katha

Wow, Gleb really dropped the ball tonight. I thought his dances were totally lackluster compared to everyone else. From the redemption dances, Laurie's was clearly the best IMO, but they can't make too much of a difference in scores now since then you get cries of "unfair" and ridiculous bashing (as if she didn't get enough of that already), and she doesn't need that. Calvin's freestyle was great fun. Sharna's was lovely, but it did feel a bit like "concept eats all", but then that's been my problem with her all season (and perhaps my general problem with her as a choreographer). I think Laurie's was beautiful and 100% her. The yellow sundress, the joyfulness and you clearly saw how she loved performing it. Best freestyle Val has ever done IMO. I thought from the start that should Val drop the ball on the freestyle, someone else will win. But...he didn't. He didn't need to deliver the best one (though I thought he did), he just needed to keep her in contention. Laurie and Val might have done enough, it will be close though and I wouldn't be surprised at a different outcome either. And I give Val mad props for keeping it emotionally truthful in the FS, I'm sure it's tempting to search for "bigger" or "more dramatic" because you have the suspiscion that it will have more impact. But it would have been dead wrong for Laurie, and I'm glad he didn't go there. Killer season from him IMO, absolutely outstanding work throughout.

I don't think that's quite true, though? Shaw comes into it, but the Nazis in general are responsible for the murder of his family. So that's bound to make him jaded about both mutants and non-mutants, and I'd argue that's what plays out in the movies: Someone who doesn't have a lot of faith in anyone.

Those are nice songs for the freestyles and they all seem suitable for the celebs. I figured that Calvin would go for something fast and fun. Jana will do emotional contemporary, something we've seen from her before, but it's in her wheelhouse. Is Sharna using that "conductor" concept she wanted to do with Charlie White? I think she is, it'll be interesting to finally see what that will look like. The song for Laurie is lovely and I'm so happy Val stayed away from heavy, melancholy or bombastic fare, I'd have seriously side-eyed him for that. Something joyful and simple is what I wanted for her freestyle since the beginning and it looks like that's what it'll be, so I'm glad. (-: Re-do dances is about what I expected, thank god it's not just repeats of old dances like they sometimes like to do as well. That always struck me as totally pointless (exception: Rumer and Val's foxtrot, that one was just luminous in the finals.).

If they actually address that Rory has a long history of making bad relationship decisions and stringing boyfriends along, that would make the whole thing worthwhile. Because while I balked at the spoilers at first, the more I thought about it the more I realized it's totally in character for Rory: She strung both Dean and Jess along as a teenager instead of making a decision, then she started an affair with Dean while he was married, then she was already sorta falling in with Logan and his crowd while still seeing Dean, then she had that kiss with Jess while on the outs with Logan. Her romantic relationships always had more than a hint of the dysfunctional. It makes sense that she'd cheat on a boyfriend for hook ups with Logan. It's just an extension of her questionable actions regarding boys she had as a teen and young woman into the "adult world" and men.

The problem here is I think that the movies want to have it both ways. Erik is one of the most compelling characters IMO, he's played by two great actors who give him nuances that probably aren't really in the script, and his backstory is tragic and makes his bitterness and lack of faith in non-mutant humanity understandable. But he crosses into hardcore-evil and the movies kinda don't want to deal with the consequences of that. It makes Magneto even scarier that he's smart and was once friends with Charles and that he has good impulses and noble feelings and there's kindness and goodness there as well. But he's still a villain, just a three-dimensional one. The movies always want to forget that when it's inconvenient for a random nonsense plotline.

She's been so poised and positive and graceful throughout the whole season, it's incredible. Just out of this world IMO. People say she's "young for her age" and that might be true in certain aspects, she's certainly a rather typical sheltered gymnast, Shawn Johnson in her first season was somewhat comparable in her behaviour. But in other ways she's strong and kind and composed to a point that would be totally beyond many adults. Part of that may be her gymnast background that just toughens you up, but part of it is also just inherently Laurie herself IMO. This ability of hers to make the best of everything, to try to look for happiness and joy and laughter all of the time, it's...I couldn't do it. I loved that her whole semi-finals package was about her Puerto Rican background and about honoring that. I loved that they made the foxtrot a tribute to Alzheimer awareness through the purple costumes, but didn't beat it to death with maudlin "story and play-acting" in the dance. Her whole season has been so awesome for me, I loved most of her dances minus paso, you also really see the improvement in technique and performance when you watch them in sequence. How she gets more precise and clean as the season goes on, how she learns to nuance better and connect with Val. It's cool. (-: She's also been on a gruelling schedule and not a peep of complaint. Val's been super with her, but he's a demanding teacher who won't let her get away with covering things up through gymnastics tricks, she's an exemplary student. They've been rehearsing while flying all over the country, yet they're both always positive and in good spirits. And I'm still slightly in shock that Val really stuck to his guns throughout the season, that he didn't budge when the complaining started, it's been minimalism and focus on dance basics all the way through. And she's rewarded his faith in her fully, she's open to learning, she's open to going out of her comfort zone and stretching herself and trusts that he knows how to get her to be a better dancer and performer. It's been such a pleasure to watch it all. Well, I do slightly resent her for making me like Val. (-; I've always appreciated what he brings to the show from afar, but could never warm to him. The cringeworthy showmances, the regular messes on social media, it always got and will continue to get the side-eye. But it clicked for me in terms of what he does dance-wise on the show.

Yeah, I loved it as well and thought it had great samba content and the storyline was well integrated into the choreography (looking at you, Gleb...), but Maks wasn't as present in the dancing. There are no rules how a trio is supposed to look like, so whatever, but it's a fair observation. I suspect it's also tied to their schedule. Laurie is travelling around so much, I don't know how available Maks is, so that might have cut into rehearsal times. Val and Laurie can practice their solo passages in the trio on their own without needing Maks present.

Calvin has sort of reached his limit, hasn't he? Though what he does well he does really well, like the salsa. I thought that was a highlight of the night, perhaps not the most technically accurate, but it sure was fun. In that sense, I think he's more compelling than Jana. Jana's always good, but I seldom find her the standout, even when she gets perfect scores. I don't mind Laurie's sharpness and don't agree that it's all she does, but yeah, it's kinda their style. But I'd argue that it's not only Laurie, this is Val's aesthetic in general. His best partners usually perform in a sharp, fast, precise way. You had it with Zendaya, with Rumer, with Tamar to a degree, and now with Laurie. So it's probably a mix of her heading in that direction on her own anyway and Val's own preferences.

Well, yes, but DWTS has always been a sadistic mess that doesn't have much scruples about producing "drama" out of vulnerabilities and tragedies. Agree that the black screen and cut to Laurie crying was unnecessary, but I liked the rest of the package and they have done way worse (I'm still getting rage blackouts thinking about Sadie's rumba package). But her family and Val? They probably did what they thought was best in a very difficult situation and I certainly won't judge them for it, I don't know the circumstances and what considerations went into doing it that way.

Tough decisions needed to be made regarding Laurie this week and there weren't going to be easy solutions. They probably told her Friday because she was back home in NJ on Friday, so that was better than telling her when she's isolated (apart from her mom, who seems to be around all the time?) in LA. I haven't seen anywhere that Val was the one to tell her or that he made unilateral decisions, just that he and the family decided it was better to wait till Friday until she was in NJ (and probably also to get the press obligations they had in NY out of the way). Her whole package was going to be about family, her roots, her grandma and Alzheimer anyway. That was planned beforehand, hence also the costumes in purple. Then her grandma sadly died a few days before this was aired, so they needed to add that. They couldn't very well pretend that she hadn't died. I'm sure her family (and Val) made the decision they thought was best for Laurie's well-being, and since no one knows any kind of circumstances or context, I'd say it's impossible to judge if it was the "right" one. In such sad circumstances there probably isn't a right decision anyway.

My problem with Gleb is I think this: Someone compared him to Allison, and it goes in that direction. He adds stuff into dances that seems totally superfluous, at least on the American version so far. Like, couldn't they just quickstep instead of all that shop/baby whatever? It added nothing to the mood of the dance. If you do fluff, at least have it be somewhat integrated into the theme of your program. I had the same problem with the jazz and with the AT, to be honest. Also, Jana had two dances in hold in the last two weeks and it made it very obvious that her arms are somewhat funky IMO. For me her arms in hold look weak and I'd think that's also on Gleb to teach her that, it's not on Jana to know this on her own.

Because it's a reality show with dance content, it's never been a true dance contest in any way, shape or form. People watch to see celebs learn to dance (that's why All Stars was a bit of a bust, frankly. The quest/challenge aspect makes it interesting for the audience, seeing people be out of their element and try new things, All Stars did away with all of that), to get to know them, to be entertained by sparkly dances, to get a bit riled up when they disagree with scores. It's fun and fluffy. If the best dancer in any given season wins, that's accidental. You need to be decent and entertaining to win and make people connect with you, that's it. It's not a "real" competition with clear rules and "objective" scoring or whatever, it can't be. When you have 70 year olds competing against young athletes etc., that's not possible.

That was a very good night of dancing, I thought. Everyone was great. And since the scoring doesn't mean jack anyway, sure, give everyone tens, why not. I think Terra's been super all season, since her height means she can't quite do what all the other contestants do it can't have been easy, she and Sasha had to deal with that, and they were entertaining throughout IMO. Job well done. James recovered from last week's mishap, so that was good. And yay, Sharna's back! (-: Calvin is dancing really well for someone so tall and the lifts they do are mind-boggling! I like Jana's dances, but I always forget her a bit afterwards. I think it's Gleb's choreo, I'm not quite sure it works for me. I saw what he did on the Russian version of the show with Adelina Sotnikova, and IMO he did more interesting work there. Laurie is brilliant. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to dance after a loved one just passed a day earlier, that must be so hard. I've been a fan of Val's puristic approach all season, and I continue to be. Those were two great dances with a minimum of frills, even the "teacher Maks" concept was fully integrated into the dance and didn't detract from samba content at all. And I loved that her package was about her Puerto Rican heritage and how proud her whole family was talking about that.

There's this sketch now with Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle where all these white Hillary supporters are just shocked, shocked I tell you that America is racist. And Rock and Chapelle are like, "Yeah. Where you been?" And I've seen reactions like that from minorities throughout, I mean the lack of shock. I think in some ways this was a band aid ripped off where many white people in the US have for the first time been confronted with the ugliness that's always been woven into the fabric of the society. I've been banging on about how horrible the Bush administration was on all the same things the Trump administration will be horrible on as well, and I truly believe that. Bush/Cheney was a nightmare, they just didn't need to make all the racist, misogynist and homophobic things they pushed through quite so obvious because a lot of it went totally unchallenged at the time. The status quo was worse, so they didn't need to push back against it so much. This becomes even truer for the Reagan or Nixon administrations, ugliness was much more widely accepted, so it didn't need to be touted and defended quite so openly. Now there's been progress made in laws and in social attitudes in general, so what they're spouting isn't accepted as a consensus anymore even amongst privileged white people.

I think this will be interesting to watch anyway: Trump courted all these white supremacists, how much does he just see them as useful tools (as he seems to perceive everyone as useful tools to get what he wants)? Then you'll have various Republican figures who, well, they're all Republicans, but they seem to have different priorites that they're super fixated on. Ryan with his Ayn Rand fandom, Pence with his fundamentalist Christian nuttiness and so on, at a certain point these various agendas will start clashing. What happens then?

IMO this was the case with the Bush administration as well. Look at the cabinet members there, look at their histories, look at what they implemented, look at what they tried to implement. Bush just got away with giving all of that a "friendlier face" for some people, but he had underlings doing the dirty work for him when it came to smearing all sorts of people with all sorts of bigoted claims as well.

Bannon was always going to have a role in the WH, though, let's not kid ourselves. I feared he'd be chief of staff.

Yes, and he did something all populist demagogues do: He presented easy scapegoats and "new ways of doing things", while underhandedly basically bringing in the same establishment figures that have been around since forever. Gingrich? Guiliani? Bolton? Sessions? Various Wall Street fat cats whose names are being thrown around. People like Berlusconi, Haider, Wilders in the Netherlands worked with similar strategies and rode that to success as well, at least for a time. I do think unfortunately, though, it's not so much that they "create" hate, it's that they rip open what's always present under the surface for a considerable part of the population in any given country. But then, I'm not sure I believe that man is essentially good. The history of mankind with its countless atrocities is certainly rather pointing in the "man is wolf to man" direction. So that base of voters indulging in their ugliest impulses was always going to vote for Trump, where HRC lost it is probably the voters who are so frustrated with everything they voted for Trump as a sort of misguided "protest", third party voters and those who just stayed away because they've lost faith in politics helping them in their struggles at all. The ones staying away are the greatest problem IMO. Because even though it's an easy narrative for the media to depict, the reality is that many people have been left behind and probably rightly feel that the Democrats aren't really committed to helping them either.

Not understanding, or pretending not to understand, that it's common courtesy to congratulate and that none of these people have changed their opinions on him at all.

This has become the default position of 24/7 news media whose main interest is ratings and non-stop panic and drama. After Brexit there was a lot of discussion about the completely irresponsible way the televised media in particular had covered the issue, without questioning lying fools like Farage etc., without providing much research of their own, and how that had contributed to an uninformed electorate who voted to exit the EU often without knowing what the EU even is or what it does.

This is unfortunately not something Trump-specific, a run-of-the-mill Republican president would stock his cabinet with the same people. Bush had all these extremist, scary people running the show as well, that's easy to forget. He was an outwardly "friendlier, folksier" candidate, but the people doing the dirty work and running the show for him were trading in the same sort of ugliness that Trump is displaying openly.

I don't know why this amuses me so much, but it just does. Perhaps I'm trying to look for any kind of humour or levity in this depressing situation. Still: Somehow, the Republican party with their total spinelessnes when it comes to Trump, has made Mitt "flip flopping milquetoast" Romney come across as one badass outlaw renegade. And now Omarosa going on about Romney is Trump's enemy number one or whatever. And of course Romney's own hilariously shady tweet after the election that basically read "We're all fucked with this Ooompa Loompa" in slightly politer terms. Idk, it's one of the curious stories of this election cyle IMO. And slightly less depressing than a lot else, so I come back to it when the rest makes me anxious. Trump was spouting a lot of bigoted nonsense and pandering to the basests instincts of voters and he's obviously not qualified. Yet the Republican party as a whole just wouldn't call him out on any of it, and I do think this is something that will be their legacy now. Except for Romney. He had to have known that he was basically taking a flamethrower to possible future career aspirations with that speech. He tore down everything about Trump, his campaign, his peddling of hatred, his shady businesses, his lack of competence, his foul temper, and he tore it down good. Trump was a sort of trial by fire for the Republicans and for the most part they failed spectacularly. It's interesting about the ones who didn't.

And I do worry that the left in many places doesn't want to acknowledge that this disconnect is a problem. It's easier and more comforting, I think, to just say "they're all just vile, ignorant yokels, screw them". But if you want to win, you need those votes. And the reality is more complicated, there's frustration and despair and sometimes rightly the perception that the Democratic party also doesn't care about them and hasn't been pushing for policies that might help and isn't even really committed to try because they're too busy colluding with Wall Street. Then you get apathy or people going for the (misguided) "protest vote" or whatever. That's also why the Republicans were always so busy to paint Obama as "elitist". It wasn't really working, though (at least not beyond the crowd who was always going to resent him anyway). Because I think he understood and he found a way to reach out in ways that resonated. And so people responded to the fact that even though he was "not like them", he also might have faced hardships of his own and perceived their pain. Obama was capable of framing all of this in a way that was very inclusive and relatively easy to understand.

Yeah, there's no explaining away Trump's racism and all-around bigotry. One of the (many, many, many, many) lowlights of this campaign was in one of the debates when Trump and Clinton started bickering about who's been more racist (of course Trump always "wins", but it was disheartening to see her tapdance around her own behaviour in the 2008 campaign. And they deliberately went for dogwhistling to court white voters in 2008 IMO.).

I don't think anyone needs to hesitate about drawing comparisons to Germany and posting them, but I am of the opinion that "just like Hitler!" is an argument that only ever stands up completely if a thing is, in fact, just like Hitler. The complexities of how the Nazis came into absolute power (and it wasn't through an election, they had the majority to form a government in a democracy, nothing more. They then proceeded to immediately establish a terror regime, they had no mandate to do that and in no way shape or form was any of that justified by the constitution.) are very much tied to the general rise of fascism and anti-semitism at the time, to the economic depression, to the particular problems Germany faced after WWI. And what's also historically unique about Hitler, Goebbels and their ilk is this: They were ideologues to a degree that's seldom been matched in the history of mankind. What they ended up doing, the genocide, the war, the enslavement, all of that was out in the open for years before they came into power. They also, ultimately, chose to go for the destruction of Germany and chose suicide instead of dealing with a world that wouldn't follow their twisted ideals. That's a level of commitment to ideology that I haven't seen in any of the far-right governments that periodically crop up all over the world. A better comparison might be more recent far-right movements? Berlusconi in Italy, Jörg Haider in Austria. Con men who pandered to prejudices for their own selfish gain.