StrictlyChat, Week 5, in which Artem's boobs hypnotise a nation

Week five. Week five, people, and there is still SO MUCH CANNON FODDER.  And quite a lot of it escaped brutal death for another week while a more talented comrade fell. And now that I’ve kicked that metaphor into submission, let’s get into the detail.

Kimberley and Pasha
Quite a lot of posing and throwing the head around this week, but I still quite liked it, though this is possibly because I love Pasha enough to think everything he does is brilliant. What it did make me think, though, is this: where is this series’ really classic dance going to come from? You know, that one that makes you sit up a little bit straighter and say HANG ON THIS IS BRILLIANT and watch it back a lot and then get fed up by the time the Christmas Special is over because you’ve seen it, like, four times by now and actually now you come to think of it you never liked it that much in the first place.  It’s only Week Five, so I should probably relax a bit, but this could have been super-good, and it just made me think about Matt and Flavia and Ramps and Karen (fun fact  - Ramps and Karen’s salsa was week 5, so maybe it’s ok that I’m thinking about all this already) and then I felt a bit sad. But then I looked at Pasha again and I cheered right up.

Lisa and Robin
Good to see her do some ballroom, but I bloody said it would be the tango and I was totally right. Good effort, Lisa, good effort, but I wish Robin had gone a different route with this and slowed things right down for a hardcore dramatic tango, rather than this which was brightly coloured and had trumpets parping and still felt well camp. Surely a proper ballroom for Lisa next week – I hope it’s a nice gliding foxtrot or something, just to give us a week off from all this constant TA-DAHing. To be clear, I am not blaming Lisa for this. I still really like her. I just think it got one-note very quickly, and I think she’s as tired of it as I am – time for the judges to be able to talk about her dancing, not about her performing.

Richard and Erin
What’s to say, really? Major brain melt from Richard, but he just reacted in the absolute perfect way. He messed up, he knew it, he was funny about it but still looked like he cared, he didn’t cry and he didn’t beg, he just… dealt with it like a normal non-drama queen person (*cough* Matt di Angelo *cough*). If I were a voting woman (by which I mean before the final – I like to save it till it counts (as though it really ever counts)) I would have voted for him, and I have never busted out a pity vote in my life. He still wound up in the bottom two, which surprised me, but for some reason there are still enough people voting for Victoria, it turns out. Anyway, well done Richard Arnold, and I for one am glad you stayed. Something perky and cheerful for him next, I reckon, which should get him another week unless he buggers it up again. Even his charm can’t save him twice in a row.

Denise and James
It was good, there’s no doubt about that. It still managed to leave me cold, though, which I don’t really understand. I feel that, quite aside from my own personal dislike, they don’t seem to have really connected as a couple? Is that fair? Is that my imagination? Good scores, and pretty much deserved, but I still can’t get on board. By the way, did anyone watch ITT on Monday? Their behind-the-scenes stuff from the dress rehearsal had a lovely clip of James showing his true colours and snarling at Denise. It made me hate Jordan more and like Denise a bit, so IMAGINE MY JOY at the news that Jordan is injured this week and Ian Waite (HURRAH!) is taking over for the week. It will of course be doubly crushing when James comes back, but at least I can have a week off from my relentless hate. I want them to do a quickstep. I love an Ian Waite quickstep. Or a samba. I love an Ian Waite samba too. (I just love Ian Waite, let’s be honest.)

Victoria and Brendan
It was crap. It was crap AND she had a rehearsal woobie meltdown. Any normal year and she’d have been booted out unceremoniously and nobody would have missed her. She survived because we’re all still somehow hoping she’ll turn out to be good, despite all evidence to the contrary, and we’re all still a bit emosh about the Olympics, and nobody had ever heard of Colin Salmon, who never played James Bond. A pretty ballroom dance for her this week, surely. Waltz? Viennese? Or if the producers really want to bust out the big guns, an American Smooth. Otherwise, she could be toast.

Louis and Flavia
Enjoyable. And really, that’s pretty high praise for a samba on Strictly. It’s bloody hard to do, and if you don’t give it a good go, it’s deeply embarrassing both to perform and to watch (see above re Victoria). There are basically only three sambas ever on this show (that I can remember, anyway) which I have enjoyed: Ramps and Karen, Matt and Aliona, and Ian and Jade (loved her, by the way). I kind of wish Louis had got this dance later in the series, because by week 8 he would have been insanely good, instead of just enjoyable. Still the ones to beat though, no doubt about that. He is steely. Craig, incidentally, gave Louis the same score as he gave Victoria, which: WHAT?

Colin and Kristina
Oh well. They totally didn’t deserve to go home this week, but the man has no fan base, and they gave him the wrong partner, so there you have it. He sort of counts as a SHOCK EARLY BOOT, but he was kind of lucky to survive the last couple of weeks, so really he was just unlucky that he went out on a week where he actually danced quite well. The perils of the mid-table position… I very much enjoyed, by the way, him telling us all that he accepted his defeat “with grace”. As someone on Twitter rightly pointed out, if you tell people you’re doing something “with grace” you AUTOMATICALLY AREN’T. It’s like telling people you’re funny. If you have to tell them… (please take note, Van Outen). He was also profoundly pouty on BBC Breakfast this morning, falling into the “it’s just so hard when every comment is negative” trap, despite claiming on Sunday night that the judges were the experts. I would have missed you, Colin. Now I won’t.

(Couple of Kristina bonus moments this week, though. Did you know she and Pasha have known each other since they were kids? And in the behind-the-scenes stuff from Saturday, she cracked me up with a brilliant look to camera when she told Nicky Westlife everything about her was entirely real. I hope you get a good partner next year, Kristina. I kind of want you to win.)

Nicky and Karen
YAWN.

Fern and Artem and Artem’s chest
Shameless. Worked though, so who am I to criticise? Time for Fern to go home, though. A samba would probably do it, but the producers won’t go there yet.

Michael and Natalie
Good stuff, Vaughan. Perfectly nice foxtrot, nothing to get excited about, but that was more than enough to keep him safe this week. He’s got a salsa next week, apparently, which is going to be HORRIBLE, but I think there’s a distinct prospect that he’s built enough support through two weeks of TRIUMPH and BREAKTHROUGH, not to mention sheer hard work, which the British public loves, that he might just survive it, as long as he looks like he’s trying and is generally good-humoured about it. God, even as I’m typing this though, I’m not sure I’m right. Vaughan. Salsa. Natalie’s skirt-flinging misdirection is going to be insane, isn’t it?

Dani and Vincent
I slightly hate the producers for this massively obvious piece of scripting (Dani’s doing well, but not that well, she’s a tiny little person partnered with a tiny little person, we need to give her a breakthrough week so let’s give her the JIVE) but this really was fab. It felt really 1950s, with a bit of swing thrown in with the jive, which made it miles more interesting than most jives you see on the show. I don’t think it was quite up there with my favourites (Alesha (always overshadowed by her cha cha, but really good fun), Saint Jill obviously, Louisa) but it was the most enjoyable dance of the whole evening, and it made me happy.

(I am always haunted, by the way, by the Jive That Should Have Been, from Ramps and Karen. She, a jive world champion, went on and on all week about how jaw-dropping it was going to be. And then she made it really difficult and Ramps lost the beat, and it made me sad.)

Not much change in the main contenders and, let’s be honest, there really isn’t going to be, so let’s busy ourselves with considering who’s out next. I think it’s probably between Richard, Fern and Victoria, possibly with Vaughan in amongst it as well, and it will all depend on which dances they have. Floaty ballroom will save Victoria, Latin might sink Fern or Vaughan, and Richard needs a personality dance to get him through… See you next week!