For a good time call…

This recap is still looking for its tooth.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you spliced the DNA of CATS (2019) and Austin Powers?

your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
Jason Gilkison would like to call this Fosse, I think most of us would in fact call it Fossish because as far as I’m concerned the Venn Diagram of the Backstreet Boys and Fosse should just be a proclivity for chairs

AND YET

the routine mostly just had the vague trappings of Cabaret, by which I mean there was a threatening sexuality to every movement, some of it involving chairs (this time not played by Gorka)

and hell of a lot of bobbed wigs, which they were having to scrape the bottom of the barrel for because Jowita was running around at the back looking like the Girl from Lazytown was in an episode of Riverdale

and Luba, WHO ALREADY HAS A BLONDE BOB, was put in the wiggiest blonde bob you’ll ever see

how have they managed to make an actual Russian woman look so much like someone pretending to be a Russian woman in order to steal the fingerprints of an oligarch in a heist movie?
She was of course one of the leads in this tale of Carlos The Love Rat and his quest to… be pegged by every girl in town?

somewhere there’s a bathroom stall in Elstree with the number for Carlos’s burner phone scrawled on the door

GILKISON! You can’t rim on Strictly! That’s not even a momentary out of context screenshot (on this blog? Never!) it went on for so long Karen had to fully disassociate

Not that I’m kink shaming, I’m just judging vampishly

Ah, the three core types of vampire: Anne Rice Vampires, YA Angst vampires and 17th Century Softcore Porn Vampires.
My favourite part of this? The fact Nadiya posted a picture of her dressed like the cover of a romance novel about vampire courtesans in Venice to Instagram with the most Miss Congeniality caption because it would have been gauche to just do it because she was feeling herself (get that engagement girl)

she’s playing the long game for that slot on the 2024 professional roster – this is 4D chess Mushtuk and you’re out there playing boyband checkers

Nadiya has already started researching the heights of every athlete going to the 2024 Olympics – she’ll bribe the Olympic Basketball Federation if it’s the only way she can nab an Olympian, she’s got the Liechtenstein royal family on her side

Time Traveller Kai wasn’t invited because the last time he did European diplomacy it didn’t end so well

At some point I was writing about pegging and then before I knew it, it was a World War and if that isn’t Fosse, I don’t know what it is.

Nothing interesting comes out of the backstage recap except Angela Scanlon seemed to remember she’d left the oven on which might explain the slow collapse of their American Smooth

and the show is doing no favours to Layton by making sure to draw attention to the fact he topped the leaderboard for the third time in only 5 weeks – it’s rude to point and stare at the ringer, guys.

As for the first installment of the Monkseal Safety Sex Face Gallery, an alarming number of people looked on the verge of vomiting which usually people have overcome by Week 5

and if you want to know how it feels to know you have to try and wrangle a set of silk pyjamas with sweaty palms, wonder no further

that’s an internal scream if I ever subconsciously heard one and Motsi had some helpful advice for Zara AND DEFINITELY NOT GRAZIANO

the amount of static that satin must create would stick Zara to the roof if he let her go, they’d never get her down, they’d have to wait until it wears off and she slowly parachutes to the ground in the middle of someone’s Couple’s Choice routine. So while Graziano goes to liberally apply chalk to his hands, upstairs we learn ABSOLUTELY NOTHING because they were holding their Halloween routine cards very close to their chests and Nigel kept talking about lycra support and making THIS gesture

so conversations had to be cut short and kept as vague as possible in case anyone said something the press could read too much into given The Elephant Not In The Room

oh, I’m sure there was LOTS of tea on friday – LEAK THE WHATSAPP GROUP, GIVE IT TO ME

what do we think the group chat photo is? I hope it’s a picture of the last known whereabouts of Vito’s top left lateral incisor

in its absence it would like to pointedly thank all of the contestants and Strictly production staff AND NOBODY ELSE.

This week’s special guest was Bastille who was accompanied by footage from Planet Earth 3 and as a result got well and truly Danyl Johnson’d by this baboon

I did think this would mean we wouldn’t get a pro routine alongside him but the show clearly wanted to prove they could tastefully do this concept and not put anyone in a grass skirt…

so Lauren and Kai got to take to the floor to do a contemporary dance during footage of chimpanzee conservation efforts

and I would like to give a special shoutout to whoever choreographed this move to perfectly coincide with the footage of a deer being subjected to a crocodile’s death roll

sometimes this show is stupidly perfect.

The debrief with the judges is mostly just Craig and Motsi explaining that week 5 is when everything gets SUPER SERIOUS which is why Anton gave Adam and Luba jumping around like they were trying to win five quid in a school disco dance off a 9. The most interesting part is the fact the show still has the Padam, Padam license going

I know they’ve already used it for the Parisian mime spectacular that they had the self-restraint to not wear berets and wave around baguettes during

(we still might want to get Strictly diplomat Nadiya Bychkova to go to France and apologise for that) but it’s BEGGING for a Week 8 Tango treatment. It’s What Vito and Ellie were made for.

The Next lot of safe couples:

as for the bottom two, guess what’s black and white and red all over

Eddie has very quickly stopped calling the judges his “maintenance engineers” so while he and Karen go backstage to prepare to fail their second MOT, we go upstairs to find out absolute guff all because they didn’t want to spoil the absolute hysteria that Angela Rippon is going to be doing a Charleston to the Murder She Wrote theme

that sound you can hear is the wardrobe department trying to workout how best to dress Kai up as a typewriter. And as next week is Halloween, we get a teaser VT about the spooky things happening at Elstree

you get absolutely no bonus points for guessing that the menace in the Spirit Halloween grim reaper costume with more time on their hands than they probably should have all things considered was Neil Jones

Luba is suddenly questioning whether being one of the partnered professionals if actually worth it

she did not sign up to be the Shaggy to Adam’s Scooby Doo, she just wants to wear the pretty dresses and maybe break a man’s soul in the process.

Dance Off time and really this was more of a formality because I don’t think there’s a world where Eddie doesn’t leave in exactly Week 5 because his comedy tour commences this week which is why Karen was marching him around like a stage mother who fully believes her 6 year old daughter was robbed of the Little Miss Alabama crown – getting the comedian that’s mostly using the show to mine clout for their soon to commence tour twice in a row is a tough gig

she’s been here for 12 series now, she’s looking for a dignified exit and balding Mr. Tumnus trousers are not that so I guess she’ll try again next year? I do kind of wish Eddie had stayed – either couple would inevitably get booted on Halloween but I like Eddie’s presence on the show more and he believe could at least deliver a more entertaining character dance for Halloween, whereas Zara has given all she’s ever going to give and they’re certainly trying to do her in with the Halloween Charleston.

It’s goodbye to Eddie and potentially goodbye to Karen who at least has a really good gig on Instagram using her dog to advertise Pedigree dog food

BUY MY TICKETS! (AND MY DOG FOOD!)

And I’ll see you for Spoopy Week, make sure to wear a very low effort costume and cover yourself in cobwebs for proper authenticity

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