Predictions, Wrong and Maybe-Not-So-Wrong

The So You Think You Can Dance? finale is tonight/tomorrow night. I missed the first season, so this is the third one I've followed. It's interesting how sometimes you can pick out a clear winner right from the start, and sometimes you can't.

In Season 2, Benji was just so ridiculously fun to watch that he was a shoo-in from the beginning. The fact that he actually won made me believe in the "wisdom of crowds." Last year was different. Nobody jumped out at me so much, and I probably would have been happy with several different winners. Luckily, Sabra was one of them.

This year is wacky. First of all, Evan Kasprzak completely sold me in the auditions, but inexplicably failed to make it through the Las Vegas cuts. Then, for most of the season, Will Wingfield seemed about as clear a winner as Benji had been. He did absolutely everything beautifully. He was stuck with a weak partner for a while, which was too bad, but it almost didn't matter because it was usually hard to watch her anyway, with him on stage. And at least as important as his partner routines were his solos, which included actual variety. I tend to think the contemporary (and ballroom) dancers have the solos that are the most same-seeming, and get the most boring after a while. So being able to do something noticeably different each time is a big plus.

But Will got voted off! What was America thinking? Ironically it was on the night that Nigel had reminded everyone to register to vote for the presidential elections as well. This does not have me looking forward to November. Anyway, that leaves me with Katee as my pick for the best remaining dancer, with Joshua as my second choice. The two of them have definitely been the best partnership of the show, doing a lot of my favorite routines. I don't think either of them has ever been voted into the bottom yet. Twitch could have a chance just as a personality favorite, but he still has weak points in his dancing, so I don't think he'll take the whole show.

But if we learned anything from Will's elimination, it's that this competition is about America's favorite dancer, not best. So I'm not going to get too attached to any of my own predictions tonight.