For the briefest of moments I thought that we were keeping within the Movie Week theme by having a balletic production of The Lighthouse with Amy dressed once again like your manic cottagecore dream girl

playing the role of Willem Defoe and her partner being the newly arrived Robert Pattinson in their slow but inevitable descent into madness and frenzied sexual chaos. Anton would play the seagull because it’s a role that takes up less than a minute of screentime and mostly requires him to lie on the ground. But no, it’s obviously the Obligatory Remembrance Day Waltz-a-thon.

It’s your typical slightly saccharine affair with everyone dancing to We’ll Meet Again by Dame Vera Lynn – it’s lovely and I’m sure it pleased who they were aiming to please. It’s hard not to be slightly resentful about Remembrance Day getting a whole routine and essentially an afterschool special while everyone wears poppy badges and for it not to be considered virtue signalling under the BBC’s new FAIR AND UNBIASED guidelines.

But back to our Movie Week results and our two very generically dressed hosts:

Honestly shocked Tess didn’t go full on literal poppy ballgown. Just in case you were wondering, yes because it is Remembrance Sunday the contestants are wearing poppy badges, and the fact they seemingly just pierced Marge Simpson’s skin is deeply unsettling to me

I realise if they pinned it on her very low dress it would have looked like a nipple pasty but they could have been clever about it and given her a hairclip or something.

The Monkseal Memorial Safety Sex Face Gallery:

Bill really needs to start trying hard with these and now it’s on to our first member of the bottom 2:

I am a little surprised I thought Nicola and Katya had accrued enough support to keep them out of the bottom two for at least a couple more weeks but with so many ties in the leaderboard it’s hard to dig yourself out of that hole. Apparently Clara is just as surprised as I was as she, loudly, exclaims “nooooooo!” because after all she did spend the entire results reveal looking like she was about to dissolve into a puddle of pure anxiety sweat:

Can one of the production team not just tell her beforehand whether she’s safe or not? I’m not sure she or I can manage much more of this.
With Nicola being in the bottom 2 it was pretty obvious that it would be Jason joining her there so the judges mainly just offer her advice of “know that you’re good and go out there knowing you’re going to win!” because Jason was never going to be saved by a paso to the Star Wars theme tune – honestly, whose idea was that?

Up on Claudia’s Covid Safe Carousel Jamie and Karen are still going absolutely bonkers over being safe:

They manage barely a coherent word between them except Jamie is now never going to take his Hercules costume off – a bit like that weird Quibi series where the woman got very attached to her golden arm that was killing her due to “pulmonary gold disease” and her last dying wish was “Please, bury me with my golden arm!”. Quibi, gone and never forgotten. Ranvir has the cha-cha-cha and reacts thusly:

So that’s a leaderboard plummet on the cards – I’m not sure she has the abandon required for an out of hold Latin number.
Couple’s Choice is sadly back with a bang next week with Bill and Oti dancing to Rapper’s Delight and I don’t think my body, soul or mind is ready for a Bill Bailey street dance – and if he isn’t dressed as that Gary Bussey “Hello fellow kids” meme I will be very upset. Claudia also reveals that Max and Dianne are going from the insanity of a Simpsons routine to an American Smooth which seems like it is news to Max

And Claudia suddenly realises she may have unfortunately sprung a bit of a surprise on him

But also Claudia does always look a bit like a surprised Egyptian heiroglyph.

There’s a lovely performance of Ave Maria by the Kanneh-Mason siblings who are outrageously talented. Graziano and Nadiya are this week’s dancers

and they do a very pretty American Smooth and this is the sort of Remembrance Day routine I find much more palatable – it’s subtle, it’s sweet, emotive and combined with the poppy petals dropping from the ceiling it manages a level of poignancy that is far beyond that of just having your dancers dress up in military uniforms to dance a waltz.

And then it’s time to watch Bruno bluff his way through a Movie Week debrief like me talking my way through a seminar on Superhero Films without ever having seen an Avengers movie. I read the wikipedia synopses which is more than I think Bruno did, after all we seem to have interrupted him in the middle of either getting dressed or undressed, I dread to think which

The producer’s notes tell him to be utterly enamoured by the ease of JJ’s foxtrot. Motsi is still insisting she wasn’t laughing *at* Jamie, it was definitely *with* him – sure Jan. And for reasons unbeknownst to me we do not get a replay of Jamie dropping Karen on her head – COME ON GUYS, YOU HAVE ONE JOB. Instead the action replay is devoted to Bill Bailey doing the entire history of dance during the announcement that the phone lines had been opened. Shirley has to justify her low scoring of Maisie and demonstrates that Maisie has the footwork of a dressage pony *CLUNK*

The Monkseal Memorial Safety Sex Face Gallery Continues:

This leaves Caroline and Jason in the bottom two and really was only going to go one way:

Luba watched one whole Star War this week only for you UNGRATEFUL TURDS to land her in the bottom two? The injustice of it all. But can you imagine the outrage of The Theatre Community if their Last and Only Hope was in the bottom two? Riots in the streets of the West End.

The judges’ advice, by which I mean Shirley is the only one given the chance to talk to him, is to just got out there and enjoy himself because they’ve already booked his taxi and the Girl Scouts have booked their training room for a craft exercise next week.

Claudia’s interviews atop her Covid Safe Carousel continue apace with JJ laughing with far too much mirth when Claudia asks him whether he thinks he is finally a dancer or not

He is then made to feel very guilty for abandoning his wife to care for 2 very young children while he goes off and learns to dance in what is essentially at the point a cloistered community.
Maisie reveals she is back in the comfort of Latin next week – I’m willing to be on it being the first rumba – she’s a reliable to choice for it after all. HRVY’s primary school apparently sent him a lovely gift because they’ve been missing him for these last few weeks, we don’t ever find out what it was but I can only assume it was a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
And then it’s Clara and can we take just a second to really marvel at her bedazzled headwound:

I know it’s an almost exact replica of Christina Aguilera’s from the Lady Marmalade music video (weird choice during Movie Week but ok) – but really the red gems on her temple were maybe unnecessary? I hope she gets a party Latin next week – she seems happiest during them but I’d be interested to see her do just a straight up elegant waltz without the gratuitous trappings of a theme.

Both of the bottom two performances don’t really improve very much on their first outings – Nicola manages slightly more precision and bounce but still looks tentative and Jason is still bogged down by the inappropriate music but does at least manage to go a few feet further during his knee slide – and he knows he’s going so he’s just having the time of his life and stomping his feet so hard you can actually hear it over the music.

Unsurprisingly it’s a landslide victory for Nicola and Katya with Jason going out like the Best American Dork he is by serving us up some real 90s teen movie closing credits prom dance:

The poignancy is slightly marred by cursed Homer and Marge Simpson in the background but you get my drift. I’ll miss Jason – he was clearly having so much fun and brought a real lightness to show – long live My Himbo King.