They are dancing to "Puttin' on the Ritz" by Rufus Wainwright, and Karla comes out in a black and white polka-dot dress to charm her mannequin. Vitolio comes to life and tugs on her dress, which drops down to awesomely turn into a sparkly orange, pink and purple dress. They pull off this style way better than I thought -- they are coordinated, their jumps are good, and they move without looking terrified. I tend to always watch the quickstep in fear because it can go bad so quickly, but to untrained me they really do a great job to my happy surprise. Nigel loves the choreography, and when they show Jean-Marc, Furry Hat Guy behind him nods again in agreement. Nigel makes a comment about keeping a woman quiet with a snap, which I would have found totally tasteless if it weren't Mary that went quiet to illustrate his point. Heaven, if only for a moment! He has a few nitpicks about their lines actually being too good and taking away from the bounce, but he loves that their personalities came out. Mary loved it but also had a few technical critiques, which is something I wish she'd do more often because I like hearing what they actually did well and what they could improve on. That snapping worked! Mia then gives Jean-Marc all of the credit for the piece and only kind of gives the two dancers anything for how they performed it. She's confused by Vitolio being crazy one second and contained the next and doesn't understand him -- it's a bit unfair since he was totally contained during the performance, and isn't that what she's supposed to be talking about here? She tells Karla that she looked scared sometimes, but then admits she herself could never do this dance and gives credit where credit is due. It feels like a big step for Mia.
With that, we finish one of the most grossly bloated two hours of television yet this summer and tomorrow we'll see what America thought of it all.













Comments