Well, forced to make a dessert or being forbidden from making one - either of those is better than leaving it up in the air and then questioning the judgement of people who do either.

I kind of like Cat Deeley. It is possible I am a sucker for her accent, though. Also, I find watching her tower over the dancers endlessly amusing. She's listed at 5'9, and assuming she's wearing 3 inch heels most of the time, there are a lot of tiny tiny dancers on this show.

I kind of like Cat Deeley.

I don't hate her, I've just never understood what qualifications that she had for the job except she was pretty and had a nice accent. Well, I suppose that's all you need for a presenter, though.

Also from the Zap2it recap, and hee:

Lisa talks about how easy it is to work with chef Bloomfield -- "Our personalities are really, really similar." Bloomfield should contact her lawyer about a slander suit.

Also, how adorable was the little jig Stephanie was dancing at the end?

I kind of like Cat Deeley.

I kind of love her. she seems to genuinely care about the dancers. i'm especially thinking of Anthony Bryant and how she tried to comfort him after the judges told him he wasn't going to Vegas.

SYTYCD - I don't know what Mary's on, but I'd like some.

From Lee Anne's blog:

Here’s a run-down of the protein selection each chef had. Eric Ripert’s list consisted of: caviar, clams, sea urchin, lobster, hamachi, snapper, poussins (baby chickens) quail, quail eggs, chorizo, bacon, veal tenderloin, and rack of lamb. Dan Barber’s table had abalone, calamari, scallops, tuna, halibut, guinea hen, duck, duck fat, foie gras, prosciutto, pork belly, rabbit, and venison. April Bloomfield’s table had oysters, octopus, head on prawns, jumbo lump crab, mahi mahi, organic chicken, squab, pancetta, sweetbreads, oxtails, beef tongue, wagyu strip, and ostrich steaks.

From a culinary producer’s point of view, it’s a little frustrating to see our chefs go for the same old proteins again and again, even with such a selection. (Scallops: Official Sponsor of Top Chef.) And Lisa and the damn prawns. Leave the shrimp alone already and show me that you can cook something else. It drove me bonkers because getting all of those beautiful proteins to the island of Puerto Rico almost shaved ten years off my life in stress alone. (My fish arrived two hours before we began the final challenge.) Obviously there was quite a bit of repetition, especially from Richard, so I was puzzled by some of their protein choices.

behind the scenes at SYTYCD -

cute read:

[link]

I like Cat because she really does root for the dancers and I've seen her make comments on the show about, ooh I can't remember the phrase, but she called the dancers "my little ones" or somehting. This was last year towards the end of the show and I really believe she cares about them and wants them all to succeed.

Plus she handled whathisname's constant remarks with grace when I would have gotten fed up with him

The thing is there's a feeling of niceness and respect on the SYTYCD I don't get from American Idol. Okay Nygel is a letch and Mary needs to turn it down a bunch, but there's not the bickering and meanness that goes on with the judges and Ryan on American Idol and there's not a feeling of one judge being really dismissive towards Top 20 contestnants.

Also even the results show of SYTYCD is better, there's only 2 nights of this, since there are 10 performances and the results show has actual stuff and not just filler. Plus by the time SYTYCD is over, I'm kind of sad.This year I gave up on AI, it just seemed to drag on forever.

SYTYCD - during the auditions, they can get kind of mean, but often it seems to be in response to an unskilled/ untrained/ untalented person who has delusions about their abilities. Once they make it to this stage, the judges are more respectful.