Last night’s SYTYCD was one of the most uneven in terms of dances. The group dances were great, both choreographed by Sonya. Why the dudes were wearing court jester formal wear remains an open question. Jeanine’s superheroine costume displayed her super-ability to bring the elder weiner creaking back to life.

With the pairs dances, disco again rocked the house. I haven’t been a fan of Tabolean’s routines, as they often have blah choreography mixed with twee concepts and a disastrous love of props. Exhibit A: The ridiculous chained-together routine. On the other hand, the routine 2 weeks ago with Ade and late, lamented Janette (sob! America, you bastards!) was pretty good. Last night, I found myself really enjoying their routine, even thinking “hey, Tabolean really seem to be stepping up their game lately.” That nice moment was crushed seconds later when the dancers stuck their feet in boxes with smiley faces drawn on them and stomped around, ungracefully. Why, Tabolean, why? You’re the prop comics of dance!

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This bipolar nature of this show makes Paula Abdul seem like a model of stability. We veered from dances about the army to breast cancer to zombies. By the way, SYTYCD, did anyone question the decision to put the zombie dance on right after the breast cancer dance? I’m just saying.

Ellen DeGeneres stopped by as a guest judge. I’m not really into Ellen’s brand of stammery comedy, but I kind of lover her for standing up to Nigel over Evan’s looks (followed by Mary and Mia agreeing with her). Nigel thought Evan’s heavy eyelids made him look drowsy, not sexy. Chuck Bass begs to differ.

The show opened with a jazz routine (not to be confused with the later POP-jazz routine, because they are complete opposites) by Travis Wall. The routine is awesome, it’s great to see Travis come back as a choreographer, even if it does mean Nigel fellating himself every five seconds over how great the show is. As usual, the costumers have outdone themselves, festooning the dancers with every scrap of led jewelry they could get their hands on. But what exactly were they? Nigel compared it to Lady GaGa, but Lady GaGa would never wear pants. Duh, Nigel (excuse me Dr. Honorary Degree Nigel, as was mentioned in a completely unscripted and spontaneous way by Cat). Vote after the jump.

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This week’s so you think you can dance marked a transition. The judges become impotent, but tragically not silent. The dancers randomly choose new partners, resulting in my long wished for Kayla/Evan match up. The dancers do solos, which I’d enjoy more if they were able to work with choreographers. Are the American Idol contestants forced to come up with their own songs? It makes no sense that the dancers are repeated asked to choreograph themselves.

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If last week brought lots of filler, this week was jam packed with spectacular dancing. Each couple had to dance twice. The show was also bittersweet, as it was the couples would be randomly assigned next week. In this weeks poll, you can vote for both you favorite dance and you favorite overall couple.

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Until now this season, I’ve kicked off recaps with my favorite dances. This week, though, there’s a giant elephant in the room that changes things up. It’s from outer space, dressed in shiny foil, and has weird sexual perversions. But enough about Michael Jackson. (Too soon? Eh, too bad.)

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As we continually whittle down the contestants on SYTYCD, one thing becomes painfully obvious: we’ve still got two hours to kill, people. So in addition to reherasal footage and Nigel recounting how he danced for Admiral Nelson back in his cabin boy days, we also get little personal tidbits from the dancers. This would be fine, except the dancers are totally boring, or are forced to be boring, thanks to the family audience that sucks the fun out of pretty much everything. Thanks a lot, America. At least you can’t stop Mia Michaels’ and her homage to badonkadonk.

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Hi. It’s late and I’m very tired, so I haven’t been able to think of a fun poll to go with the dance poll for this week. Although I considered the following possibilities:

• Who would make a less irritating judge than Nigel? (Possible answer: stick that pokes you in eye after every dance, also brings up possibility of replacing Mary with stick that pokes you in ear.)
• What alternative careers are more likely than ones imagined by the dancers? (Possible answer: I hear The Real World: Straight to Porn is casting!)
• What is that on Toni Basil’s head? (Possible answers: Parisian Mushroom, Lonely sea creature attempting to mate with Toni’s head and lay eggs in her skull)

You see my problem. So for now, let’s just vote on the dances. I need to sleep and let my Nigel rage subside (seriously, how much of an asshole was he tonight? Gah!). Poll after the jump.

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This week on So You Think You Can Dance, Lil’ C shows up to make Grandpa Nigel feel inadequate, and make the dancers feel dumb with all his fancy talking words. They are much more comfortable with Mary’s wailing and crying. Maybe Lil’ C should use handpuppets.

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While I was less than impressed with last night’s special dancer (Amrapali Ambegaokar, who danced to “Ganesh Toda Tatkar” by Gangani & Smt. Anjani Ambegaokar, according to the Fox site), her solo did serve to remind me of a couple long lost gems: the “Shockin’ your ass like a faulty vibrator” lyric to Bug Powder Dust by Bomb the Bass (which is all kinds of trippy when mashed up with a Bollywood dance routine), and this totally awesome Tunak Tunak Tun video. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see one if not both of these worked into the choreography sometime this season.

(Video after the jump.)

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The Supreme Executive Task Force here at MidSeasonReplacements had a corporate retreat recently (read: EdHill and I had a beer (read: many beers)) and decided this would be a good time to tray a leaner, meaner approach to recapping. Recaps would be shorter, less play-by-play and more general impression/comments, with the upside that they would be out more frequently than our current rate of never. Aaaaaaaaaaaand here I am on Saturday Sunday writing something I planned to be up during the week. So there are still a few kinks in the system. The important point is that I drank beer, and that So You Think You Can Dance was off and running on Wednesday, with a strong top twenty dancers.

In the spirit of the new system and the beer I’m drinking now, I’m not covering the dancers in order. Originally, I thought to rank them in the order from best to worst, but that’s too hard, especially when the good ones are from different genres, or I wind up hating one dancer but not the other. So I’m just covering them in fairly random order, although the favs will usually be near the top, except when they’re not. Yay, consistency!

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