Month: May 2009

Survivor: Borneo Episode 4

Unable to organize the others against the ornery old Rudy, Stacey was voted out in Survivor: Borneo Episode 3. The good news for Tagi is that they’ve now got plenty of food with Richard Hatch having a new toy.

Back at camp, the tropical storm continues. Aside from the miserable conditions, Gretchen finally takes this as a sign that she’s right. BB’s insistence that the camp be on the beach has to be ditched once and for all, and she’s moving to the woods, with or without her tribe. They agree to move with her.

As for Greg, he couldn’t care less. He’ll do whatever she wants. First, he’ll have to make some phone calls on his coconut telephone.

Sean wants Sue to slow down for a little bit and to stop working. His version of slowing down: build a bowling alley on the beach.

The challenge is to build an SOS on the beach for a plane flying overhead. Whoever builds the best signal will win a crate of supplies. To add to their boxes, Jenna requests a spice rack, while Dirk wants a filet knife. Tagi can’t agree on anything, leading to a tribal split. Mostly, they’re against Sean and want to argue with him. Richard sees this as an opportunity to form some alliances and guarantee his long-term safety. Ramona continues to struggle with the island in general, as well as with her fellow castaways. She’s been given a second life on the island, but it doesn’t look like she wants it. Despite that, she says she’s starting to feel like she’s more part of the group as they begin the task. Tagi has written a message in the sand, and they’re wearing their yellow panchos while moving on the beach. Pagong has a smiley face and is waving their team flag. Tagi’s signal is more clear because they have moving bodies colorfully dressed, so they win reward. They receive pillows, hammocks, spices, and a knife to strap to Hatch’s thigh.

The alliances have begun. Sue, Richard, and Kelly are together. They would like to target the doctor. Rudy thinks that maybe at the end there could be alliances. Yeah, maybe sooner. He doesn’t believe in alliances anyway, so they’ll leave him out of the loop.

Gervase believes Ramona’s redeemed herself. Jenna believes that Ramona’s work ethic has changed, but her attitude has not yet gotten there and it’s too little too late anyway.

The immunity challenge is divided into separate responsibilities. The first leg is the swim, then a run across a floating bridge, then paddling, a sprint through the jungle, and lastly to dig for the buried treasure. Sean and Colleen take the first leg to swim out and grab the bottle underwater. Sean gets off to a strong early lead for Tagi. Greg and Kelly run across the bridge, joining Joel and Sue in their respective boats to paddle. It’s still Tagi’s race to lose. Dirk and Gervase run through the jungle, with Gervase seeming to take his time with it. Richard and Rudy dig for their team, while Jenna and Gretchen do their digging. Dirk is obviously the first to return from the jungle, and Richard and Rudy pull up their treasure chest. They built a lead on the swimming leg, which Pagong was unable to erase, and Tagi wins immunity.

Ramona’s the clear choice when they go to tribal council, but Colleen is worried that her challenge performance may be a problem.

Votes
Ramona
Jenna
Colleen
Colleen
Ramona
Ramona
Ramona

With 4 votes, Ramona has been voted off the island. As for the left field Jenna vote, that came from Greg, trying to protect his girlfriend Colleen.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of Survivor: Borneo episode 5.

The Bachelorette 5 Episode 2

Jillian Harris returned to get her pick of 25 30 men, of which she eliminated 10 in a matter of hours in The Bachelorette 5 Episode 1.

Reid was expecting to be in a mansion. Instead, he’s pretty much at camp. For those who get roses, they will be able to move out of the guest house and up to the mansion with Jillian.

Michael, Brian, Brad, Sasha, Tanner P, Wes, Ed, and Mathue will be going on the first group date for a pool party at her place. Her first bit of alone time is with Michael. She runs downstairs to grab the rose, and they assume he’s getting it. In reality, she’s wandering off and getting in a car. Chris comes by to tell them what’s up. Their task is to find her. The guys will team up to go look for her. One member of the winning team will get dinner with Jillian that night.

Wes and Brad hate each other already. Tanner and Michael are proving excessively loud. First, they must find car keys locked inside of a box. Frustrated with that task, they just break open the box. By looking at the map, which it takes some of them more time than others to figure out they need to do, they find out they’re going to Hollywood. They will first do a quick change and get into tuxes. Then they find notes in their pockets telling them to lay it all on the line. There’s an additional clue in the kitchen that leads them to a jewelry store. It’s not entirely clear who’s on what team or who’s in the lead because these guys pretty much all look the same to me for now, and the producers have apparently never watched an episode of The Amazing Race. From there, they have to put a spring in their step, heading to Spring St. Brad and Wes, who work the least like a team, manage to get there first in spite of each other. Now Jillian has to make a choice. She would like to have dinner with Wes, the guy who sang to her last week. Brad’s kicking himself for helping Wes get dinner with Jillian.

Wes tells her he’s just had a few girls and typically remains in relationships for a while. She’s not sure how much she buys this, especially since he’s out on the road so much. The guys who remain behind will now be able to start watching their date on TV, which includes the first kiss. Unsurprisingly, Wes gets the first rose. The other guys don’t get what she sees in him, though. Jillian says that she’s afraid that she falls for the semi-bad boys, and Wes probably falls into that category.

The individual date is for Jake. He packs his bag because if he doesn’t get a rose, he’s gone. Jillian wants to find out if he’s too conservative for her. First, they’re going to ditch his dress clothes, in favor of something more suitable for a barn dance. Jillian is having fun dressing and undressing and undressing him some more. They arrive at the bar, which they have all to themselves. She wants to do the Coyote Ugly bar dancing thing, with hopes that he can’t see up her dress. She’s surprised that he knows how to two step way better than she does. Jillian says that she could walk away from her life and start over because she knows Jake could take care of her. Would she get married out of this? Of course. Without waiting for her to finish her sentence, Jake takes this opportunity to kiss her. To end the night, they get a performance by Martina McBride. After the first dance, Jake receives the next rose.

The second group date is Jesse, Mark, David, Mike, Simon, Kiptyn, and Juan. That leaves Julien, Tanner F, Reid, and Robby out in the cold without dates for the week. Jillian says that she’s planned this date for the guys. The date card says they need to be ready to play ball, and since they all played sports in college, this competitiveness should be up their alley. Simon’s a soccer coach, though, so he has no concept of how to play basketball. The boys seem least worried about Juan, who they view as too intellectual. Not that it matters anyway because she’s going to match them up against the Harlem Globetrotters so they can lose humiliatingly. When the game’s over, the Globetrotters have voted for David. Knowing he’s been too quiet, Mike strips into his speedo to get Jillian’s attention, which she says melts her heart.

From the beach, they go to a hotel. David has decided he hates Juan’s guts and wants to tie him to a tree. Kiptyn says he’s never had his heart broken because he’s a heartbreaker, rather than the breakee. At this point, it looks like Jillian’s pretty much just kissing everybody. The final rose for the night goes to Mike because he jumped in the ocean with his speedo. Seems a little pointless.

Tanner P is still obsessed with feet. He’s still creepy, too. She thought it was nice when he did it the first night, but now it’s becoming an obsession. When Jillian asks who has the ugliest feet in the house, he responds Sasha. Yeah, he’s been checking out the guys’ feet, too.

Jesse says that he chose to go on The Bachelorette instead of going to Italy and learning the old school Italian wine business because Jillian was chosen.

Robby didn’t get a date and really hasn’t talked to Jillian much at all. So when he gets the chance to try to get to know her some, Wes, who already has a rose and is living with Jillian, comes to break them up. That’s not sitting well with the other guys, who don’t like him very much anyway.

Chris has a little surprise for the guys as a ballot box is brought out. They will each vote for the one man they want sent home. Is this guy actually going home, or is this just a way of causing animosity? Because Mike, Jake, and Wes have already received roses, they are excluded from the vote, which is lucky for Wes because he definitely had some votes coming his way. This enables him to continue being a jerk to the other guys while they’re voting.

While waiting for the results of the vote, Brian does a strip tease, and he doesn’t stop. If Mike gets a rose for being in his speedo, perhaps Brian will get a rose for getting butt naked.

The man receiving the third most votes was Julien, who we’ve seen for about two minutes total at most. With the second most votes is Dave. And in last place was Juan. Dave considers this good news, apparently with the fact that he received the second most votes being lost on him. Jillian will be able to save Juan if she wants by giving him a rose. She vetoes the decision and gives him a rose.

Roses
Wes (group date)
Jake (individual date)
Mike (group date)
Juan (result of the guys’ vote)
Jesse
David
Ed
Sasha
Mark
Michael
Tanner P
Kiptyn
Reid
Robby
Tanner F
Brad

The four guys who are eliminated are Julien (who never got a date), Brian, Mathue, and Simon. Brian thinks he’s probably going home because he stripped it off. Simon thinks he probably should have made more of an effort to get to know Jillian. Mathue calls this one of his hardest rejections (already?), but he realizes he may have been too reserved.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of The Bachelorette 5 episode 3, which airs Monday at 8/7c on ABC.

Survivor: Borneo Episode 3

BB drove his tribe crazy for 6 days by bossing them around and telling them they didn’t do enough, leading to his demise in Survivor: Borneo Episode 2.

Over on Tagi, they’re still trying to get some fish. They’ve still got empty traps. When the girls go on a fish run, they complain about Rudy, who’s not contributing but is eating more than his share of food. Despite her complaints about Rudy, Sue plans to vote Stacey out, a point not lost on Stacey.

On their tapioca run, Greg, Gretchen, and Colleen stumble upon a mud volcano. Then they bring the rest of the tribe back to have a bonding experience.

Dirk is not afraid to share his preaching. That’s an easy way to alienate people. Sue’s had enough already.

Stacey thinks that Dirk has a little crush on Kelly, but that he doesn’t have a chance in hell, as if Kelly’s out of his league or something. All that aside, he’s heard she has a serious boyfriend, so he doesn’t plan on pursuing her. This leads to talk of how Dirk’s waiting until marriage, and how he doesn’t much care for Richard Hatch since he’s gay. He doesn’t like how Richard talks about his sexuality all the time, as if preaching to people all the time is any more socially acceptable.

When they get treemail, Hatch is thrilled to find out it’s an underwater challenge.

The reward challenge places a big emphasis on the tribe. They must swim under, grab a chest, and bring it back to the beach. Reward is fishing gear. They can’t dive under to get their chest until all members get out to the raft. Tagi gets off to an early lead. Pagong waits for Gervase to finally arrive, which he knew would happen because he’ll drag on any swimming challenge. Hatch and Dr. Sean take control on Tagi, and it’s not even close. For their reward, Tagi receives a fishing spear, mask, and snorkel.

Richard Hatch is the king now. He gets back and will be going fishing. Sean thinks he’s not going to catch anything, so he and Dirk go out with the superpole and a raft. They won’t have to waste their time on that much longer. Hatch returns with a ray. Sean is unimpressed. He gets another ray. Sean’s still unimpressed. Then he returns with a third. Okay, maybe they’ll eat them now.

Pagong’s worried that Tagi will catch fish now that they’ve got the gear, but they’re turning their attention back to rats. Greg has made a rat trap to catch them. Tastes almost like chicken. Ramona says they don’t eat the rats in the ghetto, but she’s willing to try now. They’re surprised by how good they taste.

The tribes will build a stretcher before they go to immunity. They have to carry their smallest member, but that’s the extent of what they know. Tagi has selected Kelly, while Pagong will go with Colleen. Not only does Pagong have a really light member, but they’ve got a good looking stretcher, one that they can rotate upside down without her falling off.

The two lightest people have been placed in the jungle. There’s been a plane wreck. They have to go rescue them from a tree and take them back to the beach, then to the first aid tent. Pagong takes the lead and is the first to rescue their member. They are also first to the beach. And they arrive at the first aid tent first. From the beginning of the challenge, Tagi was never even in this, and Pagong wins immunity.

Tagi doesn’t have a lot to think about. It’s either Rudy or Stacey, and most of them have made up their minds already. Hatch wanted to chat about it before leaving for tribal council, but nobody wanted to talk.

Tribal council is a brief one, as they get caught in the middle of the worst storm they’ve seen yet.

Votes
Stacey
Rudy
Stacey
Rudy
Stacey
Stacey

With 4 votes, Stacey has been eliminated. She knows Sue Hawk didn’t keep her word, but it doesn’t matter since Stacey’s game ends here.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of Survivor: Borneo episode 4.

Survivor: Borneo Episode 2

After falling and costing her team the immunity challenge in Survivor: Borneo Episode 1, Sonja was the first person voted out of the game.

Stacey’s already talking about eating a rat. It’s day 4. There’s nothing in the fish traps, so those rats are looking better and better.

Stacey believes that Rudy voted for her, which she told Richard, the guy who actually voted for her.

BB continues to take control of Pagong, which they’re starting to appreciate to a point, but they’re still tired of him. He only notices people who work, which means he likes Gretchen, Greg, and Jenna.

The rest of the tribe knows Richard is gay. He hopes Rudy doesn’t because he can’t imagine he would take too kindly to it. Rudy has found out, although he doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s still a bigot, but he likes Richard nonetheless.

Ramona says that she’s finicky. They give her some papaya, but she knows she won’t be able to keep it down, so she doesn’t eat it. She’ll compensate by drinking more water. At some point, water’s not going to be enough. BB’s upset with her because she’s not working. He says he’s not trying to win a personality constest. That’s good.

Colleen and Greg are hanging out a lot. They say they’re just friends.

Gretchen and BB started arguing when they first got there about where the shelter should be. He got his way, and now they see that they’re close to being washed away. He agrees that maybe she was right, but he refuses to move it as high as she wants it to go.

Sean’s built himself a fishing pole, but he hasn’t caught anything with it. Sue tells him this is a stupid idea.

Pagong is ready to make some food. First thing BB does when he gets back, though, is to wash his clothes in their fresh food container. The sun’s going down, so they don’t have time to go get more water. This leads to a major blow out that’s been building up. BB believes he can do as he wants because he’s building the shelter. He hasn’t learned his lesson from this argument and will continue to do as he pleases.

BB wants to throw the immunity challenge. He’s not going to “quit” but rather is going to lose on purpose so he gets sent home. Sounds like quitting to me. Everybody else wants to win, but it’s obvious who they’ll vote out given the chance.

The immunity challenge is a gross eating challenge. The first person to refuse to eat something loses immunity for their tribe. They will be eating beetle larvae. After much freaking out from Gervase, he manages to eat it. Everybody else seems okay with those bugs. The tiebreaker round is to choose whoever from the other team they want. Pagong picks Stacey. Tagi picks Gervase. First person to finish two beetle larvae wins immunity. Stacey finishes first, and Tagi wins immunity.

That leaves Pagong with two choices: sick Ramona or bossy BB who wants to go home anyway. BB would also like to get rid of Joel, perhaps their strongest team member.

Votes
BB
Ramona
BB
Ramona
BB
BB
BB

With 5 votes, BB has been voted off the island. The tribe would have been better off to have lost Ramona, but BB isolated himself from the rest of the tribe, leading him to want to quit.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of Survivor: Borneo episode 3.

Survivor: Borneo Episode 1

With summer upon us, the TV schedule’s pretty bare as usual, without much showing up for at least another month when America’s Got Talent 4 and Big Brother 11 help to fill out the schedule. With that in mind, I decided to dip into the archives and take a look back at Survivor: Borneo, the season that began it all. I was apparently one of the only people in the country who didn’t see Survivor: Borneo or Survivor: Australia when the series premiered 9 years ago. At the time, I was watching The WB… until I moved to a place that didn’t have that, so I stumbled upon Survivor: Africa and have been hooked ever since (the handful of seasons from a few years ago notwithstanding). Years later, I ended up catching about 80% of the first two seasons when OLN (now Versus) bought the rights.

The original Survivor cast of 16 survivors consisted of:

B.B. Andersen
Colleen Haskell
Dirk Been
Gervase Peterson
Greg Buis
Gretchen Cordy
Jenna Lewis
Joel Klug
Kelly Wiglesworth
Ramona Gray
Richard Hatch
Rudy Boesch
Sean Kenniff
Sonja Christopher
Stacey Stillman
Sue Hawk

The unique thing for the first set of castaways is that they had no idea what to expect, so it was a new experience unlike anything they can throw at them today (regardless of how many lame twists they come up with). That said, I for one would like to see them go back to basics like this at some point again and stop experimenting. No twists. Just Survivor.

The contestants are given two minutes to salvage whatever they can off the boat. Then they head to shore.

Tagi: Sean, Kelly, Rudy, Sonja, Richard, Susan, Dirk, Stacey
Pagong: Gervase, Colleen, BB, Ramona, Gretchen, Greg, Jenna, Joel

Rudy’s making enemies from the beginning on the boat ride over. He doesn’t like how the others are transporting the boxes.

Ramona is already getting sick on the boat ride over. She doesn’t like the motion of the ocean or the outdoors.

With Richard Hatch already looking down on them from his perch in the tree, Tagi is looking to build a shelter and a latrine first. They don’t seem overly concerned about fire.

Dirk is annoyed by Richard, who he says is trying to bring the team together and has some good skills. People like that are annoying to Dirk. Richard wants to get all these people on the same page so that they’re not just running around like chickens with no heads.

Over on Pagong, they’ve found a water map, so they send BB and Ramona to go get it and hopefully not get lost. They’ll be taking their water back to camp, but they need to get a fire going before they can drink it.

That night when everybody goes to sleep, the rats see it as a chance to play around in their camp.

Rudy’s tired of all the young kids. He’d rather have them listening to just one person, him if needbe, because that way they’d be a lot better off.

Sonja is already injured. Her leg has a gash in it. Dr. Sean patches her up.

Tagi has three or four fish traps. With a rat in each, they’ve got some bait.

Pagong hasn’t slept at all. The rats crawled on/around them all night long. BB believes he’s the leader of building the new shelter. Nobody else particularly wants to help him out, and he’s not giving them much reason to be around him either. Gretchen wants to help him, though, and doesn’t want him to spend all day in the sun. He refuses to listen to her when she says he’ll be worn out and burned.

Because BB has some bifocals with him, he and Gretchen manage to get a fire going. Tagi, however, is doing it the old fashioned way. Where there’s smoke, there’s no fire.

The very first immunity/reward challenge is to get a raft back to the beach and light all the torches. Each tribe member must have one hand on the raft at all times, and they must light every torch. Reward is 50 waterproof matches. Tagi gets off to an early lead. Pagong catches up and has a slight lead when they reach the beach, which they extend as the other tribe drops their raft. Pagong wins immunity, also denying Tago from fire for a little longer.

Dirk disappears on his own after the challenge. He’s off to read his bible.

Rudy has decided he likes Richard. He’s fat, but he’s good. Rich in turn likes Rudy and isn’t bothered by his directness, which others are finding rude and arrogant.

Hatch has narrowed it down to 4 possible nominees, of which he is one. Sonja feels responsible for her team’s loss. It was her falling in the challenge that cost them any chance they may have had otherwise.

Stacey and Kelly are already bonding. They don’t like Rudy, so they go to Sue and ask her to vote him off with them. She agrees, but she lies.

The good news when they arrive at tribal council is that they will get fire.

Votes
Sonja
Sonja
Stacey
Sonja
Rudy
Rudy
Rudy
Sonja

With 4 votes, Sonja has been voted off the island. The odd vote out was Richard Hatch’s. He voted for Stacey, though he didn’t know why.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of Survivor: Borneo episode 2.

The Apprentice UK Series 5 Episode 9

Mona was fired due to lack of creativity in The Apprentice UK Series 5 Episode 8, despite Debra’s mistakes.

Sir Alan drags the teams to a maternity ward. He has arranged a stand at the baby show at Earls Court. Prior to that, they will interview suppliers of baby equipment, from which they will choose two to sell.

Ben and Yasmina go to Empire. Howard goes to Ignite.

Sir Alan appoints the mom and dad as project managers. Lorraine is the leader of Ignite. James is the leader of Empire.

Lorraine went to the baby show a few years ago. She wants to get one high end niche product and one impulse purchase.

The teams are given six hours to review the products on day one.

James and Yasmina go to see a home birth pool, which has been sold at the baby show before. They like the product and the fact that it has had previous success.

The other half of the team, Debra and Ben, goes to see a protective head cap for toddlers. They don’t like the product.

Lorraine goes to see a buggy that folds up easily and can be held in one hand. She loves it. After expressing how much she loves it and would buy one herself, it’s then that she decides to haggle over the price. He agrees to knock off £10.

The rest of her team, Kate and Howard, goes to see high heeled shoes for tiny tots. Seriously? They hate them.

Debra and Ben see some thoroughbred toys for high end buyers. Impressive product, but steeply priced at over £1000. That said, if they sell just one, that’s better than they could do with anything else.

Lorraine likes the birth pool and the stroller. They choose the buggy, since the market for home births is only about 2%. Howard and Kate choose the thud guard, which they know is all about guilting parents into buying.

Ben and Debra are betting on the horse, but they would not choose any of the other products. If her life depended on it, Debra would still not choose anything else. When James forces her to pick, she chooses the thud guard. James and Yasmina want the birth pool, with a second choice of a pushchair. Debra says the pushchair sounds great.

Having picked the buggy, which is a nice product, Lorraine now needs to figure out how the heck to use it.

Both teams know that the rocking horse is critical. One sale, and it’s over. No sales, and it’s over.

Lorraine’s team has discovered that they’re not the only ones selling the pushchairs. She knows that the other seller can change their price, whereas she can’t. Howard knows that, if they lose, they’ve got an excuse. Their other issue with this pushchair is that Lorraine still hasn’t figured out how to correctly fold and unfold it.

Debra and James have decided to take the price tag off their £1700+ horse.

Their birthing pool, discounted to £76, is attracting buyers.

On the other team, while some of the kids aren’t overly crazy about the toddler hat, it’s cheaply priced at £16, so there is a market for it.

As for the buggy, they’ve finally figured it out and are starting to sell. There’s another problem, though. The other buggy seller has it priced £35 cheaper.

Without price tags, the rocking horses are starting to attract attention. Not the right attention because the price is still scaring people. As the day goes by, an exhibitor is looking to buy the horse, but he wants to haggle. They are unable to move on the price and give him £200 off, so they lose the sale. The day ends with that.

Ben says that James hasn’t improved much since last time.

To be fair, Ben may already be trying to cover his own butt, knowing the horse didn’t sell. He says that James and Yasmina were keen on the rocking horse over the phone, so it wasn’t just him and Debra to blame. James felt that the buggy was too expensive relative to others on the market, so that’s why he went with the other choice of the birth pool.

Lorraine’s team supports her. Kate says that she’s improved. They quite liked the head gear as a secondary product, which Ben hated. Lorraine acknowledges that she didn’t check to see whether anyone else was selling it (and cheaper).

Empire sold £722. Ignite sold £1660.89, an obvious landslide because no horses sold. Their reward will be to meet a famous cartoonist and get their caricatures drawn.

Debra wants James fired because he didn’t go with the buggy. Ben will push that card as well, since they don’t have another one to play and need to divert attention away from the rocking horse. Based on the final sales numbers, it would be hard to argue that the buggy was that much different a choice than the birth pool, but they’ll try.

James calls the horse a distraction. They should have focused more on the birth pool. Debra says that they would have won with the buggy. Except the other team sold the buggy, too, and they also had helmet sales to go along with it. Yasmina brings up that Debra repeatedly refused to offer another product as an option.

Ben and Debra claim they were unable to get any movement on the price from the rocking horse vendor. Sir Alan’s response: he checked up on this, and if they pushed him, he would have reduced by the price by something like 10%. That would have been enough to get that deal done at the end of the day.

Obviously, Ben and Debra will be returning. If James could, he would take Debra and Debra. This is the fourth time all of them have returned to the bottom three.

Sir Alan thinks Ben’s too full of himself. Margaret has a lot of sympathy for Ben if he had to spend a whole day with Debra.

Why shouldn’t Ben be fired? The response leads to a lot of babbling until Sir Alan gets tired of hearing it.

James says that he could get along with people, whereas if Debra were hired, half the people would be on strike the first day.

So does anyone have the guts to take responsibility for the horse? Ben says that they share responsibility. Debra lies and pretends she said the head gear was a lower risk option that was good.

Ben’s light at the end of the tunnel has gone out, so he has been fired. As for Debra, she has survived yet another week in which she should have been fired.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of The Apprentice UK Series 5 Episode 10.

So You Think You Can Dance Season 5 Episode 1

So You Think You Can Dance is back again, and tonight kicks off the auditions that will take place in New York, Miami, LA, Denver, Memphis, and Seattle. The first stop will be New York City.

Maksim Kapitannikov is dancing with Fayina from season 3. Nigel liked that there wasn’t anything false about the routine. Mary found it hard to not watch Fayina, but Maksim’s good on his own. He moves on to the choreography.

Nobuya Nagahama believes he’s the Japanese hip hop Madonna, or something. Nigel compares him to Hilty and Bosch, which is apparently a good thing, but he fears that he won’t be able to do anything other than locking. Nobuya responds that he doesn’t like to do any other kind of dancing. Wrong show, then, dude. He’ll be doing the choreography.

Lauren Gottlieb from season three is doing the choreography for those who have advanced to that round.

Maksim advances to Vegas. Nobuya also advances.

Arielle Taylor went to Vegas in season 3 when she was still in high school. Nigel thinks she’s great and hopes she’s learned to not contain herself and instead use the whole stage. She’s got a golden ticket.

Thomas Martin will be dancing bolero with his partner. When he was younger, he was the six-time national men’s baton twirling champion, which he says fully convinced it’s true. Mary calls it basic beginning bronze level dancing. She’s being kind.

Mina Estrina and Igor Zabrodin do Latin ballroom dancing. They will do a piece of their chacha with a secret trick at the end, in which he spins her around in circles for an impressive amount of time. Nigel thinks they make a great couple and look fabulous. Nice style, good feet, good arms and hands. Mary screams. How will they do without each other as partners? They will stick around for the choreography.

Kellen Stancil is dancing with an umbrella. It’s bad luck to have one of those things open indoors, but it works for Kellen, who’s got a good story to go along with the dance. The umbrella represents his aunt, who he recently lost. He gets a ticket to Vegas.

Chimezie Nwosu, who probably doesn’t want people to call him Chikezie, is a hip hop dancer. The choreography is a lot of fun. He will be back for the choreography.

Igor goes to Vegas, but Mina won’t be joining him. Chimezie will also go to Vegas.

From New York, they head to the mountains of Denver. Sonya Tayeh joins Nigel and Mary.

Kayla Radomski lives with her grandparents to save money so she can take the expensive dance lessons. Nigel says she brought everything that could be asked of her. Not much he didn’t like. Sonya can’t say enough good things. Kayla is going to Vegas.

Misha Belfer and Mitchel Kibel are same sex ballroom dancing partners. Mitchel, who says he’s straight, whereas Misha is gay, used to have a female dancing partner, but it didn’t work out, so now it’s raining men. The routine looks good until Mitch trips and falls on his partner. Nigel doesn’t know what to say, and he’s a bit of a homophobe. Just dancing alone, though, he thinks they’re both good. Mary thinks the technique needs a lot of work because they switch in and out of lead and not lead. The judges want to see them dancing with girls.

Mitchel has been cut, and Misha has been as well.

Allison Moist is apparently auditioning to play the cowardly lion in Star Wars: The Musical. She’s light years away from where she needs to be.

Elias Holloway is popping with his brother, who will probably be on the show again when he’s old enough. Nigel found it extremely entertaining. Mary calls it about the cutest thing she’s seen, and the camera will love him. He’s going to choreography.

Natalie Reid was cut on the final day of Vegas last year, as her roommate Katee Shean advanced despite admitting to being a quitter. It’s pretty obvious she will be advancing straight back there again. Sonya, who was jumping up and down during the performance, is speechless. Mary knows she will go the distance this time.

Brandon Bryant was also cut on the final day of Vegas, losing out to Gev Manoukian. As with Natalie, he will obviously sail through. Mary’s in tears after the performance.

Elias has been cut because he needs more training, but he will be back next year.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of So You Think You Can Dance Season 5 Episode 2, which airs Wednesday at 8/7c on Fox.