‘So You Think You Can Dance’: Fifteen Seconds of Solid Gold

Within the first ten minutes of last night’s episode, the judges had canned a dozen contestants, sans commentary, bringing the total down to 34. Finally, enough air time for real dancing! Or so we thought. Instead, let’s see how many ways you can pretend to say no to a hopeful nobody-maybe-someday-I’ll-be-somebody and then turn it around to mean yes. Evidently, twenty. This is where the sadistic natures of the judges are revealed in full force. Yet truth be told, the false verdict given to Jessi Peralta led to riveting television: a heartbroken confession that she would no longer dance and a sense that you were truly witnessing the expiration of someone’s soul. In gratitude for those fifteen seconds, we’ll forgive the needless teasing of oddball Ricky Palmonio, the disappointing dismissal of B-boy Twitch, and the nepotistic promotion of ghastly attired Lacey Schwimmer in Cyndi Lauper knock-offs. As one blog post on the official site righteously sums it up: “Do we really need three siblings of Season 2 contestants and one of the choreographer’s assistants? That’s 20% of the cast!� [Fox Forums]
—Drew Pisarra