SYTYCD: Revealing Character

The longer they stay in the show, the more we see of the dancers as individuals, as people. The physical and emotional demands the show makes on them week after week effectively strips off layer after layer of the masks they hide behind until there’s nothing left between them and the audience.

It’s what we want: raw emotion, passion, vulnerability, nakedness. It’s hot. It’s what keeps us coming back.

We watch them practice and interact and perform, and we decide who we like best. As we see more of them as people, we start to make guesses about what they’re about, like, Gev has poor boundaries around women, and Comfort was probably bullied when she was a kid—by an older brother, maybe? And life will be good to Kherington, but for the wrong reasons.

Of course, there’s a selection process at work behind the scenes, too, in deciding what the audience sees, and what it doesn’t see. For instance, we saw Gev swooning over Courtney, and joking about how hot Chelsie is, complete with footage of him pouncing on her during practice. We saw Comfort pull away from her partners. We saw Kherington complain that the judges hate her.

We watch them in these clips, and we form opinions about them as people. I loved it last week when Mary Murphy said, "Dancing doesn’t build character, it just reveals it," but do the show’s editors help that revelation along by choosing what we see and what we don’t? Do they help the fans decide who they’ll vote for by showing the less-attractive traits of the contestants?

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Two predictions for tonight: Mark’s close call last week will bring a flood of support his way tonight, and Joshua will be dancing without a lot of clothes on (they promised!).

And I’m not the only one with a conspiracy theory. Leeloo Dallas thinks s/he(?) knows what’s on for tonight.

BSYTYCD identifies a groundswell of support for Mark.