Our next ''story'' followed right away, and it was easily my favorite of the night precisely because it could've devolved into treacle but didn't. Brett Banford, a global messenger for the Special Olympics, won over pretty much everyone he encountered (including me) with his engaging enthusiasm; when he crowed, ''I'm here to represent,'' and the crowd leapt to their feet and roared their approval, the inspirational-sports-movie fan in me couldn't help tearing up. The other supposed inspirational story of the night — that of full-contact-fighting trainer and country-western/ballroom/hip-hop instructor Chad Agnor — didn't move me so much as it had me hiding behind my laptop as the galoot recklessly charged into his audition determined to prevail over his torn hamstring. Dramatic? Sure. Entertaining? Not so much. (I was even less clear on why we spent any time on Michael Moore's backstory — do you think Transfusion Hype plays a lot of gigs at Red Cross facilities? — if the only payoff after he bricked the audition was his self-deprecating joke to the judges that he teaches dance.)
And then there were the moms. I love moms. I'm particularly fond of my own. And, yes, Kortney Pearson doubled her screen time by showing up with BFF and fellow blond divorcée Michelle Stringham, who at least thought enough to leave the jeans and massive knitting-project-I-mean-scarf in her gym bag when she tried out. And, sure, Nicole Downer's audition had an appealing future-soccer-mom jazzercise spunk to it (and the song choice of Daniel Bedingfield's ''Gotta Get Thru This'' was hilariously apt). But so help me, I could not have cared less about Kortney taking dance fitness classes from Michelle to lose her baby weight, or Nicole packing up her halfway-to-eight-is-enough brood each morning to walk to the school bus. I want to see good dancing, dammit.
The Disasters
But, no, instead I had to weather human shrugs like Brian Davidson, who began his brief tenure on the show by barking like a dog and ended it with a litany of non sequitur trash talk, with a smattering of cheesy club boogieing in the middle. Mind you, I'm not really mad at Brian. I'm mad at the producers for putting Brian on the audition stage and into my TV. The judges, however, seemed to take the bad dancing extra-personally last night, as if the specter of foot slides and shoulder shuffles Naomie Christensen sloughed onto the boards was some kind of affront to dancing itself. I realize Naomie wasn't exactly the most self-aware person in the world — that much was clear the moment she said, ''I do some acting and financial advising,'' without any apparent irony. But Nigel and Mary seemed angry that she — and Cassidy ''31 flavors of booty-shaking'' Corder — even dared to attempt to try out when those judges both know full well their anger should be directed at whoever prescreened Naomie and Cassidy and deemed them ready for prime time. Yes, Mandy Moore, you were being punk'd, and the person you can blame was probably sitting two chairs to your left.
That anger peaked with Steven Arner, inexplicably the last dancer of the night. It seems kinda obvious that the prescreeners took one look at the guy's Mickey Mouse'd fro and put him right through to the judges, but his hip-hop chair dance wasn't really all that memorably awful, and neither, really, was his jank attitude. (Okay, the hand puppets at the beginning were pretty silly.) But something about the guy flipped the catty switch in Mary Murphy; after she repeatedly insisted that he needed hip-hop training, Steven finally broke out with a bratty ''giiiirl,'' to which Mary instantly replied, ''Boy, you want to get in my face?'' Then he called her what I assume was a word that rhymes with witch, and Mary berated him out of the auditorium. Now, let's be clear here: I do not believe Mary meant the ''boy'' as any kind of racial pejorative. She plainly was coming back at Steven by using, how do you say, his own particular idiom. But the whole exchange left me feeling ooky and unpleasant, like getting stuck in the room as your best friend fights with his parents. That's not so much the recommended way to leave things with your viewers.
NEXT: That's entertainment!
You Might Also Like
- 'So You Think You Can Dance' Q&A 'SYTYCD' Q&A: Winner Joshua Allen | Lisa Raphael
- Photo Gallery 'SYTYCD': 15 greatest routines | Adam B. Vary
