allow me to note that I *hate* "Len likes traditional ballroom because he's old snark. A funny counterpoint to last week with Tony and Suzanne's jazz: I kept finding myself watching Tony and thinking to myself "Sheesh there's a lot of smooth foxtrot in this jazz routine". In fairness, it may be more a case of there being rather a lot of jazz in smooth foxtrot. I know I've had my own instructor give me homework to spend some time watching Bob Fosse dances to inform the character of my own foxtrot. Anyways, I'm not going to miss Suzanne at all. I am, however, going to miss the Tony that's shown up the last couple of weeks. At least on the dance floor. I keep going back and forth on what disappoints me most about Allison and Riker's partnership: that he could be doing so ridiculously well with a ballroom pro or that they'll do well enough regardless to let TPTB justify keeping her around. She seems like a lovely person who is just a lousy fit for this show. I have no trouble believing that Chris' injury was real - I kept thinking that he seemed ... heavily medicated when they were talking to him last night. Just another reason that I really hope he goes home next week. Particularly over Sharkaroo. Whose dance (and music, what an awful rendition of Step In Time) had issues that were unfortunate, but fixable. Count me among the people who have really appreciated what working with the younger ladies has done for Mark. I grew to kind of hate his show persona for a while there, but he's been doing really well. And while I get people's reaction to the rabbit costume, I personally found myself kind of impressed by his willingness to complete go for it.

Yeah. It was definitely a DTWS-special "waltz" musically. Personally, I'm not inclined to fault the dancers for the show's music. I have to think that they would rather prefer to choreograph their waltzes to music that's at least in the right freaking time signature. But I'm not about to fault anyone who has serious issues with musicality impact of a dance being a faux-waltz to non-waltz music. My own grumbling are definitely intended to be specific to Len's specific critiques of the dance.

That's what I always got from my instructors, legaleagle. There are practical concerns, of course. And this could easily be a case of different instructors explaining the same concept in two different, seemingly contradictory ways. There's a *lot* of that in ballroom. I will stand by my statement that his left side was seriously borked though. And yes, it was causing Alison to have to wildly overextend on that side. Whether you want to call the process of fixing that "bringing the frame down" or something else would apparently depend on the instructor and what they were wanting to emphasize at the time. (My own would snap "bird wing" to me were I to do what he was doing. It makes sense in context. Honest! ;-))

For what it's worth, you're not supposed to pick your feet up in the waltz. Granted, it should be more of a glide than a shuffle, and there were definitely a few times he bobbled a bit (likely due to balance issues). I also had no particular issues with his foot rise. YMMV.On a wholly unrelated note, I see this is the episode I get to break out my "smooth is a thing" rant in response to Len's critique of one of Val's dances. Seriously, there was plenty of waltz content in his and Rumer's dance. No whisks, sure. *Because it was American Smooth.*

Honestly, their height difference isn't that bad. As far as I'm concerned, the big issue with his frame was that he kept letting his left side collapse, which can happen regardless of the height differential. His hips also went wonky in places, which had a cascade effect. I definitely agree with LadyArcadia about not compromising one's own frame though. There was a pretty big height difference between me and partner-before-last (bigger than it looks like LA has), so that was something I had drilled into me. In general terms, the height difference will impact how deep the lead gets into his knees though. It may impact the angle of his left forearm as well. But not where his elbows are.

Riker's frame was a hot mess. I'd say I don't really get the scores he got for that dance, but with his being in the faux bottom two, I assume his fanbase is worrisomely small.

For what it's worth, those are the USA Dance rules you're quoting. Riker's results are for NDCA competitions. For the purposes of this discussion, the levels are pretty much the same, but it's worth noting. As far as point systems go, they vary from sanctioning body to sanctioning body. It USA Dance has one system, the NDCA has another and the YCN has yet another. It's important to keep in mind that none of the sanctioning bodies in the US have a "point-in" system. They're all "point-out" systems. (And USAD's is currently on hold entirely.) That is, they limit how long you can stay in a level, they don't dictate when you can start competing in a given level. (Although certainly one can use them as a guide.) But in all sincerity, you could find a partner, register with USAD or the NDCA and compete in Adult Championship Latin tomorrow. Well, the next time your chosen sanctioning body has a competition. That said, I agree that he certainly has more than a couple of months of training and certainly wouldn't have been bad with those results. I think "some degree of mastery" is probably a fair statement. Exactly what that degree of mastery was would be much harder to say though. It would be really interesting if someone were able to dig up video.

A few points on Riker's results: - dancesportinfo is not any sort of an official repository of results. While you can generally trust the results that make it into their database, they can be pretty hit-or-miss in how comprehensive they are. It's entirely plausible that he may have additional results that aren't listed. - That said, the results he has are actually *not* terribly impressive. Take that 6th place in Junior Pre-Champ Latin at Holiday. (An aside, amateur has "Novice", "Pre-Championship" and "Championship" as successive levels. So that is "Pre-Champ" and not "Pre-Junior". Basically, he and his sister competed in two successive levels at that competition.) That really is a result of sixth place out of seven. And his results from Champ at that comp really are 11th out of 12. There isn't any sort of "point-in" system in the U.S. A competitor can enter any level they choose to. Now, Junior is actually old enough for junior champ to be pretty serious business. If you were go look up some junior champ events (try "usa dance nationals junior latin" on youtube for an example), you'd see some pretty spectacular dancers in the finals. But the couples in the bottom rungs tend to be ... not so great. It's hard to say with any certainty without seeing video, or at the very least scoresheets, but I very much suspect that Riker and his sister were absolutely nothing remarkable as competitors. I actually find it pretty plausible that they may have spent less than a year as ballroom dancers before deciding that it just wasn't their thing for whatever reason. - That said, the fact that he does have results at all is still pretty noteworthy from my point of view. I can pretty much guarantee that he's spent *way* more time doing rumba walks than any other "star" that's been on the show. I'm looking forward to seeing him dance rumba or chacha. If he's retained much of anything in terms of dancesport-specific training, that's where it's likely going to show the most.