dusang

Do you think the static partnering for the first weeks is an improvement? The dance styles definitely seemed more random back then -- and Quickstep showed up like four times in the first season. Now we're lucky if we get it once!!

Thanks! It just seems that the contestants from S1 don't reappear at auditions, as choreographers, etc, the way contestants from later seasons do.

Interesting. I had forgotten that Canada used four judges. TBH, although I love the show and Nico will forever be my favourite everything, I stopped watching SYTYCD-Canada after season 2 because CTV made it SO FRIGGIN DIFFICULT to stream it. (I could literally create and single-handedly populate an entire thread on my absolute hatred of all things CTV.) Agreed. Even watching just snippets of the judging vids here, they seemed waaaaay more direct and to the point. Oh Brian Friedman... speaking of my everything.... I can't even remember him as a judge -- my hatred for his choreography became so overwhelming I think I've blocked out everything about him. I do remember that Blake shit-talked him on camera during like Vegas week in S1 -- Blake was such a little bitch that season.

I'm surprised they went back to having a role in a particular show as the prize -- they did that in S2 with Celine Dion but it was a really poor fit for Benji. I'm quite torn on the switch to two regular judges -- Nigel and Mary -- rather than two rotating choreographers and Nigel. I love when their critiques are really technical, so having a ballroom expert on hand all the time is good, but they have stopped doing as many ballroom routines per episode and Mary's gone a bit Hollywood with her nonsensical shrieking, so it's kind of backfired, you know? ETA: I just looked at some of the judging vids and apparently is was pretty standard practice to have FOUR judges back then. Weird!

Thank you @NextIteration!! Wow, S1 seems so long ago!! It sometimes seems S1 is the red-headed step-child of the SYTYCD -- where are these people now?! (Except Blake, who took his fabulous bitchy ass to SYTYCD-Canada.) I remember that week to week you could see the format revisions as they figured out what worked and what didn't. I have always appreciated the show's willingness to tweak the format, even if there have been some poor choices along the way. Just scrolling through that list, without watching all of them, I actually think the show was harder back then -- Quickstep in week two?! -- and there was WAAAAY less reliance on contemporary. Also, if I remember correctly, the choreographers were a lot more rigid on their definitions -- there was no contemporary-infused hip hop or ballroom, if you know what I mean. But either the producers underestimated the rigors of the choreo or the auditioning pool was a lot smaller -- there's no way a Jonnis or Allan would make it to Top 20 now, IMHO. That reminds me how totally different the Vegas week was back then -- they split the group up and sent them to separate workshops so all the choreographers could work with them and then they brought all of the judges/choreographers together to eliminate people. How do you think the show has improved since S1? Is there anything you'd like to see a return to/of?

Sorry, no matter how you slice it, if one category (Lead in a Movie or Miniseries) can include American Horror Story, Luther, Sherlock, Fargo, and The Normal Heart and NOT include True Detective (Drama Series), I reserve the right to consider the whole thing shenanigans.

Samesies -- I was cringing through the whole thing. I didn't dislike anything but I was surprisingly bored through the majority of the episode. The Top 20 is always hard for me -- 20 people is a lot to keep track of. I can't really distinguish the dancers until the Top 10.

Not that I don't want Sherlock recognized by the Emmys but I'm calling shenanigans on the categorization. His Last Vow is a movie??

Love that even Buzzfeed admits to #16. I never hoped for #20 but have ongoing dreams that #21 will happen and they will produce giant, beautiful dancing babies.

Oh my God, I'm just watching this now and will.i.am was trying to tell the story of mixing Dirty Dancing without using slang and I am CRYING with laughter. That was hilarious!! Just watched it. The minute he realized where Graham was going with that I started laughing.

Thanks, GinevradiBenci. I am intrigued but I have difficulty watching people embarrass themselves on film so the 80s are a difficult period for me, if you know what I mean. :) (Ohmygod, just looked at IMDb -- Helen Mirren plays Baryshnikov's jilted Russian love interest!!! And Isabella Rossellini is Hines' wife!! OHMYGOD!!!)

It's a basic law of physics that you'll turn faster if you're more compact along the axis. And the faster you go, the easier it is to balance (or, in the case of figure skaters, make three to four complete rotations before smashing into the ground). As ElectricBoogaloo notes, some of the momentum in a pirouette can be derived from the arm movements. Side note: Skittl1321, one of the "suggested videos" after your posted clip is Baryshnikov doing 11 pirouettes in a scene from White Knights, a movie I've never heard of that apparently stars Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines. Now that I know it exists, it's taking all my self-control not to spend the next however long watching every YouTube clip of it available. Side-side note: I love that spellcheck recognizes Baryshnikov.

That's probably true. Based on their script, I suspect the writers did not expect HL to win so there wasn't a need to commit 12 minutes to it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to mangle my message in some manner, so apologies if I confuse you. But what I kept thinking about is that he's coming from a place with no role models, no positive support, no validation. I spent some time in Kenya several years ago and it continually surprised me to realize how different the dialogue on so many social issues was compared to here (in Canada). Basically, where I was coming from a place where same-sex marriage had been legalized for several years, they were coming from a place where no one had ever said being gay was okay, let alone the number of people who said it was evil. There was really no common ground for me to discuss this issue with a Kenyan because, even if they didn't actively dislike or fear homosexuals, they just didn't acknowledge or support them and had never spoken with anyone who would. So, to my mind, that's an atmosphere conducive to self-hate, fear, and remaining closeted your whole life. Just acknowledging you're gay would be a huge leap of out of your normative socialization. Then to be openly gay would be dangerous. To be an internationally known transgender activist in that environment... that's almost beyond my comprehension. To find the certainty, strength, and bravery in yourself... it's amazing. You know what I mean?

I totally agree. For the most part, my viewing has been out of order, based on A&E Sunday afternoon mini-marathons and such, so it's hard for me to track changes through the seasons. In later seasons the things that have bothered me the most are 1) torture porn and 2) an over-reliance on "team member in peril" or the "team member over-identifies" scenarios. So it's surprising to me, even in this thread, to see how early all of those themes emerged in the series. Big agree. All the "Strauss investigates the team" episodes were RIDICULOUS to me. These people would have been fired or reassigned at least 8 years ago IRL.

It was strange for me to hear John's points on Hobby Lobby -- my Fb and Twitter feeds have been filled with articles about how this is depriving women of choice and the basic human right of reproductive freedom rather than the "corporations as people" arguments, so it was just a really strange repositioning of the issue for me. And, in some ways, I was a little disappointed that John didn't address the other arguments.

I fast-forwarded the majority of judges comments, which tends to be the best way to watch the show for me. I agree with the comments about the ballerinas -- I thought it was a miscalculation to have them dressed identically and to go so classical with the choreo and costuming. Ballet can be done to non-classical music, you know. Also, at least one of them staggered on some landings and they were so identical I couldn't tell who or even if it was the same person repeatedly or both of them. The Ricky/Jessica piece was really lovely. I liked that Sonya reversed some of the poses to have Jessica be the balanced support and Ricky be the contorted display, if you know what I mean and I hope you do. I'm not sure how I felt about the hip hop. It was cool but a little too lyrical for me as an intro to hip hop dancers. Although Teddy and Emilio killed their intros. Terribly cheesey but also charmingly memorable. Emilio giving his phone number out like that redefines swag, IMHO.

My first reaction to the casting news was to cringe but on further reflection, despite her questionable career choices (Ghost Whisperer, The Client List) she does always come across a lot more likable than expected in interviews. So she's done some bad material -- girl's gotta eat, right? And I'll always have a soft spot for her from a Conan interview where she mocked the affected speech patterns that she and several of her costars adopted during Party of 5 -- I hated that hiccuping "emoting" so much.

I really enjoyed this one -- I'm kind of convinced that Andy & Melissa broke character when he started laughing at her "nut-catching" but it worked. Also, love the running gag of the overly-invested perps -- criminals are human too!! The repeated references to Jake's "crushing" debt were also hilarious, including the "... but it's all on credit cards so that's like $5 a month for the next 20,000 years!" And the "I'm going to pretend I'm getting a text message.. Bloop" should just become a standard method of extracting yourself from an awkward situation. ETA (several days later): I've just rewatched the first half of the season on Netflix (Canada - yay!!) and then read all of the B99-related articles here on Previously and was surprised that, in her posting on "The Bet", Tara says that the bet has not been mentioned since the Pilot. That's just not true. It's mentioned prominently in "The Slump" and the tally has been visible and increasing in every episode during the morning briefing. Rewatching I was so delighted by these little continuity references -- the running tally and the fact that Jake does wear a tie (even when wearing a zippered hoodie!), among others.

I flipped onto this halfway through and I was (again) killing myself laughing at hungover Jake. As someone who cannot hold my liquor (like, at all) I totally felt his pain. Also, Amy caving to Holt's blatant emotional manipulation is amazing. And, I love that it was Amy who brought them back to blowing up the book. She's not just a by-the-book nerd! She can have fun too!!

Yes, she hacks off-limit databases.

My suspension of disbelief is pretty powerful but I do have problems with some of it. Apart from the basic fact that not every piece of data in the world has been digitized, it really bothers me when they pull hospital and other health records without any qualms. That is confidential information and it is illegal to access it. Yes and no. Her data compiler program is probably a lot more sophisticated but she's dependent on source databases akin to the one we used -- filled with bad data and poorly structured data fields that prevent effective queries.

I used to work at a non-profit and often compared Garcia's databases to our own. She could sit in a room and map the illicit sexual relationships of a small town across the country while we couldn't compile a comprehensive list of our own donors.

I've often wondered why they bother to "deliver the profile" and provide suggestions on what to look for and searches to run, when the local police are NEVER the ones to actually run the searches or identify a potential unsub. (That may be an overstatement, the police may have provided assistance once or twice in the past nine seasons.) ETA: Haha, I was in the middle of "What Fresh Hell" when I posted that comment and a few minutes later one of the local police provided information from the tip line to identify the ubsub. I guess I stand corrected!! Although, since then I think they have come to rely on Garcia a lot more.

Thanks. That was very convenient for them, having Doubt in the can setting up Gideon's departure when Mandy had his... crisis of conscience, shall we say? Although again I have no memory of a cameo at the end of an episode -- did I not watch season 3? WTH? Although Mandy's behaviour then and now as he continues to trash talk the show is totally unprofessional, I can see his point. Of all the police procedurals I watch, CM has to be the one that messes with your mind most effectively (excluding Hannibal, which has recently taken a commanding lead in the category).

I see the complaint, but this episode is always my Gina-redeeming rebuttal -- she scratched her nose with a loaded gun to help a friend. How awful can she be?