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Welcome back to Battle of the Blades, the show that combines two popular sports, hockey and figure skating, then methodically removes everything we enjoy about both. I'm Harrison Mooney, your boatman on this River Styx of Canadiana and, as usual, I have a few opinions on the quality of this telecast.
As I detailed last week, I was once fortunate enough to have never watched this show before, so I didn't know what to expect from tonight's results program. Of course, I've seen other reality shows, so I had a fairly good idea: about three minutes of original programming, long, drawn-out shots of people waiting for information that could be relayed in seconds, and more recycled content than you can shake a stick at.*Suffice it to say, Battle of the Blades doesn't reinvent the wheel.
The BotB results show works like this: all eight couples are trotted out, uncertain of whether they're in the bottom two (which I guess is determined based on a combination of judges' scores and call-in votes), then, once they're outed, the bottom two give one final performance and the judges make a decision based solely on that (unless Tessa's involved, in which case, Sandra's mind is already made up).
So what happened?
As usual, the program opened with a montage. This one was like a greatest hits compilation of the judges' comments, and it gave a pretty good indication of the dynamic at that table: Sandra says something inconsequential, then Jeremy counters with something inappropriate. Seriously, the clips were so full of Roenick come-ons, I thought for a moment it had been put together as a workplace anti-harassment training video.
Speaking of harrowing, Seven of Nine wants her outfit back.
Just before Maclean somehow managed to stretch the revelation of the bottom two pairs into ten minutes of airtime (it was stupid and it took forever), he introduced the concept of "The judges' save," which apparently allows the judges to override their own decision to eliminate a couple just seconds after they've made it. I don't quite get it.
Yes. And so, Violetta & Cale reprised their Sunday night performance with no discernible differences, then Marcy & Todd did the same.
And then Marcy & Todd were unanimously voted off the program. They reacted with the same awkwardly forced smiles with which they had performed.
Yes, Marcy & Todd, the pair that had previously been established as the only couple in the competition with any personality whatsoever, are gone. Hence, the least interesting show on television chose, in a unanimous decision, to get less interesting in Week 2.
People: they are taking your viewership for granted.