kitcloudkicker

Eh, I don't think the intent is to have us like everyone, but to paint people in shades of gray. Most people who do criminal things aren't "monsters" but people who have made bad choices, or who's life circumstances have backed them into making choices that seemed logical or like the only way out, or who have made dumb mistakes, or yes, were kind of legitimately shitty people, but it's definitely not a black and white, "good people," "bad people" thing. We as a society have a tendency to write off "bad people" as monsters, and that's in the end so much more damaging than seeing their humanity. Like when someone gets accused of a sex crime and everyone around them goes, "Oh no, they couldn't have done that, they were always so nice and upstanding to me!" Yes, all of those can be true at the same time, someone can be an awesome dad, and a criminal, or a great friend, but also a criminal, etc. The thing I like about this show, and Game of Thrones is pretty good at this too, is it lets you see people as complex beings, not all good, not all bad. Like Healy this season - he got a bit cartoonishly villainous at the end of last season, and this season doesn't absolve him of that - he's got some pretty shitty views on women, and a horrible temper, but it lets you see him try to be a good person within his view of the world and occasionally do the right thing. And Morello - the fact that she's kind of adorable and sweet most of the time doesn't absolve her of her casual racism and stalking. And you can still like her, and think that at the same time. There's no sorting people into the "good" people and the "bad" people.

This one, for the delivery and complete randomness of it: "Hey, you ever think about Jay Z and Beyoncé fucking? Cause I do. Like, more than I do myself, even. You don't think that's weird?"

I don't know, like others have said, the Germany flashbacks look to have been high school Poussey, and we don't really know what happened between then and now. She may have gone enough off the rails for her family to abandon or disown her, she could no longer have anyone or anywhere to turn to. She may have been functioning in whatever environment long enough for the speech patterns to become her default identity. I also don't see how she'd have the motivation to present herself any differently to counselors, they're all part of the prison world she's had to adapt to to survive. We still don't really know enough about her to make that call, but there's plenty of plausible explanations for the way she presents herself. (And black colloquial speech patterns do not necessarily = "thug") (There's also the possibility that she wasn't fleshed out as fully when earlier episodes were written, making some things slightly inconsistent now that they've decided to feature her a bit more - that does happen sometimes on series when a character ends up popping more than you had originally planned.)

I enjoyed reduced Pennsatucky this season - she annoyed the crap out of me last season when the storyline started to center on her. But I liked her around for the amount that she was this time around - she gets some good one liners and her "gay agenda" conversation with Boo was the best. Even her and Healy together was kind of fun, in a slightly sad way.

Pennsatucky makes more sense as a spelling to me, because as a nickname that you're going to be calling a person repeatedly, you're likely to slur it into "PennsAtucky" as you say it. Spelling it Pennsyltucky (for the character, not the region) strikes me as unnecessarily pedantic. But thats my hangups. Also, as someone who went to college in the heart of "Michiana" I don't have a lot of respect for the integrity of annoying state portmanteaus. ;)

NPR did a decent intro to code switching a few months ago, if anyone's interested http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/08/176064688/how-code-switching-explains-the-world Someone told me Samira speaks German, and then they wrote that into the character based off of that. I haven't verified though.

The reminder was that they should be eating 1,500 calories total, per day, I believe.

If she took the picture down she put it back up, cause I still see it. Hard to tell from the outside, but I hope they work it out - from other older interviews I've seen he seemed pretty supportive, and I know they co-run that adaptive action sports foundation together. I think aerials might be a good place for Amy to explore, since she's so strong and flexible, with good musicality and performance expression - and it does remove some of the challenges of needing to stay balanced on her legs. I just like when it seems like people discover a new passion through the show - I liked that about Kellie Pickler too.

Amy's posted a shot of what looks like more aerial work (wearing the "swimming" feet) to her instagram, calling it "training for an upcoming project." It's pretty cool that the show may have inspired her to take her career in a slightly different direction.

Watched these on my phone in the airport, since I'm traveling. I found Amy and Meryl's freestyles to be the same-ish in terms of impact. Beautiful dances, both not the best they've done on the show, similar in terms of lots of lifts and playing up the emotion. I liked Meryl's tango slightly better than Amy's salsa, but I always tend to like tangos better than salsas. (Side note, Meryl's costumes seemed pretty lingerie ish to me, any uproar from the Peta decency squad on those? They didn't bother me, but then, neither do Petas outfits most of the time.) Candace got low balled on her freestyle - she seemed to be having fun from my tiny phone screen, and it seemed 9worthy to me. Not super sad to see James go, I still found him kinda boring and squatty (posture wise).

I don't think the shows ever claimed anything about Derek and Meryl and Charlie - as far as even any prior connection between them. I've only seen fans bring it up on the Internet. And it was maybe brought up during their Olympics coverage. I looked up bits of the Virtue/Moir reality show and they had one of the choreographers from sytycd on as a consultant for a day - that's all I ever assumed that Derek was around for.

Mark was injured during camera blocking today, apparently. Wants to, but may not dance. http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20817965,00.html

She does seem a bit reserved, which is an impression I take from her hesitancy with both James and Mark at first, before settling in. I've noticed she does a bit of a "Miss America" smile for the cameras, which you can really see in her interview after her injury - and I'm wondering if people are reading that as inauthentic. As for her relationship with the other castmates, she seemed reasonably close to Danica, they had a "rib twins" inside joke, and took this princess photo together. (And with a bonus Charlie photobomb). She also tweeted support to Candace - who'd I'd assume she'd have some relationship with through the Derek/Mark brotherhood. I actually don't recall seeing much of the cast interacting overall this season though. Like I don't recall Candace palling around with anyone either, and I've "heard" of a Charlie/James friendship but I don't think I've seen it. The practice clips for the team dance seemed extremely short this season, and thats where it seems you get a lot of cast interaction. I don't think Amy was even in hers (it was pretty much just Candace and Maks) and then she had to miss the live dance, so you miss any background shots of her celebrating/hanging out with the rest of team Loca.

Obviously, minds vary and all that, and you definitely don't have to see what I've seen, but for me, I tuned into this season because I heard Charlie and Meryl were on it, and found myself almost immediately captivated by Amy. For me, and maybe this is because I started poking around at her social media accounts, she clearly seems to be having the time of her life and enjoying every moment of this ride. I've watched this clip of the upcoming salsa from the Glamour behind the scenes article about 10 times already, between her smile and the fact that I can't work out how she's pulled into that lift behind Derek and ends up in front of him. There was a Carrie Ann blog that mentioned how much she embodies each dance, and it's a thing that I see, I'm completely captivated by her quality of movement. IF she wins (and there's a part of me that hopes not, because of how annoying the internet will be afterwards about how it was "fixed") it will be for that.

With the Maks vs. Derek stuff I end up feeling like this: Amy and Meryl's dances are the ones I've been enjoying the most all season, and the final dances I'm most looking forward to seeing. The one vs. the other gets really annoying. I find myself holding my breath a bit more for Amy, and re-watching her dances on youtube more often, but that's not to say "when" ;) Meryl wins I won't think it's a deserving result. And hopefully James and Candace surprise me and turn in performances I really enjoy.

Ugh, they're just standing there posing, that's not dance! ;) Kiiiiiidding!! It looks beautiful! Also, man, harem pants have infested the dancers like a zombie virus, huh? It got Maks AND Meryl, noooo!

I love that Kellie/Derek freestyle - it's one of the ones that sparked the youtube rabbit hole I got myself in to get addicted to this show this season. If Maks and Meryl do something in the same tone, I'm all for it and hope it's awesome. I don't think Derek "owns" stripped down freestyles any more than Mandy Moore "owns" choreographing a dance around a table - and I'd personally like to see more of them. (With the caveat that not everyone could do it, it would get tonally boring to have everyone on the same energy level - I think you need a mix of energy levels and production levels or it's all going to look the same and no one would stand out.)

To be fair, though, that was Kenny Ortega, and I took that as a compliment on Derek's entire body of work, maybe one he had been saving up for a while. (I do, also, find it a little funny that before the show I saw nothing but praise for Kenny Ortega as finally someone well respected for his knowledge about dance - until he compliments Derek, and then - what does he know?!) Whatever you think of Derek, it seems he's earned the respect of a lot of people in the dance world. Should people focus their critiques solely on Amy? Probably, but I don't know how Derek can change that. I get the feeling he's not long for the show anyway, I don't know how the dude keeps up with all the things he does.

Oh shit, someone should tell the US Olympic committee. Because they keep putting her on their website and calling her one. How embarrassing.

In a world where Candace gets 9s for forgetting a large chunk of her choreography, seems like especially now you gotta just ignore the judges marks. They're scoring them close enough together that they're throwing it to the audience. (Also everyone left seems so nice! This is my first season paying close attention and it's amazing how much rage this group of seemingly likeable people can generate. Maks mikepack slamming levels of rage ;) On another note, the Macy's dance wasn't my favorite, but I am starting to like Mark/Derek/Val as a jazzy little trio. Used here and in the best part Disney opening.

So much of this! In fact, one of my favorite SYTYCD dances was a jazz around a table (this one, with Neil and Sabra). I do need to go back and watch the Derek/Amy one on a clearer picture since I was using a shitty live stream.

This is exactly what makes me laugh about the conspiracy theories though. "Obviously, it's set it up for a Maks win." "Obviously, they're propping Amy up so Derek wins again." I just try to put myself in the shoes of someone producing this show - I just want a story I can spin, and melodrama along the way. If I was smart, I'd set up the season to give myself several 'outs' on storylines, try to make sure everyone that's in the final has some sort of story to highlight, and if I can get a shocker along the way to get people talking, awesome for me! I probably want some great dancers in there, but also a few people that the audience can see themselves in a little bit - don't want to make it seem to unattainable. Giving myself a final where only one desirable winner is left doesn't seem smart for me at all. I think they've set it up where they'd be happy with any of the winners. The one out of the four left with the least amount of "sellable story" for me is James - his main storyline all season has been showmance, and he's now being upstaged by Maks and Meryl. (The worst dancer, obvy, being Candace, but they can point to her and say, "Look how wholesome and relatable!")

Whelp. Called it. Getting a perfect score on the night Meryl was at the bottom was likely the kiss of death for Charlie - lulled people who might have been splitting votes to pitch them all to Meryl. On the bright side, looking pretty good for a Meryl win now that she likely gets all his voters. And yaaaay, another Amy/Derek week! I just want to see what they do for freestyle. The finals is all I wanted for them. (That Maks temper tantrum was not cute though. Grown men who pound or throw things when they get frustrated is pretty high on my list of things I have no patience for. Grow the fuck up. I'll be happy to see them win, but color me not impressed by that display.)

Everyone got a visit from an "inspirational" figure. It's the schtick of the show this week. This seems like a strange thing to get mad at. I'm going to be so, so sad if it's Amy, but now my Charlie worries feel even more founded.

I'm kind of worried all the Charlie/Meryl fans voted for Meryl, and he's a shocking elimination. Hopefully I'm wrong, and it's James.