Strictly Come Dancing 10 – Week 2 Results

The most unwelcome return since Dirty Den lurched out of the shadows, growled “ello princess” at Letitia Dean, and then proceeded to hang around like a sprouty fart until Tracey-Ann Oberman repeatedly smacked him round the head with a cast iron doorstop until he buggered off again.

Here’s hoping…

We begin, as usual with a pro dance. 12 of our 14 pros are lined up in

Team Good and

Team Evil formations. Pasha of course defies morality. Or at least he does every night in my dre [JOKE REDACTED]. (In my dreams he has better hair). As Ruth pointed out in the comments, given everyone’s respective specialities and dress, and the way they dance, it’s actually more likely that they’re Team Ballroom and Team Latin. Whatever, I was so distracted by the rampant CLAPPING over everything that I wasn’t really paying much attention to the dancing. They’re getting their Latin jam mixed in with their Ballroom peanut butter to “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps”. Which I’m guessing is in tribute to what the new producers tell Iveta when she keeps on asking if she can have a job next year.

The story is that the evil Latin temptresses of Team Latin tempt the pure ballroom men of Team Ballroom over to the dark side.

Whilst Erin stands at the side and looks pissed off. Too right. Her very employment on this show probably hinges on everyone forgetting Anton dancing Latin as much as possible. Also, she charges rental.

Anyway, the haughty pure-hearted Ballroom/Good ladies try to persuade their men that ballroom dancing is the one true path to (boring) righteousness whilst the

skanky hos of Team Evil snap their fingers, mouth “WHATEVAH!”, and…I dunno, rub their boobs or something. At this point they run and rub their skank juices all over the Ballroom men, as they vainly try to resist

wetting themselves laughing.

Everyone then hurls themselves into one big cross-genre orgy, apart from Erin who

stands at the side and looks pissed off. Once everyone has thoroughly soiled their souls to a Latin beat, it is revealed who the mastermind behind this filthy plot against decency, standards, and above all Erin was. That’s right, it was

Artem’s Crotch. I’ll be honest, I never trusted it.

THE END! (Flavia trying to act like Jollity Jill : Queen Of The Girl Scouts <3) (Especially as she was skanking around with James at the back the whole time, the TURNCOAT!)

Out minds thoroughly messed with, it’s time for Claudia and Tess to emerge and dance like

Amish teens on Rumspringa, as usual.

Dress like them as well. “HI, THIS IS MY BEST FRIEND CLAUDIA! WE LOVE JESUS, RIDING HORSES, AND COOKING GINGERBREAD CRUCIFIXES! WE COME TO YOU TO FIND HUSBANDS! SHOW US YOUR SECULAR WORLD!”. Anyway, Tess introduces Claudia back, and it’s quite clear that neither of them are quite clear why she’s there, but she’s still contracted through to Series 12, so let’s just go with it and see what happens right? Claudia for her part promises us more dancing, more drama, and the bloody dance-off. Woot. She and Tess then talk about who the pressure is really on this evening – not our celebrities, oh no.

These doofuses. I’m guessing Alesha came and got her Polo Mints back in the interval.

Claudia turns to Len and says to him that all of the couples have done one ballroom and one latin, so it’s time to start eliminating them, as we now know pretty much 100% of what they’re capable of, and the rest of the series is just marking time until…Denise wins? I dunno, I’m in a “Denise wins” sort of mood today. She asks Len if he, personally, is delirious. Len replies that he’s glad that the dance-off is back because it “preserves the integrity of the competition”.

Fucking hell, he IS delirious. He then waffles about how this is a dancing competition and all the judges try to be honest (pfffffffffffffft) and the public can choose to be kind if they want, but at the end of the day if Len wants Richard Arnold gone for being a woofy-poofy, then TOUGH. He also says some rubbish about how the dance-off is pure because everything that happened before gets washed away and the couples get to be judged on a clean slate blah blah blah blah blah such lies.

Untruths done, for the moment, Tess tells us that later we’ll all feel like dancing, because the Scissor Sisters will be performing RIGHT HERE

pointing to her very own Val Gina. Barking up the wrong tree Tess. Barking up the wrong tree. Also Len’s Glans will be making its triumphant return.

Well, I don’t know about you, but my soul just died at the implications of those two pictures together, so whilst I go try to resuscitate it with some Mint Matchmkaers and some hugs and some promises that that sort of thing will never happen again, why don’t we all sit through some pointless filler, telling us what happened backstage last night?

Riveting. In summary, Nicky was disappointed at how rubbish he was, Dani was pleased to get a 7, Artem’s Stockholm Syndrome has expanded to cover all of Sweden,

when Victoria says “awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww” she really means it, Michael thinks that his jive went better on the night than it did in rehearsal (I DEMAND TO SEE THE TAPES!), Flavia and Louis high-five like it’s the first time they’ve touched either one another or any other human being, James gets very sweaty when he’s top of the leaderboard, Iveta had a wonderful day and hopes it will never end

(mostly because when it does she’s being shoved into a crate and shipped back to Irkutsk), Kimberley got very emotional after her ballroom meltdown

Nicola Roberts not so much,

Lisa felt like a lady and, finally, Len says that he felt like he was waiting the entire show for a good dance, and then he got TWO!

That sounds far less like an advert than you think Len.

My soul brought back to life again, it’s now got front-row seats for the excitement that will surely come with our very first SAFETY SEX FACES of the series?

Don’t worry – I’m sure they’ll improve. Practice makes perfect after all. At the end of all this, we discover that our first couple in the Bottom Two are :

these two. I don’t know about you, but I am sleeping with a knife under my pillow tonight, just in case she comes for every single one of us who didn’t vote her into having a career. I’M SORRY IVETA! MICHAEL WAS JUST TOO FUNNY! Tess turns to Bruno to ask why it is that the public didn’t vote in their droves for the 74 year old man who couldn’t dance stuck with some woman they’d never heard of before. Is it because the competition is JUST. SO. TOUGH this year? Bruno’s answer?

“Yeah, sure, probably”. But more Italian. Add a “MAMMA MIA!” or somefin.

Up to Claud Nine now, where the lady herself is sat with our safe couples. She tells the person who is the happiest to be safe to put their hands in the air.

Artem looks the MOST convincing doesn’t he? Also she said “hands” Nicky not…the no-no. Put it away. If that’s even possible. Claudia says tells Fern that her very favourite part of the results reveal are the faces of the people as they realise they’ll be back next week. Yeah, me too Claudia. For…maybe slightly different reasons. She’s telling Fern this, because she pulled the most OTT face of the bunch, which she admits, because she wasn’t expecting to hear her name in a positive way from Tess’ mouth. Yeah, normally it’s “GET THE F*** OUT OF MY PARKING SPACE, FERN YOU F***** HAS-BEEN!”. It is also revealed that, in her pantomime dancing around, Fern injured Louis in the face. Either that or

TEAM FARTEM STRIKE AGAIN!

Claudia then asks Denise how she felt to be top of the leaderboard and Denise replies “yeah, great, I thought I could undo all that “RINGER!!!” stuff by deliberating not doing any correct footwork in my waltz, but even despite that I can’t help being better than everyone else.

Oops”. Or something like that. She doesn’t seem very joyous about it at any rate. She then pulls out a print-off from the Bantertron 5000, and says she’s certainly not looking forward to another week training with James ha ha I HATE HIM NOT REALLY IT’S BANTER. We close with Claudia asking Lisa if she felt like Cinderella last night. She says she did, but she was glad to get it over with, so she could go back to being herself again. “Herself” apparently being

this. Eep.

Next week : Strictly Does Hollywood. Because Movie Week was easily the best week of both of the last two series, and they vainly want to try to spread some of that magic to as many couples as possible. It won’t work.

This week: some dumbarse comedy VT, as per usual.

Fun Fact : Colin is to scale.

Next up, it’s time for

LEN’S GLANS! And doesn’t he look pleased about it? Claudia tells us that this is the segment where we will see “the close-ups, the nitty-gritty, and the fine detail”. It will show us the stuff that we don’t get to see on Saturday Night, mostly because the cameramen are too busy focusing on the dancing (…and occasionally the ceiling and bits of floor…) to bother with all the stupid faces the judges are pulling. Let’s start with Len singing.

Amazing. Frankly I’m with

this girl in the audience, who is clearly so over this segment already. This aural smothering was being done to “Tutti Frutti”, so it serves as a catalyst to talk about how amazing Denise is some more. Darcey’s verdict? “Professionals. I mean…they looked like professionals. I mean…Denise looks like a professional.” That sort of flapping awkwardness is why they pay her the big bucks! We also cover James & Denise kissing Craig, and the resultant

nightmare that followed, as Darcey rubbed spit into Craig’s face to get rid of Denise’s lipstick marks. Well that’s going to haunt my nightmares.

Oh and incidentally, we are at the same stage one week into Len’s Glans that it took at least a month to get to last series.

The only footage of a contestant’s dance being “LOOK AT THE POOFY GAY FACES THE POOFY GAY IS MAKING WITH HIS POOFY GAY FACE!!!”. Although if he can boost up this year’s frankly sorry stock of Safety Sex-Faces with that, I’ll be a happy man. You too Erin.

Here’s Bruno reacting to Michael’s jive.

That or his chemical peel is finally kicking in. He tells us that he thinks Michael will be in the Guinness Books Of Worlds Records for “worst footwork in a jive ever”. A category in which Anton and Ian’s partners had previously held the monopoly I feel. We close on footage of Fern’s Viennese Waltz, with Artem telling Fern how to dance through gritted teeth. It’s funny because it’s true. Bruno says it reminded him of the “We Both Reached For The Gun”, although he gets all the words wrong. Hey, maybe he only saw the version where they were ALL SAT IN CHAIRS and instead of singing they just read all the lyrics, wrong, because it was a low level performance where the performers didn’t really have to do anything. You know, that one.

Here are some more Safety Sex Faces :

See? I told you they’d get better. Anyway, this leaves Richard & Erin facing off with Michael & Natalie to see who will be joining Johnny in the dance-off. I would imagine they’ve done things this way because Michael is the only person who conceivably might lose a dance-off to Johnny, and let’s face it, they’d still probably save him “on potential”. Anyway

these two are in the bottom, oh dear. You can just feel the cool tropical breeze fluttering those ridiculous fake eyelashes can’t you?

Tess turns to Darcey to explain this turn of events, like that needs doing. She reminds Darcey, in a rather accusatory fashion, that SHE said that “this was the Richard that SHE wanted to see”. And yet THAT Richard ended up in the Bottom 2. HMMM! HMMMM! WHAT SAY YOU TO THAT DARCEY?

Darcey says she doesn’t know. She thought he improved from last week, but his technique wasn’t great, so maybe the public didn’t vote for him for that reason. Hmm. Yes Darcey. That’s a thing that public has ever done, ever.

Back up to Claud 9 now, with our other safe couples. Claudia says the relief is palpable, and she could tell from the look on Richard’s face that he thought he was going. My favourite part wasn’t his face, but the part where Natalie went for a sad little fist-bump of solidarity and he

totally ignored her. Anyway, Michael says that waiting for his name to be called was the worst thing he’s ever done, and he includes his jive in that. Tess then turns to Victoria, and congratulates her on having the biggest improvement scorewise out of everyone, in that she managed to score 1 Routine, where before she had scored 0 Routine. Claudia asks her if she’s officially sane now, and Victoria replies

“oh, Lord, no”.

Next Claudia asks Jerry how amazing she’s going to be in Hollywood Week, given her bona fide movie credentials. Why she almost got Oscar Nominated for her role as “Token Bit Of Skirt” in Batman. Although obviously if she were Colin Salmon they’d be trying to claim she WAS Batman. Well…I’d watch it. Jerry says she’s very excited to be dancing the quickstep, especially as they’ll be doing it to “Mrs Robinson”. We close with Claudia telling Kristina that she looks like the happiest woman on Earth. Well, yes, she just won a free week’s holiday to Canada, with pretty much no workload, apparently.

Next up :

SCISSOR SISTERS! Really it’s all downhill from when Ana Matronic yells “OOOH SHE IS PISSED TONIGHT!” (talking about Tracy, obviously) and pulls primo Drag Queen faces. They’re performing their new hit single “Let’s Have A Kiki”. And given that the main point of Scissor Sisters is for boring straight women to gush about how they would TOTES DO JAKE SHEARS, EVEN THOUGH HE IS GAY, CAN YOU IMAGINE, I’m not surprised this performance didn’t go down well, given that his squealy hen-night karaoke Leo Sayer throwback voice is nowhere to be heard. Personally my favourite flavour of Scissor Sisters always involves Ana Matronic singing, but then it usually involves Ana Matronic singing something…better?

Still, there’s a dance routine.

It’s mostly that. They also have their own dancers, which is apparently a grievous Strictly Sin in some eyes. But really, who wants to see Erin Boag and Natalie Lowe doing the poodle, z-snapping, bellowing “WORK!” and calling people “Hunty”? Oh, wait, I totally do.

Oh well.

…speaking of “hunty”.

Anyway, next up is the Dreaded Dance-Off, and for those unfamiliar with Monkseal’s Rules For Recapping The Dance-Off…I don’t. Because it’s refried bits of the show that nobody wanted to watch the first time round. However, I will make an exception if something interesting happens. Here are the only interesting things to happen in three series of the Dance-Off :

1. Letitia Dean takes the opportunity of knowing she’s buggered because she’s against Alesha, to bring her full tits-n-teeth A Game to her Viennese Waltz to “The Impossible Dream”, making it an actual triumph and her best ever dance.
2. All of Erin’s hair falls out.
3. Ali hobbles around with her shoes off, in constant physical pain, barely doing the dance, but if the judges save Zoe again they’ll have to pay to have her put on Suicide Watch, and that means fewer nibbles, so SOD THAT.

Those are all the interesting things that happened in the Dance-Off, ever. This one is

a boring one. BYE JOHNNY. Craig saves Richard based on the content of Erin’s choreography, as do both Bruno and Darcey (admittedly with an added sidebar of “Richard showed me more confidence” in the case of the latter) meaning the whole thing is a load of old tut really isn’t it? Already? I thought we were supposed to be saving people based on their merit, not on their pro’s choreographing? Also a-lol at that half-arsed autogaypilot fever dream of Erin’s winning any choreographic face-off. Len says he would have saved Richard as well, just for completeness’ sake.

And so it is time for us to lose our oldest ever contestant in Week One, and also Zoe Ball’s dad. He tells Tess that his performance in the dance-off was the worst he’s ever done the dance. On It Takes Two it will subsequently be revealed that this was because he accidentally winked at Craig instead of Darcey during the kicks section and he almost broke down laughing as a result. We’ve all been there.

To close, Johnny says that he thinks he’s done well for his age, and then gives Iveta a hug. Iveta for her part says nothing, probably because it would only be some foul-mouthed variation on

“FIRST BOOT? AGAIN? SCREW YOU ALL! I HATE YOU! I GO GET JOB ON ITV *SPIT*”