katha

Starting with: I know this is edited to bits, I know the producers egg them on. But what's bleeding through with Alexa is kinda mistifying anyway IMO: I get that of course her marriage is more important than a silly reality show where you win an ugly plastic disco ball. But Carlos seems into winning it, and tbh Alexa seems into Carlos winning it as well? Which is fine, but then why do the show in the first place? Why not cheer him on from the sidelines? The voters will catch on to the fact that she doesn't care about her own dancing and won't vote for her (her fanbase isn't the strongest to begin with...). And since she's talented I feel she's wasting a lot of potential to be even better if she was more motivated to commit to the show for herself. It's also got to be a headscratcher for Mark: How to work with someone who is so capable yet seems so half-hearted? He can't point a gun to her head and force her to be more into it, so I feel at this point he just shrugs, does his best to teach her and give her good choreo ( I think all his pieces for her were great) and waits for the (not so) "shocking elimination".

Agree that they would have been kinder on Alexa if she'd gone a bit later, but she did make that mistake so the scores weren't ever going to be great. Liked the dance otherwise, though there were some understandable issues since this is her first ballroom dance (in week 4!). Don't know how she's doing vote wise, but since they were rather harsh in the scoring hopefully that will fire up her fans to vote for her. Though at this point I question why she is on the show? If she just wanted to cheer on her husband, she could have done that watching him in the audience. And no matter how capable she is otherwise, if she's so half-hearted and more into Carlos and Witney's progress than her own, then it must be super frustrating for Mark to have to work with her. You can't force the issue, he said his piece once and now he can just shrug his shoulders and wait for her inevitable elimination since the audience at this point has also caught on to the fact that she's not really into it. A bit of a headscratcher, this situation.

It seems like they only go by weekly scores, so it's basically not worth much. It's probably between Bindi and Nick so far. Perhaps Alek can sneak in there. Everybody else is a bit of a question mark IMO. Carlos might be overshadowed for being "that other boyband guy" and not meeting overinflated expectations about his dancing. Tamar will be controversial with the main audience, I think. Alexa just isn't loud enough and distinct enough as a persona, I feel, and the Spy KIds nostalgia isn't that strong (compared to people like Bindi and Nick). Hayes isn't dancing as well as the judges say he is and I'm not sure what's going on there...is he getting the votes or are they trying to make him happen even though his young fans are starting to lose interest? Andy's getting lost in the woodwork.

At this point it feels kind of mean to keep dumping on Allison and it's not her fault, the producers made the decision here. But I agree that she's a liability for celebs who don't come with a ton of dance experience already and that's why Andy seems to be falling behind. Carlos and perhaps Nick with their boyband backgrounds have some form of dance experience and Tamar has performance experience, but boyband dancing and doing a bit of choreo for songs isn't much like ballroom dancing either. Alexa, Bindi, Alek, Hayes, far as I know, come with the same (lack of) dancing background as Andy. They're starting to pull away because they have pros with ballroom/latin background who know how to teach and choreograph these things. And even with Riker there was one very telling moment: The salsa dance-off against Willow. She was fourteen and on severely limited practice hours, she didn't have the dance background Riker had. Yet IMO she won that thing fair and square. She was also clearly improved from her salsa performance the week before. While Riker had energy and charisma and speed as always, but it was messy and unrefined. And Allison wasn't capable of bringing refinement and nuance into his performances.

That's one of the most misunderstood songs ever, isn't it? It's a creepy stalker song, it's not about touching devotion or love or something. Sting is always baffled by people using it for weddings etc., since the lyrics are so disturbing and depicting deranged behaviour. It's probably that the melody is so catchy...

I don't think any one of the pros is "owed" finals, wins etc. So I don't want to go in that direction. But I became a fan of Mark in the Candace season. I came for Meryl and Charlie and was just very, very impressed with his teaching and her improvement, with how he knew how to handle her nerves and her high-strung personality, and how he managed to choreograph entertaining pieces that suited her, even though she was rather limited. You also saw him work around Sadie's limitations and interfering family and handling it well when the pressure and mindgames of the show started getting to her. He was great with Willow as well. He's said his piece on Alexa having to focus on her own dancing once, but since then has also IMO tried to give her dances she can perform well with him where there won't be massive scrutiny on "OMG! She has to romance a man who's not her husband on the dancefloor!!!" since all that would probably accomplish is make her self-conscious. A good judgement call for the beginning of the season. I think all these qualities sometimes get lost because there's so much attention paid to his various spleens. And yes, it can go overboard and become annoying, but it's just one aspect of him as a dancer and choreographer. And often the crazy works well for him. He also does a lot of quiet, nuanced work (sometimes even in the crazy concept dances!). As for the "leading man" thing: In the context of a reality show like DWTS he's just not fitting that particular persona like Derek and Val do. I think Mark knows this and has accepted this. And to be fair, they do give him a platform for his kind of creativity and they don't usually give him home-run partners, but most of the time they're not hopeless (apart from Bristol and Kim) either. And yeah, I love that the question "Will I look foolish?" just doesn't enter into it for him. He's ready to go wherever he thinks the dance demands it, It's entertainment and anything goes. The trainwrecks when it goes wrong are spectacular, sure, but isn't that also part of the fun?

I think what you see here is that they are somewhat hooked to their scripts and repeat things ad nauseum that might not even reflect what is happening. Or they don't know what else to say that isn't tied to technique etc. and since they don't want to bore the viewers they fall back on things they already said (Julianne here). Various couples throughout the years have had breakout! dances! Like, five a season, if you want to believe the judges. They just assume the viewers have no attention span. Though I will say that IMO Mark has been choreographing these last three dances in interesting ways to accomodate Alexa: The salsa was sexy, but in an OTT theatrical way, so they could just have fun with it without going super sultry. The rumba had the tribute theme, so they could focus on the emotion of that. And the jazz portrayed father-son dysfunction. I thought they were connected in all three, and I think Mark taking off the pressure of having to do things where the main focus is sex/romance helped. IMO it's good that he steered it slightly away from that, at least at the start of the season. I also thought it was strange that they didn't comment on the weird disconnect between Tamar and Val in the tango. This week it was for the first time really noticeable and bothered me. And yeah, apparently there were a lot of clearance issues for various couples. But they couldn't make it the focus of every package since that would make the producers look bad (they look bad all the time anyway...). So Bindi got the sympathetic edit for whatever reason. And originally Carlos and Witney were supposed to do Salsa to the Golden Girls song. Eeek. It was still a difficult assignment, but I'm glad they were at least allowed to change to a somewhat more appropriate dance style.

Perhaps it's too early to say and I hope I'm wrong, but that's what I've been thinking as well: It's starting to look like he's getting a bit of the dreaded male ringer treatment. The judges seem to have marked him out as the one with the most dance and performance experience of the lot, he had a very good first dance and has a lot of showmanship. So now they expect magical stuff everytime and if it doesn't reach that ideal, they're underwhelmed. It happened to Charlie White as well. I'm sure he'll bounce back from that and he'll get better scores probably already next week, but yeah. He's not been blowing away the competition and perhaps they expect that or something, but his dances have been consistently good. I thought this week's scores were mostly okay, last week the 21 compared to the overscoring going on around him was rather low for what he showed. I think the comparison between Carlos and Alexa the show is harping on is rather malicious here as well and hurts them both. For Alexa it's "She's not such a natural performer and doesn't have his showmanship/charisma". For Carlos it's starting to become "you're not improving as Alexa". And both is unfair. Alexa starts without the dance background that Carlos has so it's understandable she's not as secure in dancing and presentation. And Carlos isn't going to improve in such obvious ways like Alexa, because she starts from a lower level. If they would just let them have individual journeys all of that wouldn't be a problem since they're both doing fine. Different, but fine. But the producers gotta have the dramz! Sigh.

When I saw what theme Alexa had, I was kinda scared what Mark would do. Because there is a danger with him of overcooking it (yeah, I couldn't resist the pun...). I thought it worked brilliantly, costumes and setting complimenting the freaky theme. And they did a lot of interesting movements in the jazz and did it well, it wasn't just lift, pose, lift. Carlos had a difficult theme and they did decently with it. We don't know how much is editing of course, but something that came up is where I do think there's a possibility of danger in the partnership. He treats Witney a bit like a little sister? He's nice, he works hard, he dances well, but it sometimes seems like he's indulging her at times and not really respecting her authority? Or it's the producers hammering that together, who knows. Though I will say once again: It was a good thing Mark immediately addressed what he perceived as an issue with that marrieds!!! things. Yeah, it makes things uncomfortable for a bit to spell it out and perhaps Alexa doesn't want to hear it, but it has the potential to spare them a lot of grief in the long run because it's out in the open and can be addressed and they can work on it. Andy was once again kinda there. Hayes did a backslide, though the theme didn't help. Tamar's facial expressions did bother me for the first time here, I didn't think they were an issue in the dances before. Otherwise good, though. Nick was great. Bindi had the breaks in hold and she looked a bit sloppy? Alek was decent.

Personally, when I see fans wishing that he changed hairstyles I always think "Don't jinx it!". IMO the man bun looks OK, it's not my personal taste, but it doesn't bother me during the dances. Mark has done much worse: That one time at the beginning of season 18 where it looked like a small animal had died on his head. Or last season the strange Boy George tribute hair. So it's really not a given that...should he change it, it will be a change for the better. (-; And I think he has just a mass of unruly hair. So if it's not cut very short, shaved etc. it's either going in all directions or he has to use a ton of product and/or man buns to keep it under control.

I don't think it's so much comparing Tamar with the other women as it's just pointing out the (IMO rather sexist and reductive) voting patterns of the DWTS core audience. They like a certain kind of female celeb and if you don't adhere to that, you just have to do extra work to convince them to root for you. I also think someone like Mel B, as Andie1 mentioned, is an example of how this can work and not work at the same time: Far as I remember she was (real) bottom two at one point, so they had problems rallying votes for her to some degree. And yeah sure, Maks flubbed the freestyle, but she was fighting an uphill battle in the finals anyway because it seemed quite clear that Helio had more voter backing than her, no matter that she was a much better dancer.

The dance assignments seem like an unholy mess as well. So as I understand it, Bindi now does three ballroom dances in a row? Why? And considering Alexa does Breaking Bad, it probably won't be a ballroom dance for her? So she'll have done 4 dances and not one ballroom dance among them? It just seems seriously unbalanced.

I've absolutely no idea what to look for in contemporary and judge it basically on "Did I like it?" (far as I can see, the judges do the same...), but it looked pretty bad for me as well. I thought the scoring for that dance was very generous and made me scratch my head (like a lot of the scoring on the second night seemed off IMO). As far as I'm concerned Andy has been utterly forgettable for two weeks in a row now, to the point where I forget he even participates in the show. That needs to change or he'll get in trouble. Considering he has Allison and IMO she's sticking to her precedent of teaching her celebs the moves but not really any technique beyond that and then outdancing them...yeah.

I always think considering their upbringing, Derek, Julianne and Mark turned out remarkably well. It can't have been an easy situation for any of the three. And yeah, many of the behaviours and spleens people might find irritating about them IMO are kinda explained by their unusual youth.

Round and round this tree we go: I'm in the middle. I think Derek teaches them well, but he also hides, controls tightly and uses props when he gets a weaker dancer. Then he doesn't always get called on those tactics when other pros arguably are. Which I think fosters some of the resentment. Bethany was the classic example of that. Yes, she improved. But not everywhere. The fast latin dances were short, tightly controlled and full of props right till the end of the season. IMO she didn't improve much there at all. She had a flair for the dramatic that worked for paso, contemporary etc. and Derek tapped into that. I think Sadie is just an agree to disagree case: She was a limited dancer with great performance ability. The dances she did at the end of the season showed a level of control and precision she totally lacked at the beginning. But Mark, after the paso, was very carefully catering to her limitations, improving what could be improved and camouflaging the rest. I actually thought the quickstep was taking a page from the Derek playbook: He controlled her very tightly in hold to get the result he wanted.

I thought it was kinda awkward that tonight was the scripted "mean night" for the judges while a lot of the pros told emotional stories, also it produced the usual unbalanced scores when they want to artificially "shake things up". Yes, this was Carlos' weakest dance so far, but he was still better than Hayes and Andy...stop talking nonsense, judges. Bindi's dance was pretty but contempo-ish, Hayes is still wildly overscored for being mediocre, Tamar was badass, Nick redeemed himself. Thank heavens Mark chose rumba as a tribute to his parents and spared us all the otherwise inevitable cringeworthy "marrieds!!! jealous because of intimate dancing" shtick the producers would have trotted out. It was a lovely dance and I thought he was stunning in it, I saw some of the issues the judges were talking about with Alexa's technique (as is often the case with rumba so early on, but mostly she did well and she performed it well), the score was still too low in context of what others were given. But what ya gonna do? If it's in the script it's in the script. Weird night with a weird vibe because it was obvious what instructions the judges were given by the producers IMO.

Unfortunately, IMO the DWTS audience has always been rather sexist in its reaction to female celebs and it seems to me the producers know that and cater to those expectations. There's one way to be confident and forward that seems "accepted" for a woman on the show: Perky and perceived as "wholesome". If you're introverted and shy, you better be a Pollyanna and Bambi about it, none of that Bethany Mota "I look like I don't care all that much about a plastic disco ball" stuff. Notice how it's also usually the male mediocre dancers that outstay their welcome while a vast number of capable female celebs have gotten the boot relatively early because they "just didn't connect" with the viewers? Yeah. There are higher, often rather unfair and contradictory expectations for the female celebs while male celebs are often given a pass (exception: male ringers, there things can get quite brutal if they're not paired with Allison). That's also why I think Bindi has a clear advantage over both Tamar and Alexa, the other two good female dancers so far. She's the kind of persona the DWTS viewers like, while reaction to celebs like Tamar and Alexa has always been more mixed.

Well, this wasn't quite the trainwreck I thought it would be! Even Kim improved somewhat! Sorry to see Chaka go, but it was always a possibility with the bad dance last week and IMO this week kinda reinforced the things we've discussed about Keo again. Three super early exits like that in a row. Ouch. There was still too much talk about marrieds!!!, but thankfully they separated packages and scoring. So points for that, show. And it was good that Mark immediately addressed the elephant in the room there, that Alexa needs to focus more on her own dancing and journey. It's better to get issues like that cleared up right at the beginning before they start to fester and grow into bigger problems. And to be fair to the PenaVegas, I'm sure the producers prodded them like crazy last week and they probably didn't realize how it might come across. Last week I thought that apart from their dancing they were one annoying blob. This week I liked both of them well enough. Coincidence? I think not. Nick needs to not get too focused on outward expectations. It was clear from the start that he wouldn't be as good a dancer as Carlos, but would have more nostalgia factor etc. If he lets the pressure get to him too much and becomes strained, the audience will pick up on that. If Nick keeps on struggling, Carlos is a contender (if the producers don't overplay the marrieds! stuff and create backlash). It's still Bindi's to lose on evidence so far, though: She's got that perky, harmless persona the demo likes in their female celebs, she's a good dancer, Derek (love him or hate him) knows what he's doing. On to the actual dancing LOL: I think they don't call out Allison on her teaching deficits because the producers have forbidden them to do that. Allison will be a pro, come hell or high water, and the judges just have to get with the program and keep quiet about her various issues. And yeah, most of the things they criticized Andy for were actually Allison's fault. Hayes was okay, but overscored again. Alek did nice lifts and not much else in that jazz, but that's how it often works for male celebs so I guess I can't complain too much. Tamar was good. Carlos was good, he has showmanship that covers up his technical issues and that will serve him well. Alexa was much improved performance-wise in particular, last week she was a bit "deer in headlights", this was much more focused. Cool choreo as well and I thought it was an amount of wacky hijinks by Mark that suited the dance and actually drew attention to his partner. I love Mark and all, but she shouldn't be encouraging the crazy too much LOL. Judging by Mark's social media, she'll be dancing the Pikachu quickstep in no time otherwise and she'll only have herself to blame. She looks like someone who could make places 3 to 5, she doesn't have the sort of persona the audience goes for in a female celeb IMO. But she's capable, she seems game for Mark's ideas, she comes without the massive restrictions he usually deals with, I'm excited to see what they'll come up with together. Bindi seemed a tad overscored. That wasn't better than Carlos and Alexa IMO. A 24 would have been enough. But oh well, it's not a big deal.

I rewatched the dances and now I'm even more annoyed at the double package and hope they don't do it again: Alexa had a good first dance and being compared with her husband, who has way more dance experience and more experience performing live shows, hurt her and overshadowed her. Apparently she was nervous and did better in rehearsals, that's something you can't plan for on the first show as a pro. Judging by his choreo Mark thinks Alexa is very capable and can deal with complex stuff. Which is probably true, but now he knows he'll need to adjust a bit for her nerves. Or not, perhaps she'll grow used to the live aspect and it won't be a problem. I also agree with something on Carrie Ann's blog: Alexa was good, but she has room for growth and improvement. You don't need to kill them on the first show: that can work, it can also start working against you. So Alexa might be a bit unhappy with performance and score, I thought Mark was good with both (he was not good with the married couple shenanigans, but we already discussed that in detail LOL) because he doesn't expect her to be perfect in week 1. I understand that they couldn't help themselves on the first night and thought it was a cute gag or something. But if they continue doing it, it will probably hurt both Alexa and Carlos because no one will get a clear sense of their identities as individual people and as individual dancers. Though that they're assigned totally different dances for week two makes me somewhat hopeful.

Sorry, I wasn't quite clear: My impression is that ballroom dances (as opposed to latin) are getting the short shrift in particular because they don't seem exciting enough or something: So foxtrot, slow waltz, Viennese waltz, ballroom tango and quickstep. That it has become possible for a celeb to get to the finals and not do many of those throughout a season.

I'm in two minds about this. I do enjoy contemporary on the show at times, same with jazz (but less so). I enjoy the elements of other dance styles that have crept into the choreos of the standard dances, at least when it's not too much and it's well done. Sometimes production does enhance performance. My problem is that it's all too much. That sometimes a couple gets to the finals without having done more than one or two ballroom dances for example, yet they have jazz and contempo and Bollywood and hip hop and whatever else. That's where the show IMO is risking to lose its identity. And hiring cross-trained people when you're expanding your dance repertoire like that makes sense. Allison still doesn't. I understand she came with fan base and reputation and she's great at her specialties, she has improved some on the latin and ballroom stuff and she seems nice. So from a promotional/fanbase etc. perspective etc. I get it, I guess. But she still very obviously doesn't look like a ballroom-trained pro. IMO she still hasn't proven that she can properly teach the technique (IMO Riker sold everything like crazy, I don't think he improved much throughout the season at all) as opposed to teaching her celebs the choreo and moves. She's a symptom of the show drifting too far off course in its search for innovation for me. Same with hiring Hayley Erbert for the troupe, another dancer with no ballroom background. It's the wrong direction.

Also, to be fair, DWTS is such a weird, pressure cooker format that even people with experience teaching ballroom dancing in studios haven't always panned out as pros. You not only have to teach the celebs to dance, you also have to somehow help them cope with the crazy show environment, the live shows, the mind games etc. And especially when you have young, inexperienced pros you don't know what qualities they will bring to the table when you hire them.

While it's true that various pros throughout the years have been guilty of overshadowing/outdancing partners (though I dispute that any single long-time pro does it all the time or even the majority of the time. No, not even Mark in his very worst periods.), I think a combination of two things makes Keo's case worse: He's drawing constant attention to himself in dancing and choreography and his partners look lost and like they haven't properly understood what they should be doing. IMO that second part is where you see that he struggles as a teacher. Derek, Mark, Peta, Maks, or whoever else you want to accuse of outdancing partners occasionally, their partners also usually know their choreo, they have learned technique (even the ones like Bristol Palin, Tommy Chong, Kristie Alley, Joanna Krupa). This is a more fundamental problem than what Carrie Ann is talking about, but perhaps she was reluctant to lay into Keo that hard in a public forum like a blog.

Something else that I've seen pointed out: This is the third season in a row that Keo's celeb couldn't really remember the choreography. I know he isn't being given homerun partners, but IMO at this point it's a pattern and suggests that he has deficits as a teacher. He's a great dancer and seems nice and as I understand it didn't really have experience teaching when he came on the show. I think this is a case where putting him in the troupe for one or two seasons might have helped him to learn how the show works and what he needs to do.

I think the pros have it tough in that respect. The show is very heavily scripted and manipulated. You're kind of expected to go along with their soap opera writing. If you don't, you risk falling out of favour with your employer. Various different pros have talked about this. Then you get situations like Val participating in a showmance yet also being resentful that he's accused of showmancing. Yeah, sure, he agrees to do it, but the producers are clearly encouraging that. Or apparently the infamous gorilla costume Bristol wore was a joke Mark made then the producers thought it was a splendid idea. Of course you can say no, but if they're insisting strongly, at which point are you jeopardizing your job? It's a very scripted show and the pros have to put up with a lot of BS.