LAURIE ANN GIBSON! I love her! Can't wait to see what she does/if she yells at anyone...
Is Travis Wall group number on Thurs? Or do they have a Wed group number?
4 judges? Really? It's not like it's Cicily and whatsherface that were in the first few seasons.
Ade and Melissa back together!!!

AH! THis is gonna be a great week...

definitely excited for Brandon/Jeanine! I was hoping they would get paired together.

Janette/Evan will be interesting to see together, especially on the Rumba (which I assume Janette may blow him outta the water with). Evan doesn't exactly exude masculinity/alpha male-ness.

I'm most curious to see Kayla/Jason perform together. Uhh...especially on hip hop. (yikes!)

Poor Jason and Kayla. This will be a tough week for them to survive; neither are very popular and to be given a broadway and a Shane Spark's hip hop... :(

Shane is brilliant - hopefully he'll prove it this time!!! Don't know what's been going on in his mind lately, but I'm really hoping he'll step up tonight. I don't like Kayla, but I really like Shane and want to see him prove himself the genius he is!

I thought it wasn't on until Wed. ;)

*****HUGE SPOILER FOR TONIGHT*****



From Television Without Pity Forum (Whirledview):

Travis Wall’s group dance was a futuristic pop/hip hop(ish) routine with robot-like costumes that lit up on the darkened stage. It looked spectacular. Ellen joked it was all her idea, but that she started out dressing the dancers with Christmas tree lights that tangled everyone up, so she had to redesign everything. Travis charmingly played along with her taking all the credit, and the dancers laughed and really enjoyed her ribbing.

Evan and Janette started with Sonya’s routine about getting each other to ‘shut up’, including literally putting their hands over their partner’s mouth. The costumes were S&Mesque. Nigel, Mary, and Mia were underwhelmed, and didn’t think Evan was convincing, though they liked Janette. Mia said Janette was her favorite dancer this season. Ellen thought they were fantastic -- but then she ended up saying that about everyone -- she was the antidote to Nigel and Mia’s grousing throughout the show. I saw Sonya in her car leaving the parking lot and she looked kind of bummed.

Brandon and Jeanine were next with a waltz. Brandon was super embarrassed about saying during rehearsal that he was going to focus on images of bunnies and kittens (?) for the piece, and his voice was strangely squeaky after the dance when he tried to explain himself. Nigel hated it because the music was too slow, and again the judges were not too enthused, except Ellen. Jeanine looked awesome in a flowing yellow dress with sequins. Brandon looked good to me, but Mary and Nigel both said he did not rise and fall like he was supposed to and they expected more, though they said the slowness of the music made it more difficult to execute.

Ade and Melissa did a sexy Cha Cha, which the audience really liked but Nigel was disappointed. He said Ade’s feet were turned out, Mary said Melissa’s were turned in, and Mia really went after Ade, calling his dancing “thick”. They made fun of his red ballroom pants and red heels, Nigel saying there was no “ball room” in his ballroom pants, and also said something leering about Melissa. The audience booed Nigel and Mia -- the pair of them seemed so negative for this first part of the show. Thank goodness Ellen was there to add levity and encouraging words.

Jason and Kayla seemed to have good chemistry, and pulled off what Nigel said was by far the best dance of the night (so far). Mary put them on the hot tamale train using her new phallic looking train whistle. The premise of the dance was that Jason was infatuated music, while Kayla was trying to tempt him away from it. Jason definitely was a crowd pleaser today, the teenage girls screamed really loud for him even though he was fully clothed throughout the taping. His bother was there, standing just under the judges table and after Justin danced he came down and gave his brother a big hug -- the audience said “aaaaaawwww”. Jason seemed much more relaxed and playful, and he’s definitely the hugger in the group -- I think he hugged almost everyone at one point or another. Nigel criticized him for hunching at times, and Mia called it a “lurch”, but Jason took it really well. BTW, Mia was wearing a rust and teal caftan dress with tons of necklaces – not a good look for her. Off camera she was texting a lot and didn’t really interact with Ellen, and the audience kind of groaned every time she said something mean. She was nice to Kayla though – she said Kayla will win lots of Emmys in her future. Kayla’s grandparents sat next to Jason’s parents and they were all getting along famously off camera.

Evan and Janette’s rumba was kind of slow for a rumba, and Nigel really went after Evan, saying that he needs to do something about his sleepy looking eyes and he didn’t measure up to Janette’s competence. The audience booed Nigel and Ellen came to his rescue saying that Hollywood people’s faces start to look the same and that his look is charming and she wouldn’t want him to change a thing. Mia echoed Ellen’s remarks, and said she has sleepy eyes too and everyone always thinks she’s stoned.

Laurie Ann’s pop jazz routine for Brandon and Jeanine did not have a story line --though the song was something about war and they had sexy military garb on. It was super high energy. Everyone loved it and Mary put them on the hot tamale train. Nigel called Laurie Ann “Jeanine” by mistake and Shane Sparks stood up to make sure that Laurie Ann would get the respect of getting her name right. Then we had to do three more takes of the audience cheering while Nigel recognized Laurie Ann. Laurie Ann was very cool and charming about the whole thing. Nigel said they may not use the retakes because the audience cheered too loudly.

The mood completely changed for Tyce Diorio’s contemporary dance with Ade and Melissa. Melissa’s character has breast cancer and Ade is trying to be there for her. Melissa wore pink lingerie and a bright colored do-rag as though she’d lost her hair to chemotherapy. The studio became somber and quiet, and by the end both dancers, Tyce, and all four judges were crying. Mia started crying uncontrollably. The judges all said it was one of the most powerful dances they had ever seen. We had to take a long break so that all the judges could get their make up redone. I talked with Melissa’s former choreographer and she said that she thought this was a super important dance for Melissa because she’s always so composed and professional, and this dance allowed her to connect with people on a deeper level.

Last was Jason and Kayla’s Shane Sparks routine. Jason played a zombie that turns Kayla (dressed as a school girl in a very short skirt) into a zombie too. Nigel pointed out that it was partially an homage to Michael Jackson. Mia snarked that Shane Sparks is well known for his interest in school girls. It was deemed hot tamale train worthy, and the audience loved it. Jason was particularly good at being ghoulish and seemed proud to shed his wide eyes and cute pinchable cheeks image. Mia said she found the last pose -- where Jason holds Kayla up to choke her -- as particularly sexy.

The solos were all good, though predictable. Evan dropped his hat in his solo, and all of the judges’ criticism seemed to be getting to him. He was definitely the most picked on. The judges weren’t so favorable for Ade, but his solo was impressive, though again it seemed like a series of tricks instead of having a theme or matching the story of the music. Brandon seemed electric in all of his performances – he and Jason seemed to be the crowd pleasers of the evening. Kayla looked movie star beautiful, Jeanine looked like she was putting everything she had into it, Melissa seemed to incorporate even more contemporary into her solo.

Predictions: Evan and Ade in bottom two, with Evan going home and Melissa and Kayla in the bottom two with Melissa going home unless her breast cancer performance rallies a lot of people to vote for her.

If I forgot anything I’ll try to check this spoiler thread in a few hours to see if I should add anything more.

Oh, and Ellen danced for us during the break -- she stood at the edge of the judges table and got the choreographers to direct her every move. She joked that it was amazing to have so many choreographers give her a dance lesson all at once.

josporte!! That is one hellavu spoiler!!! Thank you!!! I loved reading it!

Wow that was quite a spoiler!!! So the judges see all the dances before it is live? I guess I didn't know that. I'm kind of glad I didn't read all that before watching tonight, esp when it came to Melissa and Ade's contemporary piece.

As I explained to Todd earlier, the Wednesday show isn't live. It's taped on Tuesday. The Thursday show is "live" (meaning it's about half live: group dance and musical performances are taped before, solos and elim's I think are live). So there are spoilers like this every week...

Ok I missed that post that it was taped Tues. That makes sense then!

I loved what Ellen said about Evan after Nigel criticized the way his eyes looked. I thought it was a good balance to the long winded and sometimes harsh comments from the others.

As much as I love Mia, she gave this NASTY backhanded compliment today "Not EVERYONE has to be a sexpot." I forget who it was for, but OMG I laughed sooooo hard...

She was talking about Evan.

She said several things I thought were uncalled for.

I would have liked to have seen Ellen dance, I bet that was funny!

Thanks for the post josporte. I think it gave us some good insight. I know some of the comments were edited out (because they didn't air some of them) etc and it was interesting to hear some of that from someone who was there! I bet that is a great experience.