It was International Week on Battle of the Blades, a chance to honour the backgrounds of the competition's various skaters, so naturally, this week's episode gawked at, sneered at, singled out and then eliminated the most ostensibly foreign couple of the competition. International Week!
Goodbye, Oksana and Vladimir -- this is a Canadian event, and, well gosh, you're just too Russian.
The program opened with host Ron MacLean announcing the two pairs that would be skating for their lives at the end of the show. "Skaters," Ron MacLean said before an absurdly long dramatic pause, so long, in fact, that P.J. Stock laughed quietly at him in the background, "It's time." And then, surprise, surprise, for the second straight week, the Russian pair of Vladimir Malakhov and Oksana Kazakova found themselves in the bottom two.
Alongside them was Marie-France Dubreuil and Mathieu Dandenault, but there was literally no suspense here. It was clear from the cold open that we were about to say goodbye to the Russians. Vladimir had two things working against him: first, he just seems way too Russian for the folksy demographic of this show to rally around him. You know who votes for this show? The people who tune in to watch something hosted by Ron MacLean, and if the popularity of Ron MacLean's other program is any indication, that demographic isn't particularly pro-Russian.
Also working against Vladimir: he's bad at figure skating. But I digress.
Footwork is the focus this week, a challenge that Jason Strudwick underscored in the mini-doc introducing the theme. In hockey, fancy stepping isn't really all that important, in case you didn't konw. "If you get there and you get there nasty, coaches are happy," Strudwick said. "Get there nasty" really needs to be some team's slogan.
Another thing we learned in the mini-doc: Brian Savage and Jessica Dube may hate each other. While this segment lacked, as usual, in dudes falling down -- seriously, they should show us a minimum of 10 practice falls every week -- it more than made up for in passive-aggressive sniping.
"We're gonna do the whole thing again?" Savage asked, presumably after a run-through.
"Yep," said a visibly annoyed Dube. More footage of couples hating each other, please. One has to imagine that, after winning Olympic medals with a capable partner, mucking around with the useless co-owner of the New Mexico Scorpions is trying.
Amanda Evora and Scott Thornton were the first pair of the evening, and they actually set a high bar, pulling off the double twist pictured above. Even I'm willing to admit it was a pretty amazing moment. Scott remained hilariously stiff, both bodily and facially. This man is the king of the awkward smile. It's the smile you give your father-in-law when you arrive at his house for Canadian Thanksgiving after spending the entire drive over yelling at his daughter.
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