There's not much to the Battle of the Blades Monday night results show. First, the program rehashes the performances (and often the exact cold open, as they did this week) from the night before; then, Ron Maclean wrings a good ten minutes from announcing the bottom two couples (you... will... have... to... wait... until... after... the commercial); then, those two couples rehash their performances from the night before; then, one couple is eliminated, and the judges spend the final five minutes acting stunned and apologizing.
It's brutal. See below for a crude graph illustrating BotB's Monday night content distribution.
Anyway, as for what happened this week: Cale & Violetta, who Sunday night gave us the nerdy doctor meets hot nurse performance set to "Love Potion no. 9", were eliminated. It would appear that Canada's not so into figure skating routines derivative of bad porn.
There really wasn't much suspense to it. Not only were they skating against Tanith & Boyd, who earned a 6.0 from the judges Sunday night, so you knew the judges weren't sending them home, but it was impossible to look past Cale's ridiculous, extra-long smock on a second viewing. There was a brief segment lauding the work the costume design team did this week, but they deserved a scolding for this misstep. Cale looked about sixteen feet tall in that thing.
The only real surprise on the evening was the inclusion of Tanith & Boyd in the bottom two, apparently Canada's way of letting the judges know that giving a perfect score on this daffy show is almost as offensive as pornography.
But the real star of tonight's program was Ron Maclean, who peppered the results show with more excruciatingly bad Halloween puns than I could have ever dreamed of. He called called the leaderboard the "bleederboard". He called himself "The Great Scorceror." At one point, he said, "'Howl' they do it," and he topped that only with "'Wolf' find out, right after this." Whoa.
I'm not exaggerating when I say there were maybe ten or fifteen more just as bad as these ones.
I must know -- is he working from a script or are these improvised? Either way, they're terrible, but if they're spontaneous, there's at least something to respect. If someone is being paid to write these, however, Battle of the Blades is wasting money.
And finally, that graph I promised.
