Reality TV Goodness

This was the first dance of the good part of the season. First, I'm really impressed with the video quality of this one - perfect cut, high resolution, probably one of the best quality videos I've seen on YouTube. Anyway, the dance is great. However, what I really wanted to post about is one of the virtues of this show being a reality TV show, which is how authentic some of the reactions are as they happen on screen.

Last week in the results show they played a clip of Ryan (Evan Kazprzak's brother), who was cut this season in favor of his brother, trying out for Season 6 that is going to premier in the fall.

*Sidenote* I'm actually a little nervous about the show playing in the fall to be honest. I'm not sure that it will play very well to the wider audience and having to go up against the Fall TV lineup. I also kind of like having it being the only show that I look forward to in the summer. Seriously, there is no other regular TV programming that I follow all summer long. There are already so many other shows that I watch during the normal TV season that I think it's going to take less of a priority for a lot of people, including myself. But mostly what it comes down to is this idea: have you ever had a song that you were out of your mind in love with and you didn't have a copy of the song yet, but went crazy whenever you heard it on the radio? My example would be Offspring's song All I Want. Loved, loved, loved that song and I would even schedule time around the Furious 5 at 9 on KROQ to listen to it because I always knew that I could hear it there. I ended up buying the cd just for the song, but hearing it at any time that I wanted to didn't elicit the same kind of jubilation that it did when I could only hear it through great scheduling efforts, or by chance on the radio. It was like hearing that song on the radio meant that the radio gods were smiling upon me and I could do my harvest celebration dance because fortune smiled upon me and it was as excited as I could be. When control became all my own for listening to the song, it always lost some of its glamor. So I think in a similar way, while I don't think there are many people who love this show more than I do, it might be a little bit of overkill to have it playing consecutive seasons. It's like waiting all year for all of other TV to end so that I could finally get a fresh drink of refreshing SYTYCD water in the desert of summer programming that makes it so amazing. But having it immersed now in the sea of other great television is not going to allow it to stand out in the fall TV season as it does in the summer. Does that make any sense? That is the longest aside ever....

Anyway, back to Ryan's try-out. I so wish that I could find the clip of his try-out because it's just so real. And this is my point - reality TV, kind of like sports, has the ability to provide such an authentic quality - real human emotion. Ryan's try-out was so artistic, and I felt fully caught up in what he performed, but in addition to that, I just loved Cat's reaction to the whole thing. Laura, if you're here, I really think that if you don't love Cat by now then you are the Grinch. Her reaction to watching that video was just so genuine and sweet, and then to see his brother Evan's reaction to seeing the clip and reading his partner Randi's question about whether or not he knew that was all going to happen was just so refreshing. It was just priceless.

From here on out there will probably be more SYTYCD posts this summer. I'm sure that at some point this summer I'm going to get tickets. If anyone is interested in attending with me since my friends at home mostly have real lives now, leave me a comment and I'll keep you posted when they become available.

The great thing so far about this season is that while I don't have any particular attachments to any dancers on the show yet (which is actually half the fun), there have been consistently strong performances from the dancers. They always say that "this is the best season yet," but in this case it might actually be true. The dancers are really top notch. Another great thing is the return of Wade Robson and Shane Sparks to choreographing dances for the show. I don't always love Mia's stuff, which I know is sacrilege to a lot of the show's fans, but her opening ensemble piece from last Thursday was really cool. All good stuff.

Stay Tuned!