A star is born!

We did it! We reached the final and only *check’s notes* just short of half the cast had to drop out at some point!

Given the general trend of the series I think they deserve something of a round of applause just for successfully getting 3 people to the final, and their blind confidence to commission a another series in 2022 when all signs pointed towards cancellation.
Due to the fact it’s the final there isn’t a Judges’ Challenge and each couple will be performing 2 routines: A showcase routine which has an extended runtime and will hopefully show the few techniques they’ve managed to pick up during this aggressively fast-forwarded series (or just lie down on a lilo, whatever suits you) and then a second routine which is just a re-skate of their favourite routines>
Only two of them will be unlucky enough to skate the Bolero – it’s been 37 years LET. IT. GO.

Faye Brookes and Matt Evers
Teenage Dream – Katy Perry

It is such a weird choice to me that you would do a pool side, beachy routine set to a Katy Perry song and that song isn’t California Girls. It almost as weird a choice as deciding that your showcase skate in an ice skating competition called Dancing On Ice would contain little to know skating at all. Instead there is far too much inelegant rolling around on the ice for someone who is having to wear a two piece

Call your agent Faye! J’adore the little toddler gymnastics bit at the end there.
They did at least make up for last week’s utter lack of prop work in a week dedicated to props by doing some sort of cult-like soul cleansing ceremony with the beach ball

Who choreographed that and decided that it would be the best way to open a routine? Just a slow massage with a beach ball.
She also slightly rearranged the beach loungers which would have been fairer props to use last week

and my personal favourite, the extended length of time she spent just lying on a lilo

maybe your routine shouldn’t feature so much time spent pretending to be asleep?
I lied, my favourite bit was actually the part where they are skating painfully slowly while Faye was pretending to swim and then Matt just drops her onto the ice like she’s a dead fish

It was very telling that everyone had had to spend the last week trying to learn three routines with significantly less experience than anyone in a previous series had. But really this routine was also quite pants.

Judges’ Scores:
Ashley: 9.5
BARROWMAN!: 9.5
Jayne: 9.5
Christopher: 9.5
Total: 38

Sonny Jay and Angela Egan
A Whole George Formby Mash Up.

Well they were leaning hard into Sonny Jay’s whole cheeky chappy schtick this week with an ode to George Formby and featuring Sonny Jay’s ability to play at least 3 notes on a ukelele. I did love that they obviously don’t have enough varied crowd sound effect so the “audience” response to Sonny Jay’s lightly strumming a ukelele received the same roaring applause as a head banger. God bless the sound person.

Like Faye, Sonny Jay also had a lot of ground to catch up in terms of his prop usage – a big mostly stationary table does not cut it! But the work with the ladder during this routine was very good and well integrated

I’m less enthused by Christopher Dean lauding his “work with the lamppost” which amounted to Sonny Jay just standing next to it while Angela skated around him

Of course doing a jaunty 1940s themed comedy routine does give you more leeway to hide mistakes because Sonny Jay almost decked it a fair few times and was clearly not marked down for it because it came across as character building, but there was at least still a good amount of confident solo skating.

Judges’ Scores:
Ashley: 10.0
BARROWMAN!: 10.0
Jayne: 9.5
Christopher: 10.0
Total: 39.5

Colin Jackson and Klabera Komini
Hot Hot Hot – Arrow

Out of all three finalists I think Colin did the most skating in his routine – and it was mostly very confident! In fact, his feet didn’t leave the ice once, not even to play the pot lid cymbals

WHO’S THE MUSICIAN NOW SONNY JAY?
If you’re looking for me to explain their outfits, I truly cannot. The loose red satin “chef whites” with what looks like child’s pyjama trousers is not Vicky Gill’s finest moment

And God bless the backing dancers who are, FOR NO REASON, competing with worse wigs than the Peter Andre ones that they handed out on The Circle.

I did love that they at least tried to be fun with the staging and have references to the judges, but unfortunately the “T” fell off one of the stands and so it read as “Orvill’s Tortillas”

and now I can’t stop thinking about Orville the Duck owning a Mexican themed restaurant. Which is at least better than the fact I kept misreading this as the Cock Snack Shack

If any of the skaters deserved the full 40 for these showcase routines then it was Colin purely for the amount of skating he did and the fact it was the most energetic and entertaining of the three routines but again, you can really see the tole that the events of this series took on the quality of the skating.

Judges’ Scores:
Ashley: 10.0
BARROWMAN!: 10.0
Jayne: 10.0
Christopher: 10.0
Total: 40

Playing Favourites

Learning from my mistakes in my Strictly finale recap where I tried to fully recap the routines that they re-danced as their favourite dances and ended up repeating myself mercilessly (On this blog? Never!) I’m just going to do a lumped up recap.

I always wonder what goes into choosing a favourite routine because you can’t do one that’s too recent because it’s boring but it can’t be from too early on because it’s a bit basic. Also, you have to go off the current zeitgeist because could you imagine if Faye had done the Love Week routine and she and Matt had come out dressed as Kate Middleton and Prince William again with all the royal drama going on at the moment?

It shouldn’t surprise that in a series that lasted only 8 weeks 2 of the 3 routines were from before the Covid Break with only Sonny Jay opting for his Love Week performance and reviving the cursed Popeye routine because I think it’ll probably the only one that anyone remembers from this series, but it might be more for the techno beat remix of Wellerman than anything else.
The only bit of the routine that I really remember was the weird disjointed Irish jig he does in the middle of it, which is still there but this time he isn’t just about tearing Angela’s arm out of her socket while doing it

and his skating is remarkably improved with him showing a lot of skilled and deft skating while reaching quite high speeds (his arms are still an absolute no from me)

I still think Colin is the most technically skilled skater and had much less room to hide in with his revival of his Bodyguard themed routine that featured more lifts than any male celeb managed this year

Which isn’t hard considering one of them was Matt Richardson and 3 others had to drop out before Week 6 – it was a rough series, huh?
Despite Colin’s skating skill there is still that bit in the middle that’s a bit of a frantic dog’s dinner

I wish they could revise their routines before redoing them but I guarantee they wouldn’t have kept in this bit.

Faye had chosen to do her Black Swan routine which I still wish she had just unleashed and gone Full Natalie Portman for, it’s still lacking that edge but I think that’s just Faye, she seems too lovely to be a villain, which makes it even weirder that the press decided she was this year’s villain and throwing tantrums backstage.
It’s still a very good routine and Faye’s poise and form during lifts is as good as ever

they do unfortunately miss their mark for the final beat because of a slight stumble on Faye’s part and so they end up lying down on the ice just out of the light

not that it ever really mattered because as you can imagine the judges found themselves contractually obligated to give everyone 40, which does mean that Colin Jackson was the only person this year to receive the double 40.

The Gang’s All Back!

As it’s the final all of the previously eliminated couples get to have a little moment to shine on the ice. Or most of them do, Denise van Outen is still too broken to continue and Myleene Klass has developed some sort of injury and definitely didn’t pay her doctor to write a fake sick note, so they’re just sitting on the sidelines looking beautiful

a pity they couldn’t even revive the bit where Denise got pushed around the ice like a fine dining Dalek

a real missed opportunity.

Due to the quick and rapid fall off of contestants there are quite a few of them who can only reference one dance, Rufus Hound is still Off Brand Super Mario

Billi is back doing her Spice Girls routine while getting literally totally eclipsed by a production member

This show going off the rails at the same speed as a The Goes Wrong Show production should have meant it was cancelled this year but ITV are determined to keep it going in 2022. Good luck.

Graham is back and is this timed partnered with Yebin while modelling their Ferroro Roche skiing outfits

It only speaks a little bit of truth to the supposed fall out with Karina considering he never *actually* danced with Yebin on the show.
Also bringing nothing but fashion is Lady Leshurr who if you saw on The Circle you know is partial to a flashy tracksuit

I fully believe she now owns this, and if not GIVE IT TO HER VICKY.

Along the way we also lost quite a few very good skaters, namely Amy Tinkler who came out and honestly put the entire final 3 to shame

I cannot believe the show turned them into such villains, look how utterly happy they are doing their little ho down dance to Steps

WOZ ROBBED of the series.
Joe-Warren could have also been a contender for the final if he hadn’t contracted Covid and weirdly chose to do his Week 1 performance, sans table and without falling over

Rebekah pulls out the headbanger again

I want to know how much money it took to convince her to put that Rachel Green wig back on

Anything less than £10,000 and she got royally ripped off.
They couldn’t quite convince Jason Donovan to put the Priscilla outfit back on, although I imagine it was also because that was the routine that broke him, and so he is back along with Alexandra not not looking like Kristina Rihanoff again

and then lastly but by no means least and completely eclipsing the entire finale is Matt Richardson who takes the most amazing tumble during his attempt to revive his Paso Doble routine

That recovery is the most adorable thing and was by far and away the only thing anyone was talking about the next day.

Bolero to You!

As ever the final skates of the series have to be a remake of the hopelessly dated and uncomfortably cringey routine that is The Bolero but before we get there we have to find out who has managed to dodge that bullet by finishing in third place.

The safe skaters and the last additions of the series to the Monkseal Safety Sex Face Gallery are

this does mean that despite getting a full 80/80 this evening Colin finds himself eliminated and I’d be pretty miffed if I were him because he still had to wear this ugly shirt

It’s only moderately better than having a human-sized doll strapped to your chest, meanwhile Sonny Jay is wearing the most River Island rendition of the outfit you could have ever imagined.

We are all in agreement that The Bolero is incredibly uncomfortable to watch aren’t we? It’s like all the worst parts of the 80s distilled into one ice skating routine. But the opening is the worst part of it, it’s like two mourning swans

and then somehow Sonny Jay and Angela added to the awkwardness by having her kind of slide down his shoulder with all the grace and elegance of a partially dead salmon

I don’t even know who to blame for this.
Faye’s take on the bolero had much more elegance and fluidity to it, and it is *slightly* easier for her because she isn’t having to lift anyone whereas Sonny Jay tries some lifts and pulls them off but they do ruin the flow of the routine because he clearly struggles his way through them

but while I can forgive that, I can’t quite wrap my head around the bit where they patter across the ice like a pair of grebes

Was the Bolero choreography based on the mating displays of waterfowl? Because there is a strong case to say that it was.

Their boleros don’t get marked but I would happily say that Faye won this round and it was easily her most accomplished skate of the series whereas the technicalities and slowness of it really showed up Sonny Jay’s weaknesses that get hidden in his bigger production pieces.

And then that was it! And it’s time to announce that the winner of the most cursed series of Dancing On Ice is…

Sonny Jay and Angela! (not a soul in all the world was shocked)

It’s been an interesting series and I very much apologise that these recaps always went up a little late but I hope you all managed to enjoy them nonetheless.
I will hopefully be recapping it again next year, we hope for smoother journeys and *maybe* a less cluttered reality TV schedule. HAVE MERCY ON ME LOVE PRODUCTIONS.

And of course, because we have a winner:

Top Row: Jason Donovan, Rufus Hound, Amy Tinkler/Denise, Lady Leshurr
Middle Row: Joe-Warren, Rebekah Vardy, Colin Jackson, Billie Shepherd
Bottom Row: Graham Bell, Sonny Jay, Myleene Klass, Faye Brookes
_{(Soz Matt Richardson)}