Podcast: SYTYCD Season 8 – Top 8 Performance and Elimination
Summary
This week’s judging panel featured director/choreographer Rob Marshall and pop music icon Lady Gaga, who gave constructive insight into the performance aspect of dance. Although we liked Neil Patrick Harris’s judging the most so far this season, the celebrity panel additions have worked a lot better in the second half of the season versus the first half.
The elimination show was tough for us to watch. Jess was one of our favorites from the competition and we were both expecting to see him make the top six and possibly the finals. We had a tough time seeing him cut after his growth and improvement in favor of Tadd, who has also grown but hasn’t felt as polished when you compare the two. We talk in-depth about Jess and Tadd and draw a line in the small details. Tadd has difficultly with fast choreography and when we consider his solos in total we don’t see a wide range in his dancing vocabulary and we don’t have these same issues with Jess. We admit, we’re biased here, but we try to quantify our feelings of disappointment as best as we can.
Jordan’s elimination was more straight-forward as her body of work has been hit-or-miss during the season and her solos have revolved around her leg movements. Caitlynn has been consistent and we feel like we still have more to see from her.
Marko and Melanie once again had amazing pieces and have solidified their place in the finals. As for who else is going to the finals, it looks to be a toss up when we compare Tadd/Ricky and Sasha/Caitlynn. We think it will depend on what routines they get next week and how well they perform. We consider their bodies of work and speculate on what may happen.
Please let us know your thoughts by dropping us a comment here after listening! We love to hear feedback and what you thought of the show. We also encourage you to check out our blog and twitter feed to keep up to date with us!
Episode Length: 30:01
Time Stamps
0:00 – The guest judging by Lady Gaga and Rob Marshall
1:45 – Discussion of Jess and his elimination
7:48 – Tadd, has he grown more than Jess to deserve a top six spot?
13:28 – Jess’s final solo and online fan reaction
15:40 – Jordan’s elimination (the Tyce kiss of death strikes again)
16:50 – Caitlynn’s work
18:50 – Sasha had a very good night
19:59 – Melanie had an excellent night!
22:10 – Marko continues to amaze us.
24:15 – Ricky: does he dance too tall? And is Anya heavy?
26:10 – Who makes the finals?
28:24 – Next week’s all-stars: Kent, Janette, Jamie, Ellenore, Twitch and Pasha!
29:23 – Wrap-up
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I love your podcast and can’t believe I haven’t found it til now! I agree with almost everything in your podcast except that I love Tadd! Marko needs to win though!
the podcast sounded too strong against Tadd, I mean guys it sounded like it’s Tadd’s fault that Jess got the boot. I cant blame you guys for being upset about Jess’ early departure, I would have wished Jess was still on the show and I think Jess is a great dancer in any dance style. but this week I’d rather compensate in my mind that America decided to keep Ricky(and that was kinda pain), I mean Ricky is a great dancer but not necessarily the favorite of the many. the reason why he pulled those votes because Nigel made a comment that made some fans furious and decided to vote double than the usual (just my theory) now going back to Tadd and Jess, I think had Rob Marshal said lets keep Jess, Nigel would have rode that idea because of Rob’s background But obviously Rob was more impressed to Tadd than Jess. Mary is out of the question cause she already has a picture on her mind of who will be the top 2 male dancers. so plotting down the progress of the 2 dancers (do some X and Y’s) Tadd’s over all journey has a steeper slope(upward) than Jess. so the judges kept Tadd.
for some weird reason Tadd’s slow routines reminded me of Hokuto’s(Hok season 3) bird routine and probably that was the last time that a b-boy showed real good level gentleness and grace aside from Tadd now. Tadd wont be as good as D-trix and Legacy in terms B-boying but i bet we cant picture D-trix and Legacy dancing slow as good as Tadd .
@demon Fao, I think it’s a little unfair to claim we said that it was Tadd’s fault that Jess went home. I think we should clarify what we meant by wanting to keep Jess over Tadd in our podcast. If you go back to the eight minute mark of the podcast, you’ll hear that we agree with you in that Ricky would have been our choice for elimination if the option was open. Unfortunately it wasn’t and we wanted to talk about the options presented on Thursday evening to the judges. Additionally, the judges ultimately decided to eliminate the guy and girl with the lowest votes (see Nigel’s twitter page) so although they talked about Tadd being unique, that wasn’t the factor that led to the Thursday night decision. They decided instead that it was better to let America’s votes stand at this point in the competition.
We liked a lot of Tadd’s work throughout the season and we have said as much in both this podcast and previous ones. If it seemed like we were overly harsh around the 9:30 mark of the podcast about Tadd losing his hat in the Jazz piece, that’s because of our theatre background. Improvising or correcting for losing a prop is an important rule to learn and we would have been just as hard (possibly more so) if it happened with Jess instead.
When it comes to actually choosing to keep one or the other, it’s subjective for each person. We would have kept Jess for the reasons we gave in the podcast. We take into account growth, which we saw from both Tadd and Jess, but also consider technical ability and general performance which is where we felt Jess was stronger. Certainly people can debate that point and we welcome such discussion 🙂
@bea We’re so glad that you enjoyed discovering our podcast! We understand that not everyone is going to agree with everything we have to say or who our favorite dancers are. That’s why we welcome comments and discussions!
And we agree, go Marko!
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@Jess G
don’t get me wrong I love your podcast that’s why I listen to it, I never disagreed with you about Jess . as for what I said I’ll take that back if you want me too if it sounded unfair to your podcast. I did not mean to detriment this week’s podcast episode nor enforce my opinion to anybody. I was just relaying my thoughts about the elimination and podcast. I subscribe to the idea that yes technically speaking Jess should have stayed , but at the end of the day we can not change the fact that Jess is no longer in the competition (and it pains me )with that being said I did not mean to sound that bad and peace everyone 🙂
@demon Fao, you don’t need to take back your comments, everything’s cool. We just wanted to make sure our message was clear. We know you weren’t trying to badmouth the podcast 🙂
It’s true, at this point nothing can change the fact that Jess was eliminated. As saddened as we are by his departure, we’ve accepted it and look towards the next episode on Wednesday.
I’m late, but just wanted to note something. On elim. night, Nigel’s comment to the GIRLS was “in THIS case, we are going to go with the votes”. However, they didn’t say that to the boys. Later, when Nigel was asked on Twitter, he responded with his usual “America DID vote…you have to keep your favorite out of reach of us…the judges.”, then went on to criticize the girl’s solos. Many people suspect that Jess had more votes. Also, in an after-show interview, Nigel was asked about Ricky being safe. He said Ricky had always been in the bottom, so he used “reverse psychology” (his actual words) to get his votes up. He was grinning like a fool when he said it. I think Jess was more of a threat to Tadd for going to top 4, and for some reason, Nigel didn’t want that. Finally, the show never acknowledged that Tadd had ballroom training after failing to make the ballroom round in season 5. No wonder he looked good in ballroom. He also danced in 2 movies. BTW, Tadd was the oldest…25. I agree, Jess is so talented and should have gone further.