This whole SYTYCD season is a letdown. I cannot believe how half busted this top 11 is. What's more is it's a kid's show now. I cringed to think of someone tuning into last night's program for the first time-- actual KIDS dancing competition pieces, that awful pitchy musical performance, and with the possible exception of Robert, the remaining dancers are all approximately the age of babies. None of the pairings have any chemistry. Watching adolescents partner is... not interesting. Hell, even Neil or Evan could fake adult desire.

That baseball dance with Neil and Kent made Kent look like a tween! Not dancing wise. I thought he held his own, but Neil looked like an adult. Kent didn't.

Lauren on the other hand strikes me as more mature than 18. Probably because we had to put up with Molly last season.

Anyway, they shouldn't cast a hip-hopper just to have a hip-hopper. They should make sure the dancers have, you know, actual dancing ability.

Lauren on the other hand strikes me as more mature than 18.

Lauren could definitely pass for 20 or 21, but I think her dancing and her composure is also miles more mature than Molly's.

I could not even speak on the mini-ballroom couple last night. And Cat arm wrestling little Fernando, just no. I'm sure those kids light it up amongst the 11 year old junior ballroom dancer set, but I don't want to see them on my SYTYCD stage. I know they've had adorable moppets dance before. (I see you, Lil Demon!) But in the past, the little ones have danced along with older kids who might actually be old enough to get on this show.

The musical guests are always uniformly awful and mainly firmly pointed at the Disney Channel set (Horrid J-Pop group. I still have nightmares about them) so that piano girl croaking in her flat and under the pitch way doing her best AI top 10 contestant impersonation was expected.

I think my biggest disappointment with this season was that we were supposed to be getting the 10 absolute best. That was the whole point of the bullshit all star flip, right? The 10 who made the show were supposed to be the ones. And we were supposed to get high quality, out of this world, phenomenal dancing that would raise the game. And then they went and knocked grown ass contestants like Anthony Burrell out of the competition in favor of a pale imitation of same in Adechike. They cast Kurt at least two years before they should have. (But y'all know my feeling that they should raise the minimum age for this show to 21 and I stand by that, now more than ever) And the whole thing just never quite gelled.

(But y'all know my feeling that they should raise the minimum age for this show to 21 and I stand by that, now more than ever)

I agree with this wholeheartedly; it might even be better for injury prevention. But tweens watch and love this show, so, not going to happen.

SYTYCD: I think that ultimately the pseudo all-stars concept is not working for me. If it was all-stars competing with each other, that might work, but this is just not interesting. Inevitably, the partnership is unbalanced in favor of the all-star who is not competing. And if I wanted to watch Dancing with the Stars, I would. There's no excitement of two people doing well in a style that is neither of theirs, especially ballroom, which had been so limited this season.

I have nothing saved to my dvr from this season and I'm not even bummed about it.

I'm saving the eps for a season dvd at the end, but I'm not as excited about these routines as I have been in seasons past. For me, the big stand out was Alex and Twitch's hiphop. But I agree that I much prefer pair-ups between contestants. Pairings such as Brandon and Janette, Jakob and ballroom-wife (whose name I can't remember offhand), Legacy and Kathryn, these are couples that brought out something in their partners that would not have been there otherwise. Even a failed pairing such as Jeanine and Chbeeb meant that, after they got rid of him, she emerged out of nowhere to surprise us midseason, which took the season in a new direction.

I agree with the above comments. Selfishly, I have really missed most of the "all-stars" we have seen this year (except Neil and Lauren) and I really am thrilled to see them on stage again.

But these all-stars likely wouldn't have fared very well in their own seasons if they were dancing with older, more experienced versions of themselves. The all-stars do overshadow the new contestants and it is a shame. It also makes me feel badly that the AS need to defend the current contestants when the judges say harsh things.

It's like the whole dynamic is not quite right.

Selfishly, I have really missed most of the "all-stars" we have seen this year (except Neil and Lauren) and I really am thrilled to see them on stage again.

Can you imagine if they were competing with each other?

What's weird for me is that having only watched one season previously, I have no idea who half the all-stars are. So it's been really odd to try to separate them from the contestants during performances, because up until a week or so ago I was still getting to know faces.