Thin Ice Results Show: More Fun Than A Bucket of NCAA Balls? You Tell Me...

When you skate… on the Thin Ice…

I forgot to include that theme song for this show among my dislikes on Friday. It sounds like a cut from a British prog-rock album circa 1977. Who knows the artist on this ditty? Am I close? I just don’t think it makes for very appealing TV theme music… though I’m sure it would be perfect at a cast party for Sweeney Todd. (I've NO idea why I picked that show.)

OK, so the show has a similar start to Friday, except that we learn early on that the TV voter faves from Friday were… Shizuka and Stephane?! A little surprising. Combined totals had DuWeiss in the lead, Shiz/Steph tied for 2nd with Bourne/Zim, and SalLauzon 4th and BerezElletier 5th. Was the message sent by viewers Don’t separate our Sale/Pelletier?

First up today was (in reverse order of placement) BerezElletier. Since Steven Cousins is Their choreographer/David’s best friend/Elena’s main man, he gets prominent billing as we head into Carrie Underwood’s “Cowboy Cassanova”, with Elena sporting pigtails and some serious Daisy Dukes (Oh, and did anyone catch David cackling the line “It’s a LOVE STORY!!” at the end of their piece… I presume it was a nod to their Olympic program. Or maybe I was overthinking it. Anyway, BerezElletier seemed a little more at ease this time, but… not enough to blow it out of the water. 8’s from Kat/Dick/Kristi… a little higher than Friday.

Then came SalLauzon with “Hey Soul Sister” by Train… if they mentioned a choreographer here, I didn’t catch it because I was distracted by Jamie’s face in that little massage table thingie while she talked. So far there’s a lot of nonsense talk from everyone about who’s the boss in their respective partnerships… of course whenever the “boss” is the female, it’s considered Hi.LAR.I.OUS. The performance was a nice melding again; there was one lift that seemed a little awkward to me, but technically I think it was OK. Judges went 9-9-9… again, up a tic from Friday. I don’t remember anything after that because all I could see was Jamie’s big earring hooking up (quite literally) with a piece of Hasslebeck’s hair as they did the post-interview. They must’ve been dying for that camera to get off them immediately!

(By the way, I have to admit I’m entertained by the fact that Hasslebeck seems to have seen all the accolades of the skaters and thought “Dammit, they’d better mention my Emmy!!” as if that would put her in the ballpark. Or the same town. Or the same freaking PLANET. But I digress.)

Next up—hey, Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”! I didn’t hear Johnny Weir was making an appearance… oh, guess he’s not. You mean someone else can skate to this? You mean someone else can skate to it AND be choreographed by the red-hot David Wilson? The other teams should be jealous. Anyway, Bourne/Zim were shiny and sexy and rocked it fabulously, especially considering they apparently just added a pairs lift TODAY. 10’s all around from the judges, including the joy of hearing Dick say “You pierced the mystique of Lady Gaga.” Classic.

Then we get another dose of Shizuka’s amazing new hair (ooh, flipped the other way this time… you’d think I never saw a bob haircut in my life, huh?) as she and Stephane work with another hip-hop choreographer doing skating for the first time? (Hi Hat is the name). They skate to Beyonce’s “Get Me Bodied” and yes, there’s more of an attempt at skating together… they even did perfectly synced SBS 3toes, damn!...but they kind of went on their own at spin time. Dick Button pointed out that there were still some “disjointed moments”, which of course elicited boos from the crowd… which prompted him to bark back “I know more than you do!” Word. Votes went 9-8-8; again up just a bit.

Finally, DuWeiss are up, and since Mike is wearing a suit w/no suitcoat, we get a hint… and yes, it’s a story piece about a guy who seems to love his briefcase more than Marie-France in a lavender slipdress. Immediately I think of the So You Think You Can Dance number from a few years ago (let’s just call that the Clip of the Day), but ironically this number’s choreographer is from Dancing w/the Stars (Mark Ballas, who won the trophy with Kristi). Big difference is that in this version, which is skated to “Broken String” by James Morrison, I think the woman wins out. (Which is to say the briefcase gets the boot. Just in case you weren’t sure. ;-) Oh, and Weiss pulled off not only a triple flip, but a back flip OVER a lunging Marie-France. Votes of 10-10-10.

Big goofy delay at the end, where they had to go to the judges to cover for a while they finished tabulating… but, that’s the magic of live TV. Finally, the peel-off got started as they named the order of who was getting which cheesy oversized check…

And the order remained the same, except for one flip-flop:

5th—BerezElletier
4th—SalLauzon
3rd—ShizSteph
2nd—BournZim
1st-- DuWeiss

So there you have it… is it “the future of figure skating”, as advertised? I kinda doubt it… but if it successfully triggers a manageable revival of pro skating competitions, well, as Dick would say, hat’s off to them. The early ratings news from Friday put Thin Ice in 3rd with 4.1 million viewers, 2.7 rating/5 share, which at first glance isn’t too bad… in the same slot a week earlier, Supernanny pulled down 4.9 million viewers, 3.2 rating/6 share. But either show was bound to face tough competition from March Madness over on CBS, so under the circumstances I think Thin Ice didn’t, uh… crack.

At least, not until we see what the numbers were for tonight. Carry-over is everything!

Coming all too soon (like tomorrow sometime)… the start of WORLDS PREDICTIONS!