The Digital Dad

So, the wife and I have a new vice, Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance. It’s in the second season and, yes, we watched it last year, too. It’s kind of funny. Last year the competition focused on a lot of technique and classical stylings: the Paso Doble, the Quick-Step, the Waltz, to name a few. In the off-season they must’ve been reading up on Fox’s viewer demographics, because now we see mainly crowd-pleasers like West Coast Swing, Hip-Hop, even Krumping!

Krumping aside, I’m a fan of the stylistic change. For myself, at least, it’s somewhat more entertaining to see Pop and Lock than, say, the Fox Trot. But it does seem something of a sell-out to the classically trained, hard-working, professional dancers who’ve spent years honing their craft that their peers who perform easily as well as, if not better than they in the competition, learned their moves watching MTV and “You Got Served,” hanging out at the skating rink and mall parking lots. Where’s the ups for hard work and dedication?

But it does make for some darn fine television. We’re at the point in the competition where the halfways and maybes have already been kicked and it’s anybody’s game. Of the 6 remaining couples, any of them could win it outright, and everyone’s your favorite. Until this point you pretty much knew who’d be leaving at the end of the episode. But now it’s so close, and everyone’s so talented you don’t want to see anybody go. I feel like the flakey mom at the school talent show who “wishes everyone could have a trophy.” But dem’s da breaks. Somebody’s gotta win, and somebody’s gotta stand up there with Cat Deeley while they play a montage clip to send you home by. My picks for next week’s Vid o’ Shame? Ryan and Ashlee. They’re both great dancers, but like I said before, they in da big leagues. And dancers like Natalie and Allison, Benji and Dmitry make em look like plain old chumps.