To borrow a quote from my grandfather: “You’re very silly and your mother dresses you funny.”

Instant Dance: Just Add Water!

It’s Blackpool Hangover Week and nobody is feeling the effects of ballroom dancing’s equivalent of a three day bender more than Alex who just wants someone to take her out back into the Strictly VT Gazebo and shoot her in the head like Ol’ Yeller

she doesn’t mind if she has to die next to the potato and marshmallow casserole, it’s how she’d always expected to go

she was clearly VERY injured and honestly probably should have just waved the white flag but she’s far too much of Committed and Professional acTOR to not let the show go on. Also, Johannes is her partner and he’d be damned if she ruins his run of making it to at least Week 10 every series since 2021 – Caroline Quentin and Catherine Tyldesley’s Insane Eyes are NOT on the Christmas card list. So Alex, put on your dancing shoes, go out there, and give La Voix’s HORRIBLE Cha Cha Cha a run for its money!

they’re bad for two very different reasons of course – La Voix couldn’t remember what she was meant to be doing and Alex’s was bad because every bone in her body is trying to escape its meat prison. They never explicitly talk about Alex being injured beyond her addressing the audience and all but insisting everyone stop voting for her, and you did! But like… you can’t ignore it as she hobbles off stage with Johannes dragging her along like a fellow man of war into the safety of a trench after a mustard gassing

GIRL. Take the L, your pride isn’t worth it! I honestly can’t remember the last time someone looked this in pain during an episode of Strictly since every synapse in Jan Ravens’s brain snapped back in 2009

I imagine there was also a part of it that Alex knows the show can’t really afford a 5th withdrawal from the show – does anyone even remember that Kristian Nairn was signed up? He basically walked through the door for the initial speed dating session and slipped a disc

possibly a kinder fate than throwing him in front of the speeding monster truck of Bottom Two Goddess History that is Balvinder who has now knocked out 50% of the cast and holds the Strictly record for surviving the most Dance Offs

truly the most unhinged run in Strictly History and for it to not somehow end with a Jive that she was completely recumbent for the first 15 seconds of? That’s mother

I don’t know if anything can destroy her? It all only seems to make her stronger. If you’d told me back in week 1 that Balvinder and Weird & Hot Julian make it to Musicals Week, I’d have asked “Does everyone else DIE?” and the answer to that question is very nearly “yes.” I really do wonder what a fully intact cast of 2025 with no withdrawls looks like at this point in the competition? Amber and Dani Dyer probably have a similar trajectory, Kristian is most likely knocked out in the early weeks meaning we’d need to fill the Lewis slot and the other available slots with either La Voix making it beyond Blackpool, Vicky or Jimmy pulling through in more favourable Bottom Two Face Offs or Stefan sticking around through sheer force of voting alone – do not underestimate the vote racketeering power of your mum’s yoga class.

But alas, here we stand by circumstance and gritted teeth with Balvinder Sopal, Quarterfinalist and Strictly Record Holder and if I have to drag her to the final myself, so help me God I will do it! Although if this competition has taught us anything, it’s that she needs no help – not even from Weird and Hot Julian giving us an eyeful of his Unholy and yet Entirely Holey Lucky Underoos

there are some excellently engineered modesty protocols happening under those excessively slutty little shorts that are the last thing you should be jiving in, sir! But you know, when things get desperate you have to start throwing the softcore spaghetti at the wall

but even despite the tea time friendly thigh rubbing and gratuitous amount of tongue, Balvinder was back on her quadruplet of 7s bullshit

which is still better than Alex being only like the 6th person to score below a 5 this late in the competition

and one of those people is Matt di Angelo who completely forgot his routine and just sat down AND HE STILL GOT A BETTER OVERALL SCORE THAN ALEX! Enjoy this potato quality woobie face from a fan edit made in 2007

I’m sure Alex wishes she’d made better use of the furniture of their glittery soul train hotel lobby

come the dance off I had completely forgotten that the headscarf Alex was wearing wasn’t in fact a piece of wardrobing miscellania she’d picked up in the mad dash through Claudia’s DSI Flash Sale

WE WILL GET TO IT! I have four other dances nobody really cares about to get through before then! They were actually all very good dances, two of them going on to score perfect scores, one of which was Amber’s Jive that was almost explicitly chosen just to make Balvinder’s Jive look worse – there are 6 couples, there is no need to double up on routines at this point!

I’ll be honest – I got this far into the recap before my will to write got dragged off screen like Katya

and I truly cannot think of much to say about George’s very good quickstep other than I think I like George most of all when they dress him like someone who doesn’t know what social media is yet

Lewis’s rumba was definitely very good, but not good enough for Shirley to prostrate herself in front of him and declare him the new rumba overlord

and Karen and Carlos did a very good Couple’s Choice to the world’s worst barstadisation of Born This Way. Karen claiming this song to be about being born to play football is like that episode of Glee where they perform it and Quinn’s hardship is that she once had a fat ass

Ma’am… just girlboss your way through a performance of Fight Song if you’re not going to have Dave Arch’s Band of Maniacs shouting “Transgender Life” as you break it down like Marge Simpson

I do not blame them for cutting out the “You’re Lebanese, You’re Orient” line… that one’s been dodgy since 2011.

And now I can move onto Instant Boil in A Bag Dance, the real reason any of us are here. My biggest fear with this concept was that it wasn’t going to be the unknown quantity that was advertised. And then all of those fears went out the window the moment Carlos started trying to explain a 40 second routine to Karen in the space of 10 seconds and NOTHING was sinking in

I do think the dances were at least assigned to the couples – both because I don’t think they would’ve taken the risk of having a multiple mystery cha cha pile-up, Karen having to mostly clap and spin her way through one was bad enough

and because the rails of clothing just so happened to be perfectly coordinated to the contents of their unopened envelopes

speaking of which – this mad dash through a charity shop with Claudia being about as helpful as one of those zoo parrots that has learned how to swear violently, was probably the best part of the whole social experiment. The way she just shoved anything and everything into the hands of panicking celebrities and sent them fleeing into the backrooms like someone who’s just shoplifted from TK Maxx is the most thrilling television I’ve seen since the sacrificial radiation scene in Chernobyl

except if you’re Alex in which case you limp off like an injured racehorse that’s been lured into the glue factory

the moment she and Johannes head onto the dancefloor to kick the televisual event of the decade off, their mics hot, and Alex says “I can’t move”????? – I have become the corroborator of all evidence if Alex ever feels like pressing charges

just in case you’re wondering why Strictly hasn’t uploaded this entire segment as a whole to YouTube where it would surely do the numbers that they desperately want George dancing to whatever’s trending on TikTok to do.

So once the couples had had their outfits thrown at them by Chaotic Evil Charity Shop Sue, they headed backstage to get changed, which is a fascinating look into the Glittery Sausage Factory – and if you’re wondering how many people it takes to wrangle Nikita into a pair of novelty trousers, it’s 3!

the modesty curtains hiding everything except the absolute pride on Nikita’s face as he gets dressed as a melange of absurd sea creatures – we need to let him dress himself more often <3

Conversely, Alexis is mildly furious that George couldn’t resist the pull of the least dance-friendly item of clothing that anyone was offered – and they can’t even blame Claudia for that one! It’s the first thing he grabbed

Alexis immediately secures herself as a personal favourite the moment they head out, George trying to put his best tango game face forward and Alexis telling him he’s going to take the stupid coat off as soon as possible before Tess has even finished telling them their time has started

https://videopress.com/v/kzuNKEFq?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

and bless him, he tried but as it turns out it’s a little harder to pop a singular button than it looks

this is my favourite George routine to date – his growing hysteria as he and Alexis careen around the ballroom counting down the seconds to the one planned part of the routine, to swing Alexis around by the ankles, is wonderfully unserious

and a highly underrated part of these shenanigans is the judges reactions to the chaos as they try and work out a marking scheme on the fly – lead entirely by Motsi who has some experience with Microwaveable Ballroom Dancing, which is why she momentarily got to sit in the Officially Unofficial Head Judge Seat, but unfortunately forgot her booster seat so did look like a child insisting upon sitting at the adult’s table at Christmas

we learned so much about glittery sausage-making during this short and frantic 25 minutes.

It’s not a surprise that Lewis and Katya topped the Instant Dance Leaderboard – a jive to Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go is a lob of a routine for a ringer. And because of this, there is a small and vocal contingent trying to get them disqualified because Katya signaled that they’d end the routine with Lewis jumping through her legs from across the staircase

I’m glad forums are still thriving off the same sort of insanity they were in 2010 – there’s something so pure about. It’s truly the one place that the internet still feels like the internet.

The biggest surprise of it all though was that Balvinder ended up coming second, mostly on account of Amber and Nikita misjudging the end of their song and ending up in a seven trouser pile-up with Nikita nearly snapping Amber’s neck

but also, Balvinder was maybe genuinely good? Or as good as anyone hoofing up a paso doble in 10 seconds can hope to be. But it certainly took the judges by surprise as they all began frantically scribbling out her predetermined 6th place slot

that ended up going to Karen who spent a little too long just staring at Carlos while he tried to clap her into the routine

but she eventually got into it and I would argue maybe did more Cha Cha than George did Tango. Truly a highest of highs and lowest of lows week for Karen, who along with Amber and Nikita are our only entrants into the Monkseal Memorial Safety Sex Face Gallery

and is almost certainly now on track to potentially win the series? I’d say Karen’s the most likely to hoover up the floating Alex supporters, although I would like to try and interest them in my lord and saviour, Balvinder Christ

and you can vote in this week’s Winner Prediction Poll HERE.
And Alex’s Highs and Lows HERE.

Thank you all for reading and for waiting, I’ve had a not so fun ~struggle week~ – it’s officially Burnout Season, baby! I did end up really enjoy covering this episode so I’m glad I got it out, even if it is late, and I hope you enjoyed it!