So You Think You Can Dance - 7x04 "Vegas Callbacks Pt. 2, Top 10 Revealed"

A handful of notes for the second Vegas episode:

• The fractious group (consisting of Melinda and Robert, plus not-quite Top Tenners/Eleveners Khadija Nicholas and Arielle Coker) may have been dreadful, but you have to hand it to them -- they managed to render Tasty Oreo completely speechless.
  
  
  
  
  Like seriously, he didn't make a single inappropriate noise throughout their performance.
• Right before the famed Alex-Anthony-Kent contemporary trio, Lil C asked the other judges who he was going to watch since it was so loaded with talent.
  
  
  
  
  How about the guy wearing a tight, halfway unzipped red unitard? Just saying.
• Furthering my fascination with Nicole Knudson, she's the spitting image of Gertha Felsovanyi, subject of a portrait by Gustav Klimt:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  And you know what? The solo that she auditioned with was choreographed by Travis Wall! (I like the one in the link better than the audition version because she was much smoother with this awkwardly oblivious, fully inhabited sensuality.) Since Travis was behind it, hence the Portishead.
• Right, so of the 11 finalists, 8 are contemporary/modern/jazz, which led to the diverse offerings in the "Meet the Top 10 + 1" episode: contemporary, contemporary-masquerading-as-Broadway, hip hop, ballroom, contemporary, and contemporary. Still, to play Captain-Save-a-Show, the proportions of genres are still in line with past seasons, albeit rounding down when we come upon half of a hip hopper or half of a ballroom dancer.
• The judges visiting the semifinalists at their homes to tell them whether or not they made it as finalists? Not only was it tedious and overlong, but it tilted the show towards the more invasive form of reality than it had been before. Before, most of the show's efforts at fleshing out its contestants were clouded in feel-good vagueness; basically, the contestants sat in a studio and talked about their lives in general terms, which allowed them to control how and how much they revealed details. Just recall Kupono talking about his friend who was addicted to "drugs," or how the show always erases sexuality; the contestants talked in platitudes to buffer against the voyeuristic impulse of reality programming. SYTYCD then was about the dancing and the dancers, and those halfhearted attempts at getting to know the dancers really just walled off their personal lives. However, by actually going to their homes, the show put itself into a position to indulge in the personal voyeurism that it had avoided up to this point -- mostly, with Anthony Burrell's crushed reaction. Even Mary doesn't like it:
  
  
• Alex's eyes always looked like they were suffering from an allergic reaction.
  
  
  
  
  
• Also, wtf:
  
  (Brandon Bryant did the same thing during one of the opening dance-offs.)