So You Think I Can Be Finishing With The Recapping Now? The Finale ... All 2.5 hours of it.

Right-o. There’s no time for faffing about. No time for philosophical musings or witty intros. We have over two hours of show to get through – let’s hope most of it is fast-forwardable, or we’re going to be here for a looooooong time.

Oh, and I'd like to apologise for the lateness of my recap. I know we've all moved on to Big Brother and The Biggest Loser finale and forgotten about our special little show, and I feel so bad about letting it get to Friday night before I finished this. What can I say? Busy week. So if I can ask you to cast your mind back to the excitement that was last Sunday night, just for a few minutes/4,040 words (excluding this paragraph), then that would be great. Sorry for any inconvenience caused ... Hugs!

And also – grand finale! Yay!

We open with shots of the top four talking over their top 48-solos, and then some other recapping of auditions and top 100 week – and mostly Jason’s horrible hair, and a quite from Camilla and Courtney (oh! Hi Courtney! You won’t get to do a partner dance later so I’ll say hi now … in case we don’t see you again.) and then all the shows – in short, the recaps are here. If you missed any of this, go read them.

I'll wait.

read the rest

Not surprisingly, since this is the grand finale and we’re all about recapping the whole thing, we’re going to get some Potbelleez with our recapping. For old-times sake.

And then we finally open on a top 20 number. The camera starts on Courtney and the ‘dance flicks’ through to all our friends we’ve lost along the way, before everyone joins in. Oh, and it’s to that Rhianna song from Auditions. Awesome. And I thought I’d never ever have to hear it again.

But of course because it’s the finale it’s not *just* about the top 20. Because here’s Bonnie and Jason Gilkinson, with a little Ballroom interlude. Maybe she should have stuck to high-kicks and kept her mouth shut. And here’s Nacho Pop! Poptacular! And now look, it’s Matt and Jason – and all their gay gay glory - and Kelly Abbey, who is pretty hot for … however old she is. And finally in her rightful place – with the other judges.

And then the top four come out and they’re wearing glittery bits and aw … I love them all. But mostly Rhys (who rocks the shirtless cuffs) and then mostly Kate (who should avoid glittery black pants, by the way) and then mostly Jack and then … not so much Demi. But she’s ok.

Although the Kate/Jack thing is close. If not for the Jack pimpery of the last few weeks, it’d probably be a dead heat.

As for Our Nat, well, she murdered an ostrich and a drag queen and made herself a little dress! And she’s still calling Bonnie ‘bling bling bling’. Some things will never improve.

Bonnie takes the opportunity that everyone else took to say nice things about the dancers to thank us for taking her into our hearts and making her feel so welcome. Oh. I guess she hasn’t been reading the fora then … Now I feel guilty for all my blind raging hatred.

Except not. Shut up Bonnie.

Things I will not miss about SYTYCD #1. Bonnie. Except for the fun-making potential.

So now it’s time for a recap of the auditions. A proper one, not just an opening one. So many memories. So many tears. So much happy. And look. There was footage of Kate’s audition. Still … not very much, but it was there. Pity we couldn’t have seen it before …

And then it’s back to Nat and she’s all random and ‘wow! So many memories! I remember Caleb most of all!’ and we’re all like ‘Who the fuck is Caleb, but thanks for sharing!’

Now it’s time for some tap by the tap dogs and tap pups and it’s all very cute but I’m writing this at 6.45 in the am so the tapping is giving me a migrane. It’s one noisy dance-style, innit? But cute. With the little kid tappers.

Things I will not miss about SYTYCD #2. The stupid Flake ad.

Then it’s time for a proper recap of top 100 week. I feel like I’ve seen this before … oh. Wait. I have. And here’s Kate again! I love how now she’s top four they’re making out like she was there all along …

Oh! It’s greasy dirty Will who used to be such a sweet boy! And shut up Camilla.

Things I will not miss about SYTYCD #3. Camilla.

And then we get the bit where Jason tells Rhys he loves how different he is and Rhys says he doesn’t hear that very often and I get all teary. Wasn’t that beautiful television, kids?

And then it’s time for more Dancing. This time it’s hip-hop, with Khaly (Um?) and hip-hop dancers from the Top 100. And look how many of them there are! The costumes are all cool are futuristic but …

Things I will not miss about SYTYCD #4. All the freaking Hip-hop.

I suppose they’re giving Khaly (Don’t pretend you don’t remember him. Pierced guy. Short. Crap.) this dance because his only partner dance was so shit and they’d have to show how horrible they were to Kate by pairing her with someone so much shorter and crappier than her.

After the break, there’s yet another reminder of the voting numbers. Ok, who in the voting public still doesn’t know that you sms the name of the person you like to 191010? And not just because I told you? It’s … really not that hard. And it’s the same number (or thereabouts) for all the Channel Ten shows.

Then we have some dancing from Jamie Elliot. Aw. More cute boy dancing. I’m getting a very strong ‘boys! Dancing is cool!’ public service announcement from this show, and I’m thinking my son – if I ever have one – will be learning to dance. I want him to feel the sting and humiliation of being a boy dancer on every one of life stages but this one. And maybe win me 200,000 one day.

After that, Natalie explains to us (as though it still matters) how we used to kick people out during the first half of the top 20. And … recap! All those eliminations. Jason looking pensive and serious. JD crying because he can’t dance. Oh! Marko! I liked Marko. Why did they make him dance with that … wench? And once more, with a backing vocal:

SHUT UP CAMILLA!!

Why do they keep showing her talk?

Now it’s time for a Top 10 routine. Aw. Jack is tapping. And … there’s a stupid black big brother ad running across the bottom of the dancing. Thanks Channel Ten.

Things I will not miss about SYTYCD #5. The craptacular camera work.

The routine is pretty cool, but it’s so very clearly a Nacho Pop-influenced routine. Blergh.

(See things I will not miss about SYTYCD #4.)

Nat takes the opportunity to tell us that a) the voting lines are closed. Eh. I’m actally impressed at the total absence of any sort of Jackpimping that has gone on. Nice work, show and b) The top ten will be touring. Oh. My. God. ActonB, we are so there! And c) that the ultimate breathtaking moment was from Rhys and Kate’s … Rumba?

Wow. Way to fit too much information into one little segment there, writers.

After the break, another reminder of the crapness of the prizes that all the runners up will get. Hardly seems fair, does it?

And then … recap! Top ten to top four. Which is awesome because there’s no quotes from Camilla. We end with a shot of the top four and a cool top four dance routine (which the cynic in me suspects is one of the first live performances we’ve seen tonight … given these are the outfits these guys were wearing in the little grab from backstage they threw into the last 10 minutes of The Biggest Loser). It’s pretty awesome. If this show has taught me anything – and it hasn’t taught me much – it’s that if you want to make a routine hot, just … add a chair.

Or four.

And Rhys. If you can’t get the chair.

After that visual feast, the top four go over to Natalie to get made into three. She tries to make it very clear that she’s going to reveal the top three, not the winner, except then she says that Jack is safe, so – you know – she’s a liar. Natalie then says it’s time to reveal the two top dancers, and calls Kate which is – again – a lie. Or … Something. I’m so confused right now. For someone who started this whole thing off by wanting to make things clear, she’s certainly not doing that.

So it’s down to Rhys and Demi. And of course Rhys is safe, because that’s just the least suspenseful elimination since that time they kicked out Laura. Strangely though, I still felt a little bit ill in the moment before they called his name. This is nervewracking, y’all. You don’t understand.

Anyway, all that means that Demi came fourth. If she was a boy, she wouldn’t have made the top twenty, but because she’s a girl and I can’t really think of many girls that sucked less than her, I guess I’ll deal. Her recap is all about her journey from b-girl to girl-who-sometimes-dances-in-heels. Or barefeet, even. Sadly, they show Bonnie’s ‘You Are Woman’ brain snap and the whole world winces.

Jason tells Demi she’s awesome. And what else is he going to say? Bonnie … makes us all wince again by asking Demi to sign an essay to her sister about how she is Demi and she is great and she can dance and blah blah blah and even Demi winces and totally fudges it.

Matt kicks Bonnie under the table for making it that he doesn’t have time to speak, and we go to commercial break. Hopefully Bonnie takes the chance to have a good long think about how inane she is.

After the break, it’s time for the top 20 dancers to perform some of the most memorable dances from the show. And first up is … Marko and Stephanie’s punk Jive to The Veronicas, which Matt introduces with an internal wince. Don’t worry Matt, we don’t really think you consider this memorable for being anything but … bad.

Although I do wish Marko had gone further. He’s lovely and I kind of adore him – more for the fact that he reminds me so very much of an old friend than anything else, but still … Hearts for Marko.

Camilla and Sermsah are up next with their martial arts thingamy. Now, I was a lone voice in calling this mediocre last time, and I probably will be again, but this is mediocre. And … not even nearly as good as last time. I wonder if Camilla and Sermsah realised they’d have to dance together again when they went around bagging each other out after being elimintated all those weeks ago?

Please don’t let Camilla talk. Please don’t let Camilla talk. Please don’t let – DAMN!!!

Next up – and we’re not wasting any time tonight, are we – are Blahura and Blahnthony with their disco routine and my god it’s shit. Maybe in top eighteen week or whatever this seemed good but we’ve come so far that now it just looks like someone’s bad home videos … and you know what’s even sadder – this is as good as these two ever got. Yeah. And, even sadder: Blanthony made the top frigging ten. And Marko didn’t.

Blahnthony says hi to the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast rolls over and starts snoring.

Next up, Bonnie introduces – awwwww – Rhys and Jemma’s waltz. Now, this is still freaking awesome. It gives me tingles and it’s like the third time I’m watching it. And just maybe I’m tearing up a bit at what might have been. I love them.

The voting public is so needlessly cruel.

And then there’s this beautiful thing where Jemma tells Rhys that she’s so proud of him and she was so lucky to be his partner and she’s his number one fan and he says he couldn’t have done it without her and they cuddle and IT’S NOT FAIR. WHY, voting public, WHY? Doesn’t this shit just get you right in the gut and make you melty? When did Jack ever make you melty? Huh? Jack may have perfect Jazz face, but he never made us MELTY! IT’S NOT FAIR!!

Ad break. Which gives me time to compose myself.

Aaanyway.

After the break Rhiannon and JD get an opportunity to get that shitful Tango right. Aw. How lovely. Sadly, I didn’t actually pick where they fucked it the first time so to me it just looks … a bit better. Rhiannon’s skirt splits a bit high for my tastes – although I suppose it’s the best advertising her waxer will ever get.

She prefers a straight landing strip to a small V, by the way …

Things I will not miss about SYTYCD #6. Intimate knowledge of Rhiannon’s pubic grooming.

Natalie asks if JD and Rhiannon are lovers again and … ew. No. Not after my waxer joke.

Next up are Kate and Hilton doing their foxtrot. Not exactly memorable, really, but it couldn’t all be Rhys and Jemma, could it?

And again, we have proof of the chair theory. Chair = sexy dance. It’s cool, but sadly Hilton just doesn’t bring the hot manly love. Rhys would have KILLED that.

Then it’s Kassy and Graeme, and here’s a question for the square eyes: why are all the most memorable dances from the first three weeks of live performances? Because me, I thought things got better as we got further in, but every single dance so far has been from the first three weeks.

Although, on the bright side: no hip-hop.

Strange. Must not have been particularly memorable. Hmmmm …

Also, while I’m asking you guys for help: I’m running out of original ways to say indicate what is happens next. I don’t want to kill you all with ‘And then’s and ‘Next up’s and ‘After the break’s … but how else can I say it? Is there a thesaurus for this kind of this, do you think?

And then (SEE???) we have our final memorable dance and it’s Henry and Vanessa’s African Samba – which … may have been from a bit further in. But not much, really.

This is mean, but for some reason ever since Vanessa took to the stage in that hideous leopard-skin leotard to do her Lion-King dance just before she got eliminated, I have found her … kinda gross to watch. She squicks me now in a way she didn’t before that leopard-print camel-toe burned itself onto my brain, and so I find this routine pretty fast-forwardable.

Ew. Vanessa camel-toe.

And ew. Shirtless Henry.

I won’t go on about how there were many more, much more memorable performances they could have shown us, or, for that matter, about how it’s quite obvious that Jack wasn’t very memorable, given they all just forgot about him. I’m just going to let it go, because I’m mature and grown up and not at all bitter. Really.

And it is just a TV show.

After the break, it’s time for some Damian Leith. He’s singing Mad World by Gary Jules, which is a very odd choice – given it’s so Ben McKenzie’s song and this is just bastadry, even though I don’t hate Damian Leith particularly much at all.

So it starts off like it’s all about him, and then a little way in he wanders off toward the side of the stage and good old Caleb starts doing his thing. Remember Caleb? Probably not as well as Natalie does, but he was that super-talented fifteen-year old we saw in the auditions who made everyone cry, but then couldn’t be in the show because he was too young.

You know what I find kind of funny, and kind of sad, is that the audience cheered for the dancing right over the line ‘look right through me, look right through me’ – and it gets even funnier and sadder when the song ends and Natalie rushes over to … hug Caleb, and go on about how wonderful … Caleb is, and then – remembers Damien, yells over to him from the other side of the stage about how he was great and he has a new album out and then dismisses him.

And for the first time since I started inwardly pointing and laughing at him for releasing a shitehouse novel (not that I read it, but it … just looks shitehouse, doesn’t it?), I feel deeply sad for Damian Leith. He looks so dejected, and who can blame him? He was just used and abused by the producers of a Channel Ten reality TV show …

Again.

Natalie then gives Caleb a scholarship for the Sydney Dance company (sponsored by Optus, of course) and lets Jason wank on about line and technique and performance maturity and blah blah. I’m not part of his dance family, so I have no idea what he just said. Do you?

And we cap that off with an embarrassing ad for the Idol Auditions.

Voiceover: No matter who you are –
Guy Sebastian: I’m Guy!

So. Deep. It. Doesn’t. Even. Stand. To. Be. Mocked.

Things I will not miss abous SYTYCD #7. In Show ads for Idol.

Things I will not miss abous SYTYCD #8. And Optus.

Things I will not miss abous SYTYCD #9. And Sony

After that, it’s time to eliminate someone. I wonder who it is! So much excitement –

I qualify the sarcasm there by pointing out that when I first watched this, my heart was in my throat and I felt kind of giddy from the excitement, so while I’m bagging it out now, you all know it comes from a place of having been there

- and the first one safe is Rhys, because they’re messing with our heads in a way that can only be described as way cruel. And yet the first time I saw this I cheered, because I didn’t yet know that my chain was being yanked. On first watching, it was just awesome.

And then it was down to Jack and Kate.

Please be Kate. Please be Kate. Please be Kate. Please be Kate. Please be Kate. Please be – DAMN!

There’s lots of screaming and clapping and yaying, and Rhys tries to look happy but you just know that he was wishing the same thing I was.

Kate’s package is lovely. A lot of stuff we didn’t see – because, as we all know, we weren’t allowed to see Kate even once before the top 20 week – so it’s not just recapping shit we’ve seen fifteen times.

Everyone cheers and claps and – what is that, a tear in the corner of my eye?

Pah!

As if.

And the judges still think she’s awesome. Except Bonnie, who thinks she deserves to be standing there … and not with the top two.

The guys come over and hug her and it’s all lovely.

And then there were two. The two we’ve been predicting since week two. If this show has been one thing all the way through, it’s predictable. Sigh. Maybe with everyone predicting a Jack-win, we’ll finally get an upset.

I know it’s wishful thinking, ok? I’m writing this after having seen the result … just, let me go live in that alternate universe where the voting public thinks like me.

Next up, it’s Leona Lewis – who looks rather … leonine. This is where I go to the toilet (the first time) and hit fast forward (the second time).

Then of course there is another break. The billionth of the night. But after that it’s time for the awesome. Jack and Rhys come out in suspiciously matched shirts and jeans with the cuffs rolled up and aww … they’re both so cute. Mostly Rhys, but Jack too.

Nat asks if they thought they’d get this far and I just wish for someone, some day, on some reality TV show far far away that I don’t have to like anyone on – such as maybe The Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious, for example - to be asked that question and answer ‘well, yeah. Everyone else is shit and I am awesome. Who wouldn’t have predicted a me-slide?’

No, Natalie, they didn’t. Because they’re a bit humble and not big balls of hateful ego. Der.

Thankfully, we go straight into Jack’s package, which means that the end is near. Notice how they’re doing Jack first? That’s to make us think he’s not going to win. They’re throwing us off the stanky scent of victory. Or is that sweaty dancer boy after rehearsal? Who can tell these days …

I like Jack’s package – not that one! Sheesh! – but I can’t help but thinking that no matter what he does, he … keeps being Jack. Week to week, it’s not so noticeable, but in a montage, it becomes very clear. He may be versatile, but only so long as he still gets to be Jack. And luckily for him, they kept on giving him routines were he could be.

Rhys’s package – Can I use the same joke here again? Please? – shows something different. For a start, it shows a kinda gross mustache I’m so glad he got rid of. But then it shows someone who becomes each and every character he gets given. It’s all Rhys, but it’s all so very very different and unique and true and amazing and every emotion he’s had to express – and there have been so many – he’s expressed with his whole self and I’ve bought it, absolutely and without reseveration.

Sigh.

Finally, it’s time for our last routine of the night. Which is a Jack and Rhys jive that is so very very hot. Whoever said girls didn’t find boy-on-boy sexy never saw this. It’s also fun, energetic and light-hearted – as in it turns on a little light in my heart and makes me smile.

Everyone cheers and claps and then Jack and Rhys hug. Sadly, there is no snogging, but, you never know … maybe after the show the creating of Rhys/Jack babies can begin in earnest? Yes?

Please?

So, now would be the ultimate time to reveal the winner. But instead there’s an ad break.

Things I will not miss about SYTYCD #11: All. The. Freaking. Ads.

Or, did I say that already? It’s been a looooooong recap. Hence the lateness etc.

After the break there’s another reminder of just what our winner will win, and Mia Michaels does this little bit to the camera that’s meant to be live and shit but is suspiciously gender neutral and non-specific.

Also, is she stoned?

Nat throws to Jason as he lies and says that he doesn’t care who wins, and I think if that were true he wouldn’t have spent the whole season pimping Jack. Then Bonnie lies and says they’re both her favourites, and she thinks Mia Michaels will be happy to work with either one – except, you know, Mia loves the quirky and hates the cheesy, so I know who she would really prefer. Matt doesn’t say much of anything except ‘guy dancers rock’. Which is …actually true.

It’s time for the result now - after two and some hours of what has basically been kinda entertaining filler - and I think I’m going to spew.

Erm. And that’s watching it the second time with nearly a week to get over the initial shock. Maybe it’ll be different this time, yeah?

Please be Rhys. Please be Rhys. Please be Rhys. Please be Rhys. Please – DAMN!!!!

DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN!!!!!

Glitter falls from the sky. The boys hug. Natalie hugs Rhys. The judges cheer (I KNEW IT!). The top 20 run up on stage and everyone hugs as Natalie demonstrates her incredible inability to keep her voice at a consistent and natural volume and pace one last time – for this year. Because this show will be back next year. Yipee!

And I will be watching. But just to see how badly they take a perfectly nice reality TV show format and make it shit for season two … because this is Channel 10, after all.

Credits.

End.

Rove.

Stop.

Until next time … it’s been fun. Thank you for having me as your recapper in ActonB’s absence.

Be good, yeah?

Chesty XX