Season 2, Episodes 4&5: Vegas Week and Meet the Top 20

With Vegas week, SYTYCD Season 2 is finally getting started. This time around, 116 dancers made it to Vegas. Since 20 of them will make the show, they each have a little less than a 1 in 5 chance of making it. Doesn’t sound too scary when I put it that way, does it?

                

I should mention that the prize for this season is a little different. Instead of winning $100,000 and a year in a gorgeous NYC apartment, the winner of Season 2 gets a contract to perform in Celine Dion’s show in Vegas, a new car, and $100.000. I’ve always wondered what on earth Nick Lazarini did with that apartment to get them to change the prize. I like Nick, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they just decided it wasn’t the most useful way to jump start a dance career. I also have to mention that I love the irony of this being a show about finding a star – and then the prize is to be a background dancer for a “real” star.

Like most Vegas shows, this episode is all about drama. Dancing is hard! Lots of people get very sweaty! People get hurt (but never as badly as the teasers suggest)! I would watch the show even if no one got injured. Honestly.

These Vegas week episodes follow three major storylines: Claire Calloway, Benji Schwimmer, and Hok. I do sort of feel that they should be focusing on Travis, since he’s become the ultimate SYTYCD poster boy, but I guess I can forgive them for not realizing how good this 18 year old kid will become.

The story of another 18 year old, Claire, breaks my heart. Not because she ultimately leaves with an injured ankle, but because I know what her future holds. Since she has to leave due to an injury, Nigel gives her a free pass to Vegas week on Season 3. But she doesn’t come back until Season 4, where she has to audition from the beginning and (as I recall) doesn’t make it very far. The reason? By the age of 20, she has a one year old daughter, which means she’s presumably lost most of a year of dance practice, not to mention all of the hardship and drama that comes with being a teen mom. Thanks to the power of Google, however, I have learned that she is currently touring with Taylor Swift, so now I can be less bummed out about her.

Benji’s storyline is interesting for another reason. They present him as someone who nearly missed being in the Top 20, though of course we know that he ultimately won. He even has to dance for his life after flubbing Mia’s choreography, though that is basically a gimme when he pulls in Heidi to help him with a well-choreographed routine, complete with matching outfits.

When the judges tell Benji that he made the Top 20, he collapses on the floor in tears. It turns out that he had recently gone through a rough breakup, where he had found out that his girlfriend (or possibly fiancée? I wasn’t clear on all the details) was marrying someone else. This is also interesting, since he recently came out as gay. So in marrying another guy, this girl did Benji two favors. First, it motivated him to audition for SYTYCD, which won him millions of fans and 100,000 dollars. Second, it helped give him the freedom to come to terms with who he really was. So good for you, unnamed ex-girlfriend of Benji Schwimmer. I hope your decision worked out as well for you as it did for Benji.

Meanwhile, Hok is getting this season’s “you-are-only-phenomenal-since-you’re-untrained-otherwise-you-are-barely-adequate” treatment. For once, a dancer doesn’t react like this is the best news ever. Instead, Hok goes to the other extreme and completely looses confidence in himself. Cat ends up having to comfort him with a box of tissues. Then, at the end, he finds out that he would have made it – if his visa had allowed him to work in the USA. But again, we know this will work out very, very well for everyone, because if Hok had been on Season 2, he never would have done that beautiful hummingbird dance with Jamie, and that would have been a tragedy.

Other highlights from these two episodes:

-         Nigel telling a sick contestant: “I can’t hear you say to me you’re not well. I can’t hear it – what am I going to say? ‘Oh we’ll just leave you off the show this week, Ben, and your partner – don’t worry, you get better, mate.’ I would love to do that as a human being. I’m not a human being, I’m a television executive producer.”

-         Yet another “seems sad, but everything will work out” moment – we watch a devastated Heather Morris fail to make the cut, but she will end up playing one of the funniest characters on Glee.

I haven’t seen enough of most of these dancers to make any comment on how they dance compared to the current crop on Season 9, so I’ll limit myself to listing the names of the dancers who made it.

The Girls:

-         Erin Ellis (jazz)

-         Jessica Fernandez (ballet)

-         Natalie Fotopoulos (contemporary)

-         Heidi Groskreutz (ballroom)

-         Allison Holker (contemporary)

-         Donyelle Jones (jazz)

-         Martha Nichols (contemporary)

-         Ashlee Nino (hip hop)

-         Joy Spears (jazz)

-         Aleksandra Wolda (contemporary)

The Boys:

-         Dimitry Chaplin (ballroom)

-         Musa Cooper (breaker)

-         Ivan Koumaey (krump)

-         Ryan Rankine (ballet)

-         Stanislav Savich (ballroom)

-         Benji Schwimmer (swing)

-         Ben Susak (contemporary)

-         Jaymz Tuaileva (jazz)

-         Travis Wall (contemporary)

-         Jason Williams (hip hop)