Season 21 - Week 7 - Team Dances - Halloween Week

I usually like Halloween week.  They do some fun stuff. 

Interesting.  We've had several seasons where they did only one or even no paso dobles, and now we've got three in one night.  Also interesting that Carlos and Alexa (did you know they're married?? ) are both doing the paso.  Tamar should do a beautiful foxtrot, but she'll need to connect with Val for that dance.  Also, "People Are Strange" by The Doors??  Really?  I can definitely see that fitting the steps, but it just doesn't really seem like a foxtroty piece of music moodwise.  But I suppose since it's Halloween Week, they were going for songs that kind of fit the theme?

Halloween week is always a lot of fun.  I really enjoyed the opening number with the way they incorporated the stars as well as the pros.  Nice way to start off.  Julianne is looking very lovely tonight as well.  I really like her hair that way.  And always nice to see Leah again.  She makes a good substitute for Erin.
 
Nick/Sharna - I like Nick, and I like the song (they've used it before on the show but I can't remember who), but it didn't really seem like an Argentine Tango to me.   It seemed too loose.  You usually see strong lines and sharp movements in the AT, but this didn't have any of that.  His posture was a bit slumped, and it just didn't have the crispness.  Scores were fair for this, I think.
 
Hayes/Emma - That was a very interesting rendition of that song.  I liked it.  And I liked the dance.  Hayes did a pretty nice job with it overall.  Again, scores seemed fair.
 
Alexa/Mark - OMG.  Mark is Edward Scissorhands.  He must have been in 7th heaven with all that makeup.    But that was a very nice dance.  I thought Alexa looked good, and I liked Mark's choreo, and Mark was channeling Edward for all he was worth.  Good scores for her.
 
Tamar/Val - I really liked this dance.  I thought Tamar looked very good and seemed to connect well with Val - I disagree vehemently with Julianne on that one.  I liked Val's choreography.   This was well done, I thought.  All 8s are too low, though.  No way were Hayes and Andy better than she was, and she was certainly much better than Nick.  I don't know why the judges seem to be trying to torpedo her chances.  To listen to the judges, you'd think that dance was a hot mess, and it wasn't.  I went back and re-watched it just to see if I could spot all the 'disconnects' and misses they were talking about, and I just didn't see them, even looking for them.  I thought it was really good.  I don't know what's going on, but it certainly seems like ABC wants her gone.  She gets the edit where they just had to include her saying (clearly at least partially joking) that she thought she was the best dancer.  Then we get Julianne telling her the best dancers don't always win and that you need more, as she proceeds to tell Tamar all the imaginary things wrong about that dance.  Then scores on a par with Nick, who was did have problems.  Even the ABC website is in on it.  They have clips of all the dances, and the captions for all of them are raving about fangtastic this, nails that, awesome whatever.  Except Tamar - the caption to her video is Tamar Braxton's disconnected foxtrot.  Ugh.  She is getting hosed, and I don't know why.  Not happy with them at all.
 
Andy/Allison - Those contacts Andy is wearing are really freaky.    All things considered, it  wasn't a bad effort.  I enjoyed it.  He could have had stronger lines and been a bit more something- not sure what - but I liked it.  I thought the scores were a bit too high.  He wasn't better than Tamar who only got a 24.
 
Bindi/Derek - That was really good.  That's all I've got to say about it.  It was really good.  I'm not sure it was perfect, but I'm not going to quibble with the perfect score either.  Definitely the best dance of the night.
 
Alek/Lindsay - I thought he did a pretty good job with the waltz.  I'm glad that Artem spent some time working with him, as it seems to have helped.  He really was living in the state of denial if he thought there wasn't anything more he could have done.  Glad to see he took that training to heart and did a nice job with the waltz. 
 
Carlos/Witney - I love the paso, and it's hard for the celebs to get it right.  This was great music for the dance, and I liked Witney's choreography for the dance.  But there was WAY too much smoke.  Half the time I could barely see the dancers.  But what I could see looked nice.  It was a bit sloppy in a couple of places, but overall I thought it was pretty good.  The judges seemed to like it a bit better than I did, though.
 
Team Nightmare - I absolutely loved this dance.  Great music, great concept, great execution.  I thought everyone did a great job.  This may be one of my favorite team dances ever. 
 
Team Who-You-Gonna-Call  - This was a fun routine, but it honestly wasn't quite as good as the other team.  There were several noticeable mistakes from several of the couples.  I can't believe the judges actually scored it a clear win for Team Nightmare.  Good for them. 
 
Hayes was probably the right choice to go.  He's one of the weaker dancers left, but he seems like a nice kid, and I enjoyed that he really tried with everything he did.  The bus seems definitely headed straight for Tamar right now, so I gave her most of my votes. 

I have to disagree on Tamar, mustang.  I usually think she dances to near perfection but something was off last night.  Couldn't put my finger on it unless she wasn't as crisp as she normally is.

I'll agree that Bindi's was the dance of the night.

That smoke was ridiculous.

I understand, Singly.  But still it's a long way from not being as "crisp" as she normally is to that hot mess the judges would have had us believe it was.  I can see your point about the crispness going back and looking at it now, but I can't say I noticed it last night or that it bothered me overly much on re-watching.  The foxtrot is a more flowy dance, so I thought her movement was appropriate.  And it seemed to me that she was really trying to 'emote' more during the dance.  There was a little bit of her 'dead eyes,' but not much, and she actually did quite well, I thought, at the beginning as she was going through that hallway with the dancers coming up to her.  I just don't see that she deserved to receive that much criticism or the lowest scores of the night.  She and Nick were tied for bottom, and while I can get behind the low scores for Nick, as he was definitely 'off' last night, I think Tamar danced quite well and should have been scored higher.  They just seem like they're after her.

I was reading on another site that Tamar mentioned that the producers had told her they were asking everyone to say they thought they were the best, but she was the only one where it showed up in her edit.  And predictably, she's catching flack on some forums for being arrogant.  Some fans are also thinking that Sasha was told to go interrupt her interview by scaring Leah.  I'm not sure I believe that, but it is just a touch suspicious that theirs was the only interview that got interrupted like that.

Alexa, IMO, isn't the dancer her husband is.  Carlos reminds me of Shamar from Criminal Minds and I don't mind him. 

Anyway, I fully that appreciate they're not drawing on oldsters, sympathy, and/or comedy this year.  This season, the remaining dancers are all capable of producing quality performances.  Love this route.

It would be my wish that they do away with the negative packages altogether.  But... what we see of Tamar might be her personality in life.  Who knows?  I do wish they hadn't shown Alek's pouting session over his previous scores.  It was unflattering.   Right now, I think dance-wise, he's at the bottom.

DeadManDancing wrote:"Len would have known that, says Louis". Len knows it indeed. It was his main critique for Jay McGuiness' Quickstep on SCD recently, and he even specified it during the results show on Len's Lense. 
Thank God we still have Bruno, but they'd better replace one of the girls with Louis or Maks. Their judging this season is a disappointment, to say the least. Andy, Nick, Tamar, Alek: they all have been frustrated about judges' comments and scores, and the producers have nothing better to do than show that in the packages? This may be the best cast ever. They deserve better treatment.

  I agree and thank you for your comments.