So Lang, farewell

Week 8: Top 9 Results: 12 November 2017

Last night! Most of the cast fell to pieces, dance-wise, emotionally, or in the case of some of them, both at once. Davood (I know) and Alexandra shared top spot, with Debbie and Joe also achieving decent scores, putting a big gap between the four of them and everybody else, especially Ruth and Anton who bottomed out at 18 points. Tonight! I honestly think anyone could go - which makes it kind of exciting - but let’s face it, it’s most likely to be Mollie or Ruth, especially in the wake of last week's SHOCK!BOOT. [Part of me feels a bit sad that we've already had the biggest SHOCK!BOOT we're going to get this series and that none of the other eliminations could possibly live up to it. - Steve]

Cue credits! 

We open with the annual Remembrance Sunday pro-dance. Now I’m sorry, I know they tried to do this for an earnest commemoration and everything, but when you are dancing to a John Lewis version of the Proclaimers' 'I’m Gonna Be (500 miles)', you’re on a hiding to nothing. That song is so closely associated in the public imagination with Peter Kay's Children in Need video and you can’t possibly think that anyone will be seeing anything but. The storyline is that Karen is missing her sweetheart Kevin who is at war, so she dances with his jacket - let’s face it, it’s a vast improvement on the majority of her celebrity partners. The other pros then come on and waft around as if this song is somehow a solemn, romantic ballad (and I get that the lyrics do have that sentiment, but come on). And then we get the promised travelator at the back, with the male pros very obviously travelator-ing upon it. It looks completely fucking ridiculous, like a slowed down version of that OK-Go video with the added question of which one is most likely to re-enact the Ronnie Corbett pratfall. They even let Anton take part in it (so, him, then). I get that they’re trying to do something different to the jolly 40s stuff they’ve had recently, but this was the most ridiculous pile of nonsense I’ve seen in years. I probably would have enjoyed it had it been a deliberately camp routine, paced up a few notches and themed around something much less sombre, but this just leaves me wanting to laugh and feeling very uncomfortable about doing so, so hooray for that. [Also the best part of that song is singing 'WHAT A WANKER!' over the ba-da-da-bas, and I definitely felt a bit uncomfortable about doing that in the overall context of Remembrance Sunday. - Steve] The singers and Karen look about as bemused as I feel as it ends - and then we cut to some war veterans who are pulling the same expression. Oh well, onto business.

Tess and Claudia enter, both in black - Tess looking like she’s just draped a black sheet across herself, Claudia in a skirt and jumper. Claudia tells us that Christopher Scott is the person we have to blame for that dance and I know this show has imported many things from So You Think You Can Dance over the years, but there are other things best left the other side of the pond. Claudia welcomes the guest RAF band and a team from the defence medical rehabilitation centre, none of whom look pleased at all to be on camera and who can blame them after what they’ve just had to witness?

The judges enter, in pairs this time - Craig and Darcey; Bruno and Shirley. Darcey is in a lacy teal dress that's again, quite revealing. Who doesn’t love the sexually liberated Darcey that we're seeing this year? Shirley looks positively chaste in white, though there's some black lace peeking out.

Interminable recap of last nights in which the following of note happens: we get a good view of Craig’s tie pin that looks like a snowflake. In November? It’s like the 'Heart Extra Christmas' radio station that suddenly appeared on my DAB. Also: everyone wants to go to Blackpool, who’d have thought it? Claudia gropes Gorka before going on stage, Craig looks like he’s wearing a lot of eye make up, Mollie’s mom turns up saying she’s proud of her but also looking like she could do with some sleep. Joe, Alexandra and Davood are shown with praise; Ruth, Johnny, Mollie and Gemma with criticism and Debbie and Susan with a combination of the two. Also: Mollie think she’s going home, but will that be the case?

Not long to find out, as we are with Tess for the first set of results. Safe: Davood and Nadiya; Mollie and AJ, who appear completely shocked (as are the rest of the cast, if their worried faces are anything to go by); Joe and Katya. That means the first dance of couple is: Jonnie and Oti. Rightly so in terms of performance, I guess, but I thought his fan base my have kept them going for another couple of weeks (of course they still might depending on who they are up against in the dance off). [Incidentally, this is the same stage of the series that Greg Rutherford's vote started tailing off in last year. Maybe we just have some sort of sportsman threshold these days? - Steve]

Craig - in a bowtie that looks like it’s made of National Trust curtains, possibly the same set they took Mollie's paso hair from - tells Jonnie to watch his hand shaping, especially out of hold, and to lighten up in his face as well as keeping an eye on his balance.

There are far fewer people with Claudia in the safe zone than there used to be now. It's looking quite barren there. Joe says his family used to go on holiday to BLACKPOOL so he's looking forward to bringing back memories. They are salsa-ing next week-to 'Ride on Time'. Tune. It's not a tune I trust the singers with. Davood says next week is going to be James Bond - we don’t know what dance he has, though. Davood has never been to BLACKPOOL and Nadiya says it’s the most amazing place. Claudia asks him if he’s been to New York - he says no.  Paris?  No. Are we sure he doesn't actually live in the no-one-can-ever-escape bubble that is Walford? Mollie thanks everybody for voting and cries because her nana who lives up North will be able to watch them next week. [I'm pretty sure she's been able to watch them every week? Although this did make me picture Mollie as Susie Blake's Continuity Announcer from Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV which made me giggle quite a lot. - Steve]

Time for the annual Poppy appeal VT. The judges as well as the celebrities go to King’s Cross station to sell poppies and talk to squaddies and veterans. Bruno gets a little handsy with some of them, quelle surprise. Then a couple of squaddies do the dirty dancing lift and it’s nice that this endorsement of same-sex dancing on the show comes from some butch squaddies, long may that continue. It's also probably a better tribute to the charity than that thing we saw at the start of the show.

Time now for a 'special guest performance' from Seal because the guest performances clearly have a long way to go before they get exciting this year - they may even turn out as god-awful as last years. We open with Anton and Nadiya (!) doing a little bit of twirling before they are quickly dispatched for us to focus on Seal singing a cover of 'Autumn Leaves'. He is wearing a full-length coat - you wouldn’t have thought it was particularly nippy in that studio going on the skimpy clothes they put everybody in, but hey. His vocal is very low in the sound mix, and the orchestra he has with him drown him out, which may be a blessing as his voice sounds shot to shit tonight. It's also a really boring dirge of a song. Still, Nadiya looked lovely in the white ball gown they put her in with branches and flowers all over it, so that’s something nice.

Claudia tells us that, too, was a special tribute on Remembrance Weekend and soon we're going to be remembering our fallen by dispatching one of these lot…  I'd normally think twice before making a  comment like that but let's be honest, it's still not as crass as the thing they did at the start of the show.

Time for Dance Debrief and we cover the lie that the rumba is difficult for men so I’m not going to dignify that with any recap space. Darcey is wearing the oddest earrings-really long with hoops on the bottom. We also focus on Davood being supple and executing good lifts. Well, he’s had plenty of practice with all those illegal ones Nadiya kept throwing in, hasn’t he? We see Alexandra stepping on Gorka's feet again, and he really is brave allowing a woman in that size heels to do that. We also watched Debbie fluff a spin slightly before revisiting the glory of Giovanni’s vag lift. Claudia tells us that Shirley made a final at Blackpool 17 times and we have a photo of her in black and white, as a child. (Or teenager). Shirley says she’s been going there since she was 7, so it holds a really special place in her heart. And she is glad to be going home to the North of England and Claudia promptly invites the whole cast round Shirley’s house for Sunday dinner.

Time to find out who will be facing Jonnie and Oti in the dance-off now. Safe are: Alexandra and Gorka; Debbie and Giovanni; Gemma and Aljaž. Ruth and Susan look equally sick (as did Gemma before she was called), but the unlucky pair are Ruth and Anton. Tess apologises to Ruth, knowing that this is almost certainly her last dance. Ruth says 'if' it’s going to be her last one she’s going to go out and enjoy it. Bruno advises her to try not to go wrong and if she does, to try and mask it.

In the Clauditorium, we learn that Debbie has the duff dance draw of having to do a samba straight after a salsa - at least it will be dance to a Spice Girls medley, so that’s hopefully going to be crowdpleasing. I still feel gipped that they don't get to do an American Smooth, because I think that would have gone down a treat in BLACKPOOL. We are reminded that the last time Alexandra was in BLACKPOOL, she was singing for the Queen (at the 2009 Royal Variety Performance apparently) and Claudia says that she had a quickstep next week which must be better than singing for the Queen. Or better than more party Latin at any rate. Gorka says it’s his first time dancing at Blackpool because I guess he's dealing with last year by completely blocking it all from his mind. We learn that Susan and Kevin will be doing a patented Kevin Clifton BLACKPOOL Paso. Apparently it’s an idea he’s had every series so far and they've finally let him do it. As he has already done Harry Potter, Wonder Woman, Star Wars and Game of Thrones routines, the mind boggles. Claudia tells us Kevin was only eight when he first danced at Blackpool. Shirley was seven, you Johnny-come-lately. Kevin says their aim was to get to week three so they're quite surprised to still be here. Gemma says she goes to BLACKPOOL every year with her family so to be able to perform in the ball (yes she does say 'ball') will be great - especially as it’s her birthday.  Is there anyone in the cast who was born in the first eight months of the year? Crazy Aljaž exclaims how excited he is to be going back to BLACKPOOL and wiggles around a lot. We don’t learn what they’ll be dancing, however.

In case you've forgotten, they're going to BLACKPOOL next week. So here’s the obligatory trailer of everybody saying they want to go there. That’s recapped that for you. They didn’t even do a bit of comedy or anything.

With the bottom two, Ruth says she’s going to enjoy going out doing her foxtrot if it is her last dance and they go and get ready. Jonnie says he just wants to go and have fun in their potential last dance. A fun foxtrot?  I'll believe that when I see it.

And now for the battle of the foxtrots. Ruth's doomed pretty much the off, going out of time and looking clumsy in the side by sides, although she does marginally recover enough to get off the stairs to go into hold. There are fewer stumbles after that, for a bit, but the dance still has the problems it suffered from before of being jolty. Then, just as it looks like things are going OK, Ruth trips over Anton’s feet and it falls to pieces entirely. She still catches the props, though. Jonnie and Oti's dance is also much like their first routine, with Oti doing the patented throwing herself around the place to mask Johnny’s shortcomings, Johnnie’s frame being a god-awful mess, but him vaguely selling the dance a little bit more than Ruth and making fewer obvious mistakes. Not exactly a triumph, but it should be enough to see him through to next week.

For taking the criticisms on board better and performing a better dancer overall, Craig saves Johnny and Oti; for having no mistakes, Darcey also saves them; for being cleaner, more emotionally involving and improved, Bruno makes it a triple whammy. Shirley agrees that she would have saved them as well. 

Ruth receives a four judge standing ovation, as well as one from the audience. Ruth says she’s disappointed because Anton should be at BLACKPOOL. Have they told him they're not even going to put him on the coach if he got knocked out this week? Bit harsh. Ruth thanks the judges and all her fellow competitors and thanks Anton for being funny and a great dancer and Anton tells her she’s amazing and for ensuring that he has several more years locked into his contract, should he want them (and with twins to look after, I’m guessing he does). They dance off to 'Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me’ and Ruth nearly falls over, what a goddess. Then Anton tries to pick her up for a lift and she’s too nervous and so they give up on the idea. Then Anton lies down and gets Ruth to recreate their famous move, and then it turns into a huge pile on with everybody lying on top of Anton. God, imagine how Bruce would have responded to that?

Johnny asks Oti what her secret for getting him through another week was. Making sure you were at least fractionally better than Ruth?

Next week: BLACKPOOL!  Join Steve to find out who will rise to the occasion and who will trip over their prop dancers before taking a ride home on a donkey and getting their teeth knocked out… [Too soon - ed].