"SYTYCD" Season 8: Elimination 7

Another day, another dollar, another “So You Think You Can Dance” results show recap.

Sorry! That sounded much more bitter than we meant it to. It’s just that last night’s show was a bit…blah. Come on: It’s almost the finale! They announced the Top 4! Everything should have been CRAZY EXCITING!

Instead, we got a bunch of vanilla solos and lackluster guest performances. Maybe it was just hard to get into the show this week because pretty much everyone knew who would be sent home before things even got started. Sort of takes the wind out of a results show’s sails.

Aaaanyway, here are our top three awesome–and awkward–happenings from last night.

AWESOME

1) The huge rose in Justin Giles’ opening number. Honestly, we don’t remember much about the dancing, but that rose was totally awesome. Remember the mutant dandelions from Teenage Mutatnt Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze? Totally reminded us of them. And any day that involves reminiscing about TMNT is a good day.

2) Melanie’s solo. As we lamented earlier, most of last night’s solos were underwhelming–but this girl is in a league of her own. Yes, we could do with fewer BOOM-I’m-in-a-split moments, but Melanie is technically brilliant and somehow makes that whole crumple-face cry thing seem authentic and appealing.

3) Kent and Lauren’s performance of “Collide.” Yes! Right! THAT’S why we used to adore this show. And both Kent and Lauren have definitely gotten stronger over the past year. (Man, do we wish they were a real-life couple–talk about beautiful babies.)

AWKWARD

1) The Bad Boys of Dance’s number. Gorgeous dancers doing embarrassingly bad choreography. (The running man? Really?) You’re better than this, guys.

2) Pia Toscano’s performance. (Pia who? We are so not cool.) OK, look: We’ve said this before, and we don’t mean to harp, but when you’re performing on a dance show, why not get some awesome dancers involved? Pia has a delicious set of pipes, but how much tastier would her performance have been with a nice sprinkling of “SYTYCD” All Stars?

3) Cat’s dress. We swore that, for once, we would not get all rapturous about how amazing Cat looked. OK–mission accomplished. Instead, let’s talk about how bizarro last night’s outfit was. What was up with the giant flowers eating her face? (Were giant flowers just the motif of the evening?) And did her skirt have some unfortunate run-in with a paper shredder? We did love the bright banana-yellow color, though. (Whoops–see, there we go, adoring her again.)

As we (and the world) predicted, we said goodbye to Caitlynn, who’s gorgeous but too generic to last, and Ricky, who we’ve always thought of as the poor man’s Danny Tidwell. That makes for a pretty darn solid Top 4. Let’s hope they get some legitimately amazing choreo thrown at them next week.

What do you guys think? Are we crazy? Are we saying all the things you’re too nice to say? (Both?) Share your thoughts with us on Twitter
@Dance_SpiritMag and on the DS Facebook page!