Strictly - Blackpool

[zico]

The Blackpool Town Crier (no, not Ore) opens the show, our celebs all arrive together on an illuminated tram with Anton as the conductor, as we’re off. Really good opening routine to “One” (one of my favourite songs) and our celebs are introduced one by one, with Claudia arriving on a box with wheels. Tess has a scarlet dress with one shoulder missing while Claudia has picked out her most colourful dress in midnight blue. The judges twirl on, and Len seems to be feeling Bussell’s muscles. The celebs come on in their dance costumes, which are so awful I’m wondering if there’s been some crossover with the Apprentice hopefuls given a task of dress design for this week. There’s stuff about Blackpool being the Vegas of the north, which is true in the same way that Birmingham is the Venice of the north.

Claudia & AJ (Jive). VT has Claudia being the first Strictly celeb that needs to be lifted up onto a donkey, then AJ shows her the Winter Gardens and brags about all his dancing trophies he won there. They are dressed as cheerleaders for this routine, and the dreaded backing dancers are back (four of them) getting in the way, but when Claudia emerges from behind them, she seems to go really badly wrong and get way out of sync for quite a while. She looks ungainly and the routine is just a total mess. That’s a shame and it’s the first time Claudia has ever messed it up, perhaps nervous in front of a really big live audience, so the judges are being very kind and gentle with their comments. Len starts talking about mistakes, gets booed, and then gets shirty saying “I apologise for telling the truth”. Craig says it could have been a 10 without the small mistakes (small?). Judges then go collectively bananas and give her four 9’s for a total of 36! Even allowing for traditional Blackpool overmarking, this is just plain silly.

For the T&C ritual, Peter Kay comes on playing a dozy steward to read the T&C, has Claudia in stitches, but does a couple of dodgy gay jokes at the Judge, but he’s “in character” so hopefully it’s OK with the Judge.

Ore & Joanna (Viennese Waltz). Joanne has blonde hair and a Marilyn frock, but isn’t in the same class as Kristina for portraying the Marilyn look. This “Rat pack” routine has lots of faffing about with lots more backing dancers around a card table, posing and strutting from Ore, then a brief spot of actual Viennese Waltz including a neverending fleckerl (that’s the turning on the spot thing). Non-Blackpool Len would be down on the faffing and lack of content like a ton of bricks. Bruno goes wild for this and says he evoked the style of Ocean’s Eleven, Craig gets booed for talking about an upper-body problem on the fleckerl, and Darcey says his head wasn’t straight. Len admires Joanne’s craftiness on the fleckerl, saying it’s an old trick to keep doing the same thing and then people eventually start applauding. Craig gives a slightly generous 8, then other judges think it was perfect so 10’s for Ore to give him 38.

Louise & Kevin (Paso). Probably the most tenuous VT connection ever as Louise goes to a rock factory and presses it firmly to (allegedly) help her get the feel of the paso. Right, let’s get into the Blackpool spirit for judging. Louise is flawless, wonderful, glittering magical perfection, they put Fred and Ginger to shame, and that Darcey woman can’t hold a candle to Louise. Oh sorry, they haven’t actually started the routine yet. The Paso is the dance where Louise faces her biggest challenge as in the paso she Must Not Smile, but Kevin is trying to make her laugh by wearing the most ridiculous trousers ever seen on Strictly, with foot-wide gold stripes. Louise sits on a Beckham wedding chair for a bit while Kevin jumps about matadorically in front of her, then she walks down a few steps, wafts her dress from side to side, Kevin gets hold of her and she does her usual half-hearted but competent shtick. Louise’s idea of a Paso face is to not smile and look a bit miserable. If that’s a Paso face, then most people on the Underground are doing Paso faces. Surprising lack of body arching for such a competent trained dancer. I like Louise and she seems a really nice person, but just wish she’d give more commitment. Judges inevitably love her routine, and Darcey bizarrely praises Louise’s brilliance in walking down a few steps while holding onto her character (i.e. not smiling?). Two 9’s and two 10’s give Louise 38.

Danny & Oti (Charleston). For this routine Danny is playing a hotel waiter, so (tenuous link follows) the VT shows him going into a chippy and pretending to be a waiter. After this bit of nonsense, the routine is wowsers (that’s an official dance term). They do a synchronised one-handed cartwheel early on, while holding hands with their other hand, which is pretty spectacular, and this is fast, entertaining and really sharp with lots of difficult content, though Danny makes it look easy. By tonight’s marking standards they should get 12’s or maybe 13’s. When Craig says “Fab-u-lous” we all know that’s the first 40 of the season in the bag. Even on a non-Blackpool night, this would have got 40. Danny is hugging Oti quite a lot to make up for last week’s apparent coolness.

Ed & Katya (Jive). Ed can play the piano, so the routine starts with him being slowly lowered from the ceiling, playing “Great Balls of Fire” with the piano apparently on fire too. He has a teddy-boy outfit and a quiff. So far, so good. Unfortunately, it goes quickly downhill when he reaches the dancer floor and gets off the piano. It’s pretty low-energy stuff and he does the moves, but without any finesse. Ed is dressed as a teddy boy with a piano tie, Katya has a piano dress, and the best bit is where Ed pretends to play the keys on Katya’s dress. All rather boring, and surely time for Ed to go. Len says “you made Blackpool rock” (geddit) and tells him he’s improving all the time, as he was eighth last week, but won’t be lower than seventh this week. Craig says it looked like he was playing hopscotch in an all-girls school with the backing dancers, but praises him for being committed and assiduous (good word). Ed scores 4,6,7,6 for a total of 23.

Greg & Natalie (Quickstep). As Greg is an Olympic long-jump champion, Natalie has to get him to massively rein in his quickstep leaps so he doesn’t leave her behind. VT shows them on the train to Blackpool, where a ginger-haired train lady says “Come on Greg, do it for the gingers” so he may be getting the ginger vote. This is a complicated routine with a brief sit-down for Greg in the middle to do some hand-jiving, and also an odd brief bit of line-dancing going on, but he’s pretty impressive in this. Darcey says something about how Greg’s natural spring and the Blackpool sprung floor made him bounce about too much, and Len says he reined back too much on the leaping about, and messed it up. Four 8’s for 32.

Judge & Oksana (Salsa). In the VT the Judge is strapped onto a Blackpool ride with a big lift, as there’s a big lift in their routine. The Judge says what we’re all thinking “This is an extremely tenuous connection”. If he wasn’t already my favourite, he would become it for this line alone. He looks suitably dischuffed at the prospect of being bounced around on a fairground ride on a wet windy day in Blackpool. Despite strong competition this week, Judge and Oksana are runaway winners of Worst Costume prize – garish polyester blue, with yellow and green bits. They’re dancing to “Spice up your life” and incredibly, the backing singers aren’t as tuneful as the Spice Girls – it’s really awful. This routine is a lot of fun, with the Judge really getting his hips to move. Strange end where the dreaded backing dancers hurl Oksana about 30 feet through a tunnel of legs. Craig tells the Judge he’s hiptastic, and should be renamed Judge Grindr. Darcey says his bootyshaking was the best ever from a male celeb. Bruno tells him it was bootylicious. Claudia praises Judge for his big lift and he says Oksana is pretty light. 9 from Darcey and just 8 from the others gives the Judge 33.

Claudia and Tess promise/threaten us with Simple Minds and Rick Astley for the results show, and that’s that. My prediction for the dance-off is Claudia and Ed, as she’s a bit dull, was ridiculously overmarked, and Ed has passed peak Gangnam entertainment value. Greg and Judge were undermarked once again.

Results Show

Group dance with the celebs in bright pink suits/dresses. Claudia comes on with a giant pink beachball and a bright pink fringed Stetson with a seagull on top, in an attempt to make Tess’s dress look good by comparison. For once, Tess doesn’t actually need any distraction, as she’s wearing something decent which might even have two shoulders, but she’s teasingly wearing her hair to cover one shoulder, so we’ll never know.
Scary music time. Danny is first through, then Ore with Joanne looking genuinely shocked. Claudia is first in the bottom two.

Simple Minds are here, performing one of their greatest hits. Surprise, surprise it’s “Don’t You Forget About Me” which by a strange coincidence, is exactly what we’ve all done with this band since 1984. I remember their lead singer as a scrawny little guy with a good voice and lots of energy – let’s just say it’s a bit different now. His backing group look unimpressed, with a ginger girl guitarist looking particularly fed up. Maybe she’s a keen musician.

Second bunch of results and of course Louise is through and Kevin is punching the air. Judge is through next, to cheers at Zico Towers, so it’s between Greg and Ed. Unfortunately Greg is in the bottom two. He says “We need to make sure we don’t go wrong this time” before correcting himself to say “I don’t go wrong” and praising Natalie. Claudia interviews Ed who shows just why he became shadow chancellor, by displaying a deep understanding of the scoring, saying he realises that he must be very popular with the voting public who are keeping him in.

Rick Astley performs an unknown song, presumably from his latest CD out now at all good record stores. The years have been much kinder to him, though he’s not a redhead anymore.

The dance-off should be really close based on actual performance, but of course we know Greg and Nat are going home. We all know it’s an entertainment show rather than a dance contest, but it’s a pity the judges have favourites, or maybe the producers just tell them who they should keep in the show. Claudia’s dance looks almost as messy as it did first time round. It seems that AJ gave her easy bits at times while he did proper jive, but the last 20 seconds from Claudia are just filler than literally any of us could do. Greg does his leap better, and generally looks to have improved. On this dance alone, I think Greg deserves it. Of course, all the judges go for Claudia. Craig says that Claudia improved “enormously” – but you gave her a 9 first time, didn’t you Craig?

Surprisingly, Greg gets all choked up and is in tears, which sets Natalie off as well. She pointedly points out he had no previous dance experience. Greg says how dancing with Natalie was one of the best things he’s ever done and she reciprocates. Quite a mutual love-in going on here and both of them are obviously very disappointed to be going out. By far the happiest person in the ballroom is Greg’s fiancée who is clearly very much looking forward to getting Greg away from the clutches of Natalie. Their farewell dance is “Bye bye love” which seems somehow appropriate, though the song is murdered by the singers.

Post-show interviews, and guess what, Ore is emotional, saying “I will never forget this weekend”. Joanne says “Neither will I”, probably for totally different reasons to Ore. I’m getting the feeling she’s had quite enough of his incessant intensity and endless emoting.
Surely Greg and Natalie’s tears mean that Ed will be out next week, as more people start to vote to keep their favourites in. We’ll probably be voting for Judge next week, unless he messes up his dance. Sad post-show news from Blackpool, as Gorka was later punched by yobs on the street in an unprovoked attack and has had his teeth damaged.

What does everybody else think?

[granretire]

Pleased to read your excellant write-up, Zico, over here.

Granretire