I pull the same face whenever I see a scone.

When will we be visited by the Ghosts of Strictly Future?

So, as it turns out, opening Blackpool Week with steps performing Tragedy might have been a little too on the nose

as we’re officially in a DIVA DOWN nosedive with La Voix having to withdraw entirely from the competition because the Samba is homophobic

and in order to prevent George Clarke dying in a two person finale against Lewis Cope, the glittery contingency plan is that Blackpool shall be a non-elimination week – *IMMEDIATE SMASHCUT TO BALVINDER’S JOYFUL SOBBING*

we can do it Balvinderinas, we can drag her to the final on desperation and circumstance alone! We just have to kneecap Amber and… Alex has already dislocated a rib, she’s basically one of those limping wildebeeste that David Attenborough tricks us into being emotionally attached to before it gets mauled by a lion

a lion wearing green velvet opera gloves, no less

but first we have to go to the solemn reading of La Voix’s Strictly Come Dancing Will – to Alex, she leaves the entire pyrotechnics budget of her samba

to Jay McGuinness, her ability to completely bamboozle Tess Daly with an unscripted question

George Clarke gets her copy of Now That’s What I Call Music! 39

and most importantly, to Balvinder she leaves being GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

of course Balvinder was scheduled not only in the death slot but to have to follow Lewis and Katya doing a weapons-grade theatre production AGAIN. It’s hard to follow a Lewis routine at the best of times, but having to follow something that allows Katya to cattle prod the speciality choreographers into going insane is a whole different level of “Why me?”

but I’ll hand it to them, a bi-curious polysexual argentine tango is certainly one way to make everyone stop thinking about Lewis jumping around like he’s in an all circus poodle production of Guys and Dolls

Layton Williams would like to challenge you to a Billy Off, sir

but I do find myself thinking that Balvinder’s Sapphic Aside was probably the only memorable part of her dance

and the rest, at no real fault of her own, is a mess of fog, dark colours and busy lights because the show will not let them spend money lighting a single one of her routines successfully

and yet still somehow not the ugliest staging of the night – that prize goes to Amber and Nikita’s recreation of the Birmingham SeaLife Centre’s lobby in 1997

it’s like they forgot to pack her original staging so they just cobbled something together from whatever the Blackpool Ballroom had in their back cupboards from 1987, nothing about ANY of this bears any relevance to the song or Amber’s VT (she has family, guys!) there’s just seahorses for seahorses’ sake. At least they got stairs, Balvinder started on a raised platform and just stood there not-dancingly while Julian hopped down and lowered her down, a process that took 7 seconds

it was not a routine with a lot of strong connecting tissue and felt very much like it had been choreographed in sections without a transition between them. I imagine that’s probably the downside of a week with multiple dancers, the training footage shown during It Takes Two usually only shows the couple working alone. I’d be interested to know how many training sessions they get with the full cast. But Balvinder still seemed confident enough with the extra dancers, a little *too* confident if you ask Shirley

in fairness to Shirley, Balvinder had her back to her when she looked like the two women were dragging her to a very gay execution

Julian having to just lean against the cucking platform in the background during this whole segment is a personal highlight of the entire evening

I’m going to assume the specialist Argentine Tango choreographers maybe aren’t used to putting together a group number? Dare I be brave and controversial as a fan and supporter of Balvinder, the spread of 8s and an errant 9 from uncle Anton was definitely a result of Claudia’s pass-around bottle of Patrón

I’m glad she at least got to do her Argentine Tango – it’s the one dance she’s apparently wanted to do which is WILD to leave it until Week 9 to give it to someone that’s basically become genetically fused with the Dance Off. It could’ve been much worse for her, she could’ve had the Jive

oh. There’s always the Super Special Instant Boil In A Bag Dance!

we HAVE to talk about next week’s twist as the show gets bored of its Waltz-a-thons and Salsageddons that have not once resulted in the calamitous multi-celeb pile-up they want it to. Instead we look to eastern Europe’s box of tricks, inducting in The Wheel of Dance Death in which a random past routine gets selected for the celebs and they have to get dressed, have some random music thrown at them and spend 40 seconds trying their best to not look like they’re being dragged around the dancefloor. It could be worse, the BBC could be seeing the success ITV is having with the 16-24 age demographic and order in 5 gallons of hissing cockroaches and an inflatable pool of offal

As per the extensive VT explaining this elaborate scheme to murder Balvinder specifically, the couples have already selected their routines from the Strictly Come Swinging fishbowl

I am far too jaded and burnt by the Chocolate Bar Twist on Drag Race, to not be entirely convinced that there is no way in hell the couples don’t know what mini-routine they’ve been set up to do, right? And I will only be convinced that this is all real if the filming of it is absolute garbage because the camera operators are as choreographed as a dancer – I’ve seen a Strictly camera plan, it looks like a treasure map drawn by 5 pirates sharing 3 fingers between them. I can at the very least believe the selection was entirely random, I just can’t believe that one of the biggest shows on television would stand this delicately on the knife edge of disaster. They won’t even do live results shows.
Lewis and Amber will be absolutely fine, both because they’re have a trained musicality and because Katya wont let Lewis be bad and Nikita knows that if in doubt, scampering across the floor like a corgi that saw you drop a cocktail sausage is apparently a perfectly legal ballroom move

the rest of the routine? Perfectly normal classic quickstep – I mean, they are dancing in a Pets At Home aquarium display for reasons only known to… I don’t know, we’ll have to commune with Karen’s Sentient and Prophetic Sex Tepee to divine the meaning of that one

the build of dread to this routine… My God. Tess introducing it as Karen playing a fortune teller – a trope this show has VERY little success of not making feel a little racially charged and then opening on the teepee at the beginning of the dance was jumpscare material

thankfully Karen was more decked out for a paso than for a halloween costume she’d have to apologise profusely for

and what a bloody paso it was! It was of course catnip to me whose official ranking of Recurring Strictly Paso Themes is:

Occultist Sex Stuff > Sexy Vampires > Traditional >>>> Dad Rock Paso

My only fear is that this dance feels like a real peak for Karen, much like Vicky’s Tango felt like a peak for her. I don’t know where they go from here – she has to really sell classic ballroom eventually, unfortunately Carlos can’t spin her around like the world’s most dramatic game of twister every week

somehow that’s the most impressive move of the night to me – Lewis and Katya’s biplane of men be damned

there’s just something about Karen’s broadway production of Who Shot Mr Burns that makes my brain do printer noises

It’s such a standout routine for her and as much as I’d love them to make her do it again in the final to get that perfect 40 that she just missed out on

the group routines don’t hit quite as strongly without the backup dancers and I do feel like Karen’s Sentient and Sexual Tent of Prophecy is essential to the vibe. It’s been a big year for visiting the mystics after Vicky and Kai went to have their fortunes read in an abandoned wedding gazebo by someone who I’m still not convinced isn’t Liza Tarbuck doing a bit

it was Karen and Carlos’s turn to go get a glimpse into the future of how a weekend of Strictly works and wonder how much the budget for the average Strictly VT is

to be fair to the Theresa Caputo of Pleasure Beach, it was an evening of a fair few shocks: La Voix’s complete departure and Amber’s nan is still experiencing thermal shock of being driven around on an open top bus like she’s racing Roald Amundsen to the South Pole

could you not have just taken her to the Madam Tussauds exhibit to point at 2015 Ariana Grande again?
But the biggest shock of all was George’s nonsense score of 39

I don’t think this salsa was bad, I think this marking is suspiciously terrible. The sort of terrible that heavily implies George is obviously going to win and if he’s not going to show why he deserves to, they’re going to have create a facade to sell it. I’ll give him credit, this did feel like a dance that was finally pushing him out of a comfort zone and given that they could’ve hidden him behind a troupe of backing dancers and whatever pieces of the Sea Life Centre Amber hadn’t used, he was front and centre for the entire routine with no prop nonsense

I also thought the little bum wiggle was cute…

but beyond that and the usual fun salsa acrobatics, I didn’t think this was even close to warranting one 10, let alone three of the damn things!
If I had to tie him with anyone, I’d have put this more on the same level as Balvinder. Or Alex dancing while her spleen attempts its own great escape. But Blackpool will be Blackpool and this year even more so as they leaned heavily into A Celebration of DAHNCE! With a special routine from The Ghosts of Strictly Past: Ashley Roberts, Layton Williams, Jay McGuiness and Danny Mac who is now a shade of orange that you have to buy the rights from Pantone for

this was really fun! And almost entirely an excuse for Danny Mac to thirst post as he got the full Magic Mike treatment

whomst amongst us could complain?
I hope they do this more often, I doubt we’d ever get an actual Strictly All Stars because I can’t see many celebs willing to commit to the process again. But a week of rehearsals would get more faces to come out of the woodwork. My only stipulation is that Jay McGuiness has to come back every year, both because I enjoy looking at him and because I know how much this pissed off Aliona

I can’t remember who it was or when it was but I DISTINCTLY remember her getting salty because she was convinced someone was stealing her jive choreography from this routine and I KNOW that Jowita getting to be Aliona as Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace would’ve created a disturbance in her force. Log on Aliona, I need to hear your absolutely dirt worst take. This is a safe space, everyone share your worst Strictly opinion 5…4…3…

oh. I was just going to say that we could probably replace La Voix with Alex’s dog in a snazzy coat and the overall quality of dance probably wouldn’t diminish greatly

Alex was on Couple’s Choice duty this week with a very big band theatre jazz number that felt a little bit like the burp after you ate La Voix’s big band theatre jazz number for lunch

weird to have two such similar narratively significant routines back to back. And they were probably even more similar than originally anticipated with both of them actually being kind of dull and lacking any sort of impact and then hours later you find out that’s because Alex has a dislocated rib and La Voix had bruised her bone which is why she was in a pair of shoes built for someone whose repeating Year 5 for the 35th time

you’d think the injury rate would’ve gone down since the Will Bayley incident and yet they seem to have taken it only as a challenge to make it look like he had it easy. “Your honour, so what if we ruined this man’s table tennis career? Have you seen what Katya did to Tony Adams? Nigel Harman? And what she’s currently trying to do to Lewis Cope?” is certainly *a* legal defense

this Charleston was ultimately less of a test of Lewis’s athleticism and more a test of my own sanity. I was excited for the indie rock Charleston to I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor AND THEN IT WAS THE ARRANGEMENT FROM THE ANTON DU BEKE ALBUM

I feel like the show owes me compensation

in lieu of a Safety Sex Face Gallery, I shall instead give you an internet friendly numbered list of highlights from the Blackpool VTs:

1. Johannes’s gaymazing eyeroll at Alex and her husband being romantic

2. Julian and Balvinder’s Starflyer Sex Faces

3. Amber looking like she’s presenting a weather report and urging people not to make unnecessary journeys (like dragging your nan out at 9pm)

4. George and Alexis being forced to vlog on a camera that is probably older than both of them for some reason

their whole VT looks like footage from a true crime documentary that you expect to suddenly fade to black and white, revealing George was an axe murderer that Alexis should never have trusted

AND HE’D STILL WIN.

After all that you do become abundantly aware that nobody descended from the ceiling atop a novelty prop – and they really could’ve rigged up one of the Sea Life Centre sharks for Amber. Instead the honour was meant to be for La Voix and seeing as they’d paid for express shipping to get the damn thing there, they let her have her moment

which I think says a lot for the show’s own regard for her – she got a full interview to pad out the results show runtime and everything

I really am rooting for her to bring back the weekly variety show. I just think we can be creating more opportunities to wheel Danny Mac out to shake his tits like Nikita’s parents in the front row are about to stuff a tenner in his thong

They looks like stunt double for Paloma Faith and Celia Imrie on Celebrity Traitors, I’m obsessed with them.

And that about wraps it up for the sugary facade of Blackpool that is almost so impenetrable it barely allows you to make content of it at all. I will still advocate for it to be a non-elimination week every year, I think it works as a perfect checkpoint of “Let’s just celebrate everyone and have a good time” before the late stage of the competition really gets into gear. I’m keen to see what Karen’s Paso and Alex’s Rib does to the winner predictions

you can vote on your predicted winner HERE.
And you can vote for La Voix’s Bests and Worsts HERE.