[Slowly, inch by painful inch mustering the will to talk about this season.]
To start off, a recap of the season so far. Thanks as always to my good buddies at Primetimer for staying on top this, without which I’d most likely say the hell with it.
9/20 - Frenzied melee
No idea who anyone is. No idea who can dance, who the favorites are, who the lovable underdogs are, who are the ones to watch. Judges are more irrelevant than ever; scores are utterly incomprehensible and completely meaningless. Voting system still hot garbage, and the voters have about 30 seconds to decide which of the 15 contestants they want to distribute their 10 votes around to. Yeah, that’s exactly who you want to put the gross majority of the power in the hands of. 
There’s nowhere near enough time to cover so many contestants; they’re going 1,000 miles an hour here. It’s insane. Tyra Banks sucked then and sucks now. I can’t believe anyone’s trying to softpedal her. Flashbacks to the attempts to “rehabilitate” Dubya. Outrageous.
Pretty sure that Cobra Kai guy is toast, though.
9/27 - Frenzied melee, plus they have to cram in an elimination 
If it was 1,000 miles an hour last week, it’s more like 1,200 now. Forget bringing back Tom Bergeron, we need John Moschitta. My head is spinning. I can barely follow anything that’s happening. Cobra Kai guy is toast, so the “obvious 1st round cannon fodder so we can give the actual good contestants more time without ever having to give up the eternal immortal holy anudda wun bi da dus” gambit worked as planned. This is the only positive vibe I will receive from this season for a very long time.
10/4 - Britney Spears night! (Hey, are we still arguing over whether she’s a virgin? 
)
Derek Hough taking a health break, meaning that we’re cruising at a relaxed 800 MPH this evening. Okay, so Olivia Jade is the daughter of that scumbag crook, and Iman Shumpert is the teammate of the good Cavalier, correct? Oh, joy. Some rando I know absolutely nothing about gets bounced.
10/11 and 10/12 - Tacky costumes that are probably really hard to dance in two-fer!
And of course, given that the time slot is still bursting at the seams and Hough just returned from his health break, let’s have the episode where we don’t lighten our burden! 
But don’t worry, we still have time to hear Banks use words like “mommy” and “daddy” unironically, and “unironically” I mean “despite her being over the age of 6”. (Seriously, I find this absolutely jarring…by far the worst moments on Shark Tank are when Kevin O’Leary says “stinky poo poo”. You can’t think of any better way to put it?) I don’t care what anyone says, all that blue paint can’t be good for Shumpert’s skin. And I really don’t see what the point of pairing Jojo Siwa with another woman is you’re going to force one of them to play a male character half the freaking time.
10/18 - Way long ago movie about heavily fictionalized way, way, WAY long ago America night!
Hahh…look…I remember liking Grease. Okay? I really did. I remember it being a lot of fun. I’ll probably get the DVD someday with no buyer’s remorse. But…and this is very important!..it is not The Movie for me. It’s not even The Musical (that would be Jesus Christ Superstar). So I’m not filled with worship like these contestants seem to be. And since scores, and by extension dancing skill, mean absolutely nothing (coughBobbyBonescough), that means the only real draw are the costumes and set pieces…and…did we really need this? I’d actually prefer a Hair night. That’d at least be different.
Oh, and around this time Cody Banks got Covid and had to fudge a couple rounds as a result, which Primetimer is apparently super furious about. 
And Melanie B is out. Alas, Len Goodman couldn’t help her because he had to save…Olivia Jade?? 
The something-something child of something? When did she become a protected class? Sheesh…
10/25 - Horror night (as in movies, not the current state of reality TV)
Lessee, you’ve had an annoying 90’s pop fixture, extremely non-human body friendly cartoon characters, and outdated mid-20th century stereotypes. Where do you go from there? I know! Put them in really ugly costumes and have them pay tribute to my least favorite movie genre! Even better, lots and lots and lots of screaming! 
Uhhhhh. What exactly am I supposed to care about again? Are the contestants even required to do any specific moves anymore? I’ll return when I have answers. Or at the end. One or the other.
Wheelz - It came up in my “In praise of the season 28 premiere” thread (here’s the direct link. The problem, in a nutshell, is that votes have a wide variance and scores don’t, and with no one getting truly bad scores, the judges are more irrelevant than ever. I think best-to-worst weighted ranking on the judges’ end while keeping the votes mostly the same would work the best but then we couldn’t have lots of pretentious shouting and catchphrases, and we all know how important those are.