This coat had officially been on more episode of Strictly than Thomas Skinner.

Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.

I realise that last week I forgot to post a poll for Stefan’s highs and lows, not sure he *really* deserves it but, go ahead

Icons Week! We all love Icons Week? Were any of us gagging for them to revisit Icons Week? Which is just a regular week but the scoring is wonkier and wardrobe gets to dress Shirley and Anton up as the lesbian couple who run a pottery cafe with a vape menu

I don’t know whose legacy they owe more of an apology to – David Bowie or Craig attempting to look like John Lennon and landing uncomfortably close to Buffalo Bill

Motsi however, got through unscathed and looked incredible as Grace Jones

and as far as the celebrities went, it appears that having a drag queen on the cast has its benefits. La Voix seems to have unionised the celebrities and part of their demands was for triple stacked wigs and Balvinder’s might even be human hair!

but the best case for comparison is the lovely Dolly wig they gave Alex compared to the back end of a retired circus poodle they stuck on Sara Davies

I’m almost tempted to be believe that that was a La Voix hook-up – Alex got a choice between the wig or a breastplate

and La Voix threw in a voicemail from Dolly (she just played that video of Dolly insisting she isn’t dead for Alex) if Alex could convince Shirley to give her a 7 for a Salsa she categorically did not deserve above a 6 for

what a business woman!

Sadly Tess and Claudia weren’t getting in on the Icon dress up, although I suppose Gumby is an icon?

my personal musical icon, Celia Imrie barking in a well like a mid-coital fox, went sadly unrecognised this week

somehow it’s probably easier to choreograph an Argentine Tango to that, than having to shove Caught Up by Usher through a meat grinder in order to somehow make it fit, ultimately giving up and just having Harry and Karen dance two entirely separate, but equally sexy dances

good luck to the choreographers-for-pay who have to not only contend with the word salad of “Peaky Blinders Argentine Tango” next week, but will also have to remember Karen and Carlos will be dancing it with baker boy caps on. Nervously sweating like I’m on the pampas already.

I do like that Karen Carney is going on to the Argentine Tango next week, because it’ll give her a chance to apply the pretty valuable critiques the judges gave her for her rumba, the first “slow dance” she’s had so far

this is the first rumba I’ve felt a little uncomfortable watching all series because I could feel how much Karen was not enjoying it – or her sensual face is exactly the same as her mortified existentialism face

I do think the judges really softballed the scoring of this routine in the end – Shirley doesn’t usually open a critique with complimenting the outfit and then go on to score a 7, such is Icons Week

it was quite a nice outfit though – very Storm in X-Men the Musical: A Production That Sadly Does Not Exist

Karen is clearly a person who only hears critique, I imagine it’s the default setting of sportspeople. So by the time she’d had 4 people giving her tips on arm placement and flowing through transitions, she was under the impression she’d La Voix’d, having completely forgotten the positive things they’d also said about her straight legs, balance and timing

and was overjoyed when a string of four 7s came in

I think a couple of 6s in there would make a score that makes a bit more sense to me. And also saved us from the blockage of 28 totals on the leaderboard

the most insane part of this isn’t somehow George bottoming out on an extremely ill-advised Jive (which endears him to me a little, I’ll be honest) but Harry and Karen not even dancing in the same hemisphere of an Argentine Tango and somehow getting 32

Gosh, I wonder how that happened?

MOTSI, somewhere Len Goodman is spinning in his sweaty pampers. I can only think she saw Craig scoring a 6 and tried to course correct to bring up the average. The whole thing was gratuitously not suitable for being an Argentine Tango and I would *kill* to know what the choreographers thought when they were given that task. Because we know what Karen thought about the judges critiquing it for being too Usher and not enough Ushuaia

Pissy Karen! Welcome back, it’s been *so* long! But really, the two genres are so far removed that this might as well have been a weird Couple’s Choice. However, Vicky had a monopoly on Couple’s Choice dedicated to her icon, The 1968 Olympics Black Power Salute

I honestly think framing Vicky’s entire VT about how she regrets doing lads mags and throwing stilettos with alarming aim even while 8 tequila shots to the wind in an Edinburgh nightclub, with the aesthetics of a Human Rights protest is the most unhinged thing this show has ever done. Especially when you’re lionising Cheryl Surnames-Like-A-Sugababes-Lineup and doing a superb job of glossing over *that* section of her wikipedia page

I wouldn’t mention grazed knees, Vicky.

A salute also tends to look really bad when you do it in red and black military clothing with lots of fire and more red and black graphic lighting

AND MARCHING

at some point someone really should’ve stepped back and realised it looked like a Leni Riefenstahl production and told Kai to either tone down the marching and saluting or… maybe less lighting effects. I know they’re referencing the music video, but importantly, Cheryl doesn’t do the marching while wearing the military digs. My personal favourite far too literal interpretation of the music video however was this move that looks like Vicky and Kai are a pair of predatory hole punches stalking their prey

It was a routine that very much put Vicky out of her comfort zone because the whole thing is out of hold and extremely dependent on synchronicity. And some of it was quite impressive! However, I think this has a similar problem to George and Alexis trying to do 2 person Kpop choreography. It’s the sort of thing a group of 20 inner city kids with a sad story and a golden hearted youth counsellor perform on Britain’s Got Talent to make Alesha Dixon’s brain make printer noises. It doesn’t have the same impact when it’s just Vicky dancing like she’s about to punch your lights out while Kai looks distressingly like he might have to flee to Argentina at any given moment

and there were definitely a fair few moments that Vicky was either ahead or behind – Kai choreographing in these glorified burpees is a cruel and unusual

but I do think there were enough out of time moments to be very noticeable and to certainly not warrant this incredibly unserious score

which almost certainly got a few extra points tacked on the end of it because the judges knew there was a special video message from Cheryl herself (…yay…)

and the fact this came after Ellie got her personal message from Emma Bunton locked in La Voix’s Cameo Bunker sweatshop

we were bracing to see if Jimmy would get a video message from his icon, The Official Strictly Come Dancing Puzzle Book

I might have to buy it for science purposes because it is almost certainly all crosswords, a handful of sudokus terribly engineered into an Anton Du Beke pun and the HR department asking you to work out the results of Amber Davies’s psych-eval because we are almost certainly watching a woman having a mental collapse

absolutely howling at the fact Ariana’s people, by which I mean Literally Cynthia Erivo Being Here 2 Weeks Ago, clearly didn’t answer the messages for a video call from Ariana Grande so they just had to take Amber to the Madame Tussaud’s version that is at least 4 faces behind on the current model

and eventually Amber will complete her Animorphication to Ariana once and for all so that Nikita won’t have to keep dressing up as her to stop Amber from eating her own hair

I for one am shocked that nobody found all of this endearing enough to vote for…

oh they are hot dialling that AMBER! HAS! FRIENDS! VT for next week, even if it does mean that they’re going to send Amber out wearing Ariana Grande’s face like a mask afterwards. You have to humanise the ringerbot before it’s too late. Although I think it’s already too late, this single frame of Amber looking like Johannes getting some polite pushback on Alex starting on a wrong foot when Amber found out she was in the dance off has already hit the tabloids because god forbid a woman show a single emotion other than total humility

and the show has already chosen which ringerbot to humanise with Lewis getting to go hang out at the bowling alley with Bert and Ernie last week

it’s hard to brush off dropping from a tied second place to the bottom 2 as an accident and I wouldn’t be surprised if Amber has a voting bloc in the gutter – she had no pre-series build-up and the show has not been shy about having cast her by trapping her in a woman-sized badger trap in the West End using a Phantom of the Opera playbill as bait

Which does make her a potentially very exciting Bottom Two Goddess because I think the only person on this cast that could actually send her home without it being a mercy killing, is probably Lewis. MAKE THE RINGERS FIGHT IN THE PARKING LOT

Jimmy ultimately stood no chance against Amber and her legs that you could mow the lawn with

I think there is a universe where Jimmy could beat Amber with a different dance and Anton being willing to embrace being a messy queen

however, this American Smooth was a stinker of a routine – a rarity from Lauren. And I’m surprised they’d let it be styled so horrendously when you’re paying through the nose for licensing rights to Purple Rain – remember the X-Factor drama of them whipping it out for Ruth Lorenzo in a WEEK TWO sing-off in which she curb stomped The girlband named Girlband out of existence like a vengeful God? Peak TV. So god knows why Jimmy is having to balance 3/4 of a shih tzu on his head and Lauren is dressed like a Quality Street if it was your overbearing mother-in-law in 1984

some of Vicky Gill’s most evil work. We spent so much time worrying about Alex Kingston being upholstered like she’s a flood damaged mid-century modern armchair on Money for Nothing

and Balvinder having to navigate double denim and the 400 metres of fabric they insist on swamping her in every week

that we forgot to fret about what Lady Prince would look like. Perhaps we should’ve dressed her up as the historically accurate medium-sized motorbike, which is a jumbo-sized motorbike if you’re Prince

sir, you have to be *this high* to ride the bike.

Jimmy hasn’t really had ballroom since Week 1 and while I was hoping some of the Rumba would benefit him in this – something about this foxtrot speed American Smooth just made him look so stiff and immobile. I didn’t even think the lifts were as well executed or impressive beyond “Man strong!”

and certainly not enough to warrant a pair of 8s given how rigid and tentative everything in this dance was

the judges didn’t really sink their teeth into this routine, perhaps it was because it was towards the end of the evening and you want to end the show on a positive high instead of waxing lyrical about footwork to someone who is clearly exhausted and only thinking about the Red Bull in the greenroom mini-fridge

entrusting closing the show solely to La Voix doing a redemptive Salsa dressed as Cher is crazy business. And I think a lack of strong critique didn’t flag Jimmy as being a vote priority in the way Harry, Karen and even George were. And you can vote on Jimmy’s bests and worst below

I don’t think George was in any danger of going home, his voting audience have this on lock. And he was greatly benefited by the tie meaning there were only 5 points total between him in last place and Lewis in first place being carried over to add to the public vote leaderboard. And he’s lucky because this Jive was not the routine for him. I loved the opening of it, I think George did a really phenomenal job of setting a great tone and it felt very, for lack of a better description, “music video”

it’s fun and it’s whimsical! But the rest of it kind of failed to feel like a jive for a distinct lack of jive kicking. And then I began to realise that George stomping around like he’s trying to set a world record on an arcade dance machine *was* the jive kicking

the only person having a worse time was Shirley fighting with the one person persistently booing her

in this situation, I am always Motsi

at least a small part of the issue is Strictly continuing to hamstring jives by making everyone dance them in a pair of adidas trainers – JIVE SHOES HAVE A HEEL AND POINTED TOE FOR A REASON. I also wish they had gone with the music video costumes, I know Harry Styles has worn this exact outfit on stage

but I think Vicky would’ve had more success with the red and blue glitter, because the Strictly iteration of the heart-print dungarees is a bit like Tweedledee and Tweedle He/They run a pizzeria together

and sadly that wasn’t the theme. When will I get my queer pizza house jive?
It is still *very* funny that the George stans insist this was undermarked despite it getting 27. Which, for a dance that is by far and away George’s biggest struggle, is extremely generous

I think there’s a fair few people who think that because he was in amongst the last 4 couples to hear the result of the vote, that means he was almost sent home

but like you look at the line-up of two firm fan favourites in George and La Voix against Amber all but writing “ARIANA LOVE ME!” on the walls in her own blood and Jimmy having a bad day in the ballroom and you instantly know who’s just there for a humbling. La Voix got her early reveal of safety last week, this was all about the Balvinder reveal as she and Julian give a remarkable start to the Monkseal Memorial Safety Sex Face Gallery

and a (dis)honourable mention to the lesser spotted Guilty Safety Sex Face <3

I was so glad that Balvinder got a reprieve this week – I truly didn’t think it was going to happen because this hoedown quickstep was a conceptual mess. Julian is obviously a talented dancer but I wonder how much experience he has in terms of choreographing his own routines? Because Balvinder’s big break out routine was for a Charleston, a dance that Julian definitely didn’t choreograph and they’ve never managed to hit that high again. Much like Harry and Karen, Julian also got blindsided by the judges deciding that this was Too Icons Week even for Icons Week

and she wasn’t greatly uplifted by someone chucking a nonsensical 9 into the mix for shits and giggles. Not even Shirley who was all nostalgic for her time living in Texas many moons ago hoeing it down in any hoedown that would have her

I want Shirley to tell me when she thinks Texas Hold ‘Em by Beyonce came out. Instead it was a court mandated string of 7s for Balvinder and Julian

I look forward to the inevitable Bottom Two Goddess Showdown between her and Amber. That’ll be my personal Superbowl. Halloween Week is another week that can throw a real curveball because a lot of it comes down to the success of the costuming and how recognisable the celebrity manages to be. You can’t get away with just saying “I’m Johnny Cash” in a slightly southern drawl like you’re every 2 bit impressionist on Britain’s Got Talent, LEWIS

absolutely obsessed that he said this three times in this episode and several times over the course of It Takes Two like Johnny Cash hosts a mid-afternoon gameshow and that’s his famous catchphrase. To be fair “Johnny Cash’s Million Pound Drop” is a very good gameshow title – perfect nominative determinism.
Lewis and Katya had the second quickstep to open the show in as many weeks. Not that Ring of Fire has any real business being a quickstep and Katya made no attempt to even slightly match the tempo of the music – the band could’ve played anything and she’d still have used this routine. Also interesting to note that both Quicksteps this evening leaned into country music. However, while Julian might as well have been dressed as Buc-ee the Beaver he’d gone so texan with it

Katya was going to be damned if it looked like she was celebrating the 4th of July in October – she would’ve killed Julian for the Grand Ole Opry dressing if it came to it. Much like she would’ve killed anyone that got in the way of her being Red Bodysuit Britney if anyone stopped her

this pro-dance was incredible. My only critique is Johannes not getting to be a Britney (Where was knife swinging in an Instagram reel Britney?) and Jowita not even getting a hint of the snake for Slave 4 U Britney – Johannes would’ve been the snake if you asked!

but I do have to appreciate that the show at least learned something from Anton dragging a pair of Dalmatians having a terrible time onto the dancefloor

it’s how we all felt when Judy Murray was about to start dancing.

But I did have to laugh at all of them getting incredible choreography for them to absolutely kill for their respective Britney eras. And then Nadiya getting trapped with 3ft of floorspace that all she could do with was gently rotate like a sexy microwave meal

Gilkison took “reheating Britney’s Nachos” too literally.

I think this week really demonstrated Katya as the most clued in and astute pro on the current cast. I have no doubt in my mind that those first few weeks where she did a lot of nonsense and genre-bending were purposefully done to give Lewis a narrative of learning to dance more traditionally – an aspect of Amber’s ~journey~ that Nikita has completely overlooked, much to her detriment. But Katya has played the last two weeks very normally – save for Lewis insisting that Johnny Cash went around introducing himself to everyone and whatever this rattlesnake performing the electric slide is

this quickstep could be performed any week to any music and I’d argue would be better for it. Tonally, Ring of Fire is not a song for merrily skipping about to

but I hope that Katya playing a themed week so straight means that she’s got some high concept insanity planned for Halloween Week this weekend. Because she’s had some crackers in the past – the completely unparsable Spirit of the Piano routine

and of course the cursed Kleenex dispenser during that one week where Tony Adams decided he could be good at dancing

but if there’s one thing I want from Halloween Week, it’s La Voix running around in her sexy sheet

we did it, Joe. We got La Voix to Halloween. It’s felt like a real uphill struggle through these two weeks of Latin. I had no hopes for this week’s salsa being good, and truly it wasn’t particularly good. BUT! It did at least look like she remembered what she was meant to be doing for the two thirds of this dance that were actually a Salsa. La Voix is truly the final boss of FAFFIN’ ABAHT!

she and Aljaz will never not have a 30 second introduction to their dance – but she’s also been hired as the entertainment act of the series. However, as much as I love La Voix treating her interactions with the judges as her own personal reading challenge

I do think it’s getting in the way of them actually critiquing her, and it would be nice to hear one of the judges not just say “I love you! Now say something mean about me!” to her and actually point out that she doesn’t finish a single line and is clunkier in her transitions than me pairing a knitted tunic dress with red leggings and brown ankle boots in 2015. I HAVE BURNT MY FIRST FOUR YEARS OF TRANSITION TO THE GROUND, YOU’LL NEVER FIND IT

but, as a queer person, who was eager to see drag on the show but apprehensive about how the show itself would handle it. I am just so glad to see how much the entire cast has embraced The La Voix Experience. Especially TessBot

a truly surprisingly perfect double act. And Tess has even learned how to tell an improvised joke

and that’s why she’s leaving the show. She’s completed her quest by finding her humanity – like that year where Dan Walker taught Nadiya how to love life again and she now laughs like a drain if anyone says something even moderately amusing <3

fly free, TessBot. I wish you luck on your new quest, FINDING MY MEDIUM-SIZED BOY!

as much as I give Tess a hard time and truly don’t think she’s particularly good at her job, I am so sad she’s leaving. She’s the absolutely essential straight man trapped in a show that feels like it’s being put together from the scrapped projects of those infinite monkeys trying to write Shakespeare. And I am extremely apprehensive about who will replace her and Claudia. I’m putting a big “NO BOYS ALLOWED!” sign on the host dressing rooms and have locked Bradley and Barney Walsh in a cupboard as a safety precaution. Someone please tie Jason Manford and Paddy McGuinness up and put them in your car boot while the BBC conducts auditions.
My personal choices for replacement are Alex Jones (The One Show’s Version) to replace Tess, which is like repainting your magnolia walls with eggshell – they’re the same person. And having Clara Amfo fill Claudia’s role. My entire reasoning behind this is that I think they’re both very reliable presenters that have done the show before, are already on the BBC Payroll and perfect energy matches for Tess and Claudia. Case in point, their handling of Jamie Biscuit Baron telling Bon Jovi that he lost his virginity to Livin’ On A Prayer

but my galaxy brained idea is for them to just replace Tess with Vernon Kay and Claudia with Hacker T Dog

I just really want to see someone having to have a very serious conversation with Hacker about how much their couple’s choice dedicated to a dead relative meant to them.

And that’s it for this week as we brace for Spooky Season to do its absolute worst. Although I am delighted to see Strictly embracing Stupid Halloween over Scary Halloween even if it does mean that Vito performing a Tango dressed as a bunny rabbit is a sign we have strayed too far from God’s light and have forgotten what the Spirit of DAHNCE! even means anymore.
I’ll be interested to see how Icons Week affects the the perceived winner viability given the leaderboard that was a bit all over the place

and you can vote on the Post Icons Week poll here:

and thank you again for reading! I am hoping that I can be a little more on top of getting these out from next week now that we’re down to 10 couples and other things are easing down a bit more!