“Expect the unexpected,” intoned Jayne solemnly at the start of last night’s Dancing On Ice.
Well, I was expecting it to be good and it wasn’t.
It was Movie Week where we were promised thrills and spills and words like ‘epic’ and ‘blockbuster’ were banded about willy nilly but really it was only the puns that were ‘Fast and Furious.’
For some reason the skating just left me feeling cold. Social media last night was awash with confusion too.
Last week Perri, after his truly great trolley performance, was the toast of the show winning 9.5s all round. This week, after his supposedly spell-binding routine for Movie Week he seemed to be well, toast.
Where the viewers are concerned at least. The judges loved him, obviously.
This is odd because last week I was raging at the judges for not giving him 10s but last night I was raging that they were over-praising him and giving him tens that were not deserved and I wasn’t the only one. It’s like we have the judges in a spin. They keep under and over-marking at the wrong times.
It’s starting to grate.
Someone commented: “I’m really starting to dislike Perri.”
“Sorry, that was a really lacklustre and boring performance,” said another.
“Didn’t deserve 10s!” fumed someone else.
I mean, Perri’s moves looked good but there seemed to be something missing.
I have worked out what the issue is despite never having skated in my life and having no dance experience.
Ice dance is about feeling and Perri might be a good skater and a great mover but he has the emotional depth of a puddle and he fails to move me. In fact, his skating is starting to leave me cold.
As for the dance off, I am not getting embroiled in the whole Libby v Lisa debacle. Personally I would have booted them both off, they both were carried around the ice equally by their partners. Nothing to see there.
It did make me chuckle when Ashley said Libby never goes on about her lack of vision.
Maybe she doesn’t but the producers sure do making Joe put on special goggles so he could skate in her er, skates.
Tune in next week when they make Libby experience how Joe feels - by giving her a lobotomy and pumping her full of helium.
Still, the show wasn’t without its highlights. We were reminded of how some of the professional skaters suffer for their art. Matt Evers had his throat sliced by a flying blade a few years ago performing a dangerous move then suffered even more when he was partnered with H this series. How much torment can one skater take?
Next week it is the semi-final and we are left with Perri, Joe, Ben and Libby and I’ve gone from thinking this was a one horse race to maybe it’s not that clear cut any more. Us Brits love an underdog and Ben is improving week by week.
I really liked Ben’s performance even though he was slightly nervous and tentative like a millennial in a relationship with an older woman which I suppose wasn’t too dissimilar to what Titanic was about.
Ultimately though it is a competition between a blind woman and a professional dancer.
What can we really expect from that?
