Reality Champion Rankdown

[Solaris]

I thought it was @*Wallace who bit Beyonce?  

[*Wallace]

7 hours ago, *Lily said:

Cotton Candy / Gabby Douglas

 

Some of it is incredibly random though like haven't we all been waiting on tenterhooks to see child safety activist Elizabeth Smart dress up as a moth and dance to the "Boot Scootin' Boogie" by Brooks & Dunn? I know I have!

LMAOO this part of your write-up especially cracked me up.  As well as all of your thoughts on the show in general.  

 

I did really enjoy Gabby on The Masked Dancer and thought she did really well on it. It was definitely impressive how she beat out two dancers there. A fine cut at this point.

[*Wallace]

16 minutes ago, Solaris said:

I thought it was @*Wallace who bit Beyonce?  

Nope it was not me.  

[Solaris]

9 minutes ago, *Wallace said:

Nope it was not me.  

 

[Qorey]

8 hours ago, *Lily said:

Tamar Braxton I am sure has literally never been in the conversation of people who bit Beyoncé lmao

 

I swear I remember people narrowing it down to her before finally saying it never really happened, and she was quoted as saying. "I never bit Beyoncé, but if I did, it would've been a love bite." Where did I get that from?

[*Lily]

7 minutes ago, Qorey said:

 

I swear I remember people narrowing it down to her before finally saying it never really happened, and she was quoted as saying. "I never bit Beyoncé, but if I did, it would've been a love bite." Where did I get that from?

 

[*Wallace]

1 hour ago, Solaris said:

 

I PROMISE I didn't.  Although I wish I could meet her, of course.  

 

7 minutes ago, *Lily said:

 

Lol yeah Sanaa Lathan was the one I was referring to earlier as the rumors were mostly about her.  

[*Diana]

Drew Lachey

Derek pointed out I am a not being a good Stacy Stan and that just won't do lol so today's cut goes to another overrated dancing with the stars champion in Drew Lachey.  Yes he had a pretty iconic Freestyle but outside of that Stacy out danced him on a weekly basis and I'll never forgive Tony for screwing up their Freestyle and allowing her to be robbed by Jerry Rice anyway back to Drew he is good Winner but everyone knows I am team Stacy so I might as well take care of this cut now and move on. Hopefully this is 100 words I am waiting to get off the airplane and doing this quickly.

Edited September 17, 2022 by *Diana

[FrogLenzen]

After all these years that freestyle was still #1 on the DWTS memorable routine special 

[~Tom~]

Neal E Boyd

 

 

Neal E Boyd was the winner of the third season of America's Got Talent in 2008. He developed an interest in opera after listening to the performances of the Three Tenors. I didn't really care for him on the show, he was just a decent run-of-the-mill opera singer for me who liked to cry after a lot of his performances/in video packages. He also robbed the far superior Nuttin but Stringz, who were supremely talented, original and deserved the win. He also ran for the House of Representatives in his home state of Missouri, losing both times he ran. He sadly passed away in 2018 from liver disease. He's not one of my favorite AGT winners so out he goes. 

[Steven_]

MADDIE POPPE

 

This is a cut I've had in mind for a while. I thought it might've been too early to cut Maddie, but I don't anymore after seeing the likes of Dan Gheesling eliminated from this game. And no, this isn't a petty revenge cut since I don't think Alex gives a care about Maddie Poppe anyway lol. I'm just saying Maddie leaving this game is nowhere near one of the most controversial cuts here, especially since the Idol performances game shows how little IDF cares about the ABC Idol seasons. Anyway, throughout the first ABC season of American Idol, I never cared for Maddie. I just found her performances to be very dull. She has a nice sounding voice, but her arrangements were so sleepy and very similar to each other. Even her rare upbeat performances came across as so lifeless. Her Idol journey is one I have never been interested enough to revisit, and I haven't sought out any of her post-Idol music either. Sorry to any Maddie Poppe fans for this cut.

[taylorkat]

Neal.  On my birthday, too.  I always cried when he would sing. 

[~Tom~]

22 minutes ago, taylorkat said:

Neal.  On my birthday, too.  I always cried when he would sing. 

Sorry didn’t know anyone liked him, but happy birthday!!

[Qorey]

                     WENDELL HOLLAND

 

 

Wendell formed a duo with Dominick at the very beginning of the game, and they stuck together until the end. It was really Dom, however, that was doing all the work for their alliance. He would talk to people until they got annoyed and left, then conspire with the others to vote them off. He did this again and again, and when the innocents started to recognize the pattern, they all wanted a piece of it, and came in one by one, like lambs to a slaughter. They were all allies of Dom and Wendell, until they had their heads chopped off like everyone before them. In the end, the jury had to choose between the obnoxious Dominick, or the lucky lamb that he chose for his pet. They were so stupid, however, that they couldn't agree on the verdict, so they forced their third option, Laurel, to join the jury and break the tie for them.  

 

Wendell did nothing to deserve the win. It was not his popularity that got him to the end. It was Dominick's choice to team up with him. To win, he only had to be more likable than Dominick, and that was no big accomplishment.

Edited September 17, 2022 by Qorey

[*Chris]

1 hour ago, taylorkat said:

Neal.  On my birthday, too.  I always cried when he would sing. 

Happy Birthday, Gigi!!!  

[Solaris]

1 hour ago, taylorkat said:

Neal.  On my birthday, too.  I always cried when he would sing. 

Happy birthday!

[*Wallace]

Sad to see Drew Lachey go.  But again, it was to be expected to happen soon. I do love Stacy more, but Drew did have some outstanding and amazing dances in his run. I do think he and Stacy dominated that season.

 

I can't really recall Neal that well. Hmm he won AGT in 2008 so I don't know if I was into the show back then or not. I would go through phases with it. But awww wow that's really sad about him passing away from liver disease in 2018.  

 

Hmm not too mad at the Maddie cut, as I more or less feel the same way on her as Steven does. Or Steven might like her less than I do actually.  I do love her "Nothing Compares 2 U" though.

 

Oooh and yay Corey back to making reasonable cuts now.  I liked Wendell more on his original winning season than the All-Winners season but I still wasn't too big on him. I think I liked him more than Domenick but thought Domenick was the stronger player and would have been a more deserving winner.

[taylorkat]

2 hours ago, ~Tom~ said:

Sorry didn’t know anyone liked him, but happy birthday!!

I know, I usually stay quiet about my favorites.

[*Amanda]

2 hours ago, taylorkat said:

Neal.  On my birthday, too.  I always cried when he would sing. 

Happy Birthday!

[*Wallace]

Happy Birthday, Gigi!  

[FrogLenzen]

Poreotics (America's Best Dance Crew - Season 5)

 

AKA Poreotix. Popping, choreography, and robotics. Dumbo, Jet Li, Chad, Can, Law, and Charles. Honestly it still feels a little early to let them go, but I can feel the eyes looking at my show at the top of the list and I would rather be the one in control of the order that these winners go out and give them nice write-ups to send them off. They won the 5th season of ABDC, and I think their run on ABDC was the least iconic of the winners left. As their name suggests, they focused on animation/popping/etc. for their movement and also relied a lot on humor. You know, a lot of the "haha gay? haha no homo haha" humor that was common at the time. But with a little guidance from the judges they were able to put together some fun routines, throwing in some breaking/flipping from one of the members to spice it up while staying very clean and deliberate with the rest of the stuff. At first it was hard to distinguish the group from all the other goofy crews that have come through the show, but they eventually solidified their style as one of the cleanest/sharpest crews to win the show, with mixing in unusual lines and tongue-in-cheek humor. 

 

Poreotics was up against Blueprint Cru from Canada in Season 5. Blueprint put up a good fight. The Canadian crew had some familiar faces from SYTYCD Canada: Vincent Olivier Noiseux and Nicolas Begin. The queen of the universe and one of the most booked/blessed dancers in the industry, Kim Gingras, could not be part of ABDC Season 5 because she was busy with something... I don't remember if it was making the Top 10 in SYTYCD Canada Season 2 or some tour or something. But the bottom line is, if Blueprint Cru had Kim, they would have beaten Poreotics. And Blueprint was at a disadvantage already because Canadians couldn't vote for the show. Blueprint's Bad Romance remains the most iconic routine of ABDC Season 5.

 

Poreotics loses a couple points with me for not appearing in ABDC Season 8, the winner season. Jabbawockeez were the only other winner to not show up, and that made more sense because Jabbawockeez are a BRAND and had a Vegas residency at that point. But that's not to say that Poretics wasn't also working. They were in music videos for Usher/Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars, they had a little tour in Australia, they started a Junior crew called Miniotics, and so on. They also get some points back from me for appearing on World of Dance season 2, where they SMASHED and did so so good and only missed out on the finals because S-Rank was outrageously amazing. FYI World of Dance was basically just a continuation of ABDC if you didn't know, lol.

 

As a final note, I will say that 4 of the original 6 members of Poreotics now dance with Kinjaz crew. Which is crazy to me. We'll talk more about Kinjaz when I cut the winner of Season 8 eventually. 

 

Here's my favorite from Poreotics, which is actually from their World of Dance appearance:

it's just so silly! And also beautiful! It's like.. are they joking around or are they being sincere??? Yes, both at once. I'm a big fan of the niche and brand that they have developed. They didn't quite have this yet during ABDC Season 5

[*Wallace]

Oooh Derek, I also meant to ask but forgot which ABDC teams would be fine to cut at this point as I was also eyeing that show for a bit.  But you do really amazing, detailed write-ups for the crews, so I'll let you decide the order of them if you want. As long as Jabbawockeez win for the ABDC section.  

 

But a great write-up to read on Poreotics!  

 

[taylorkat]

V.Unbeatable

 

 

V.Unbeatable (Vikas Unbeatable) is a dance crew from India. The V in their name stands for Vikas, a former crew member that died performing stunts during a rehearsal. They took part in the dance series Dance Plus in season 4 and finished in the top 4. They also took part in season 14 of America's Got Talent and received a Golden Buzzer from guest judge Dwyane Wade. They came in 4th that season. Their win came when they won Season 2 of America's Got Talent: The Champions. They received the title of "World Champion", a cash prize, and the grand champions trophy. 

[Alex95]

Freddy & Kendra

Another cut that probably should've been made ages ago,  considering the fact that Kendra's nickname amongst TAR fansites is KKKendra, but no one has gotten around to it so I'm getting to it now. I was gonna do this yesterday before I felt petty after many Big Brother robberies. And it's gonna be an easy one since I already cut them in the TAR Rankdown so feel to check out that writeup is you want my more detailed thoughts on them. The tl;dr is they were dating models. Freddy was 35 and Kendra was 24. They got married after the show but have unsurprisingly since been divorced. Kendra became infamous when they were to Senegal and was disgusted by the people there and said "they just keep breeding and breeding". Freddy became infamous when a gate fell on his head and he threatened to beat up the entire cast (while the gate also fell on Hera's head and she didn't give a single shit ). Old school TAR, for as much as I love it, is pretty much a smorgasbord of ignorant comments, especially when you throw privileged white people who have never left their backyards into the poorest parts of Africa. There was never an excuse for any of these comments, but that's unfortunately par for the course of early 2000's reality television. Kendra's comments were inexcusable even back in the day when a lot of shit would slide. Like it became a Thing. Freddy & Kendra had their funny moments. They loathed Jonathan (who is by and large the choice Worst Racer Ever by every TAR fan as he physically and verbally abused his wife on the race course) but also everyone hated Jonathan so you don't get points for that. Their privilege can be funny whenever they faced adversity, such as Freddy throwing up in his soup at the hot soup roadblock and being forced to eat it while Kendra hysterically sobbed. Or Kendra begging airport workers to let her on planes lying about her sick child in Honolulu. But at the end of the day Kendra is KKKendra so not much further we can take them. And I've listed all their remotely good moments which is like three moments across 13 episodes. For the most part they were just bland and boring. Hopefully Kendra has grown up though and hopefully Freddy is with someone his age now!

[*Wallace]

Phillip Phillips

 

For today's cut, I was thinking of cutting someone from one of my top favorite shows of this game. I ultimately decided to go with Phillip Phillips. Will I cut my other option(s) tomorrow or in the next few days? You got to wait and see to find out. This is also probably the only time I will cut an American Idol winner as I love or really like all of the remaining winners so I might as well do this cut now.  

As we all know, Phillip Phillips is the winner of the 11th season of American Idol. And many people may know that I was not really a fan of Phillip's during the show. I did try to keep from cutting him as long as I could but I'm ready to do so now. At this point of the series, Idol just kept crowing WGWGs after WGWGs with the wins and it was getting mega boring. As these WGWGs kept getting worse and would just win over better winners. David Cook & Kris Allen were amazing and deserving winners but after that... it just kept getting boring and I wasn't here for it. Although I'll give Phillip some credit here and there. I do think he was a step up of a winner from Scotty McCreery. 

Phillip is fine. I can get how people liked him but I was just not really invested or cared about his run. While I look through many of his song choices, I go "I don't remember this?" or "I didn't care for this" to many of his performances as most of them haven't had any kind of impact on me. I just knew he would sail through the competition like it was nothing.  

I didn't mind his staying in the competition in the earlier rounds, where there were other contestants I was meh on or didn't care for. Like during the semi-finals, I was fine with him advancing through to the finals.... because it was obvious, he would, lol. Then I didn't mind him staying those first few weeks into the finals. After Heejun Han way overstayed his welcome on the show, we get to the Top 8. This is where Phillip becomes my least favorite of the remaining contestants. Yes, I preferred everyone in the Top 8 over him, which included the likes of DeAndre, Colton, Elise, Skylar, Hollie, Joshua and Jessica. Jessica was my favorite and Joshua was my 2nd favorite so I loved and was happy they made it through to the Top 3. But then Joshua leaving at 3rd and Jessica losing to Phillip in the finale was super disappointing for me. I knew it would happen all along but I still wasn't happy about it. 

Now while I didn't care for or remember most of Phillip's performances, I did enjoy a number of his performances so I'll highlight those. On Top 11 Year You Were Born night, he sang "Hard to Handle," which was a really fun performance. Then I enjoyed his duets of "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" and "Somebody That I Used to Know" with Elise Testone. Although those were mainly because of Elise, but I didn't mind Phillip there. I did actually love his "U Got It Bad" performance on the 2nd Top 7 night. He sang one of my favorite Usher songs and I love how he arranged it and made it his own. That was my favorite from him and yeah, I'll always give that performance props. Ooof he had some rough weeks on Top 6 and Top 5 night so let's skip those, lol. Hmm, Top 4 night on the Songs They Wish They'd Written theme, he performed "Volcano," which was another strong performance from him. One of his standouts and my second favorite from him. That female backup singer slayed that. I also actually really enjoyed his performances on Top 3 night. "Beggin'" was a lot of fun. I feel like "Disease" was kinda underrated as I enjoyed that one. And then I really liked "We've Got Tonight" and thought that was a beautiful performance. Then come finale night, I didn't care for his first two performances. He did perform "Home," which ended up becoming one of Idol's most successful coronation singles. He won and yeah, I said my thoughts on that.
 

I did come around to enjoy and like Phillip a little more with his post-Idol music. He does have some of the better and more enjoyable music from the WGWGs winners out there. I do prefer David's, Kris' and Nick's songs more (the ones that I know) but Phillip has some enjoyable songs. I like "Home" and "Gone, Gone, Gone." "Raging Fire" is fine. So  at least I've come around to.... appreciating him more? I do apologize to his fans for this cut, but do know I kept him off my radar for as long as I could. But with losing some of my biggest favorites in winners over the last few days, I feel I can make a cut of someone who I wasn't a big fan of during their run.  I'll post my favorite performances of his below.