With this decision, I don't know why she'd think Olivier's dress was more elegant than what's-his-name-that-didn't-win (you see how invested I am?) - looking at them side by side Olivier's looked slouchy and boxy and not really flattering.

It made the model look dumpy with saggy breasts. Also? A dog bed is made of FABRIC and that skirt wasn't ombre.

Grrrrrrr.

cone skirt

If she'd had just a couple more of them, there wouldn't have been a length issue. I thought it was a pretty good idea.

Bad deja vu from last year's finale, I'm telling you.

My daughter and I are on the fence about watching this season because of the Gretchen/Mondo issue. Last night made me worry because I thought the bird seed dress was much better. Oliver didn't get dinged about using the dog bed lining but Josh gets auf'd for using an umbrella? We may have to abandon PR for good.

Also, what in the world is Oliver's accent? He said he grew up in Ohio, but he's got a strange clipped Euro/English accent. Seems a bit pretentious.

Dawn,

I swore up and down I wasn't going to watch this year because I was so angry about how badly they did Mondo. But I didn't have anything else to watch! Like you, I am regretting this decision.

Maybe I'll read TLo and see if I feel better about this.

Oliver has lived all over the world for years, so his accent is a bit affected.

le n, we swore we wouldn't either but then, there wasn't anything else on and we got sucked in. Maybe next week we'll just watch of bunch of Community extras from season 1 again.

Okay, I feel slightly less annoyed with Nina now. Apparently, she had another issue with the birdseed dress that was cut from the show. TLo discusses it here.

Eh, I'm trying not to judge his accent - maybe his parents have strong accents and that interacted with living abroad. Maybe it is an affectation, or started as one and now is just how he talks. If he suddenly has a completely different accent, I will judge, but not now.

Eta: thanks, Kristen. Too bad that criticism got cut!

Thanks Kristen. I was just going to link the TLo article. It's a good one. If you read their other piece about the winners, their teasing of Oliver made me laugh out loud.

SYTYCD - I am so thrilled with Melanie and she was my favorite from the auditions.

I have serious doubts about Nina's taste level.

Seriously. And I guess I see what she means about the McQueen, but still.

My other issue is that I totally don't understand the difference between a beautiful simple silhouette and a plain boring one. They all seem the same to me.

SYTYCD - I am so thrilled with Melanie and she was my favorite from the auditions.

This exactly. It's so rare that my pre-like for a contestant holds up for an entire season. At some point, hating has to happen. Either the contestant turns out to be unable to sustain the high quality hinted at in his/her audition, or some personality flaws peek through, or other contestants sneak up on me and steal my heart away or . . .something. With Melanie, I liked her from the jump and she's just grown on me more and more all season.

I still would be happy with a Sasha or a Marko win, but I'd be over the moon with a Melanie win. Plus a Melanie win would provide a perfectly even split with four male winners (Nick, Benji, Joshua, Russell) and four female winners (Sabra, Jeanine, TBC and Melanie - or Sasha, too, if she won it) and that would be fun.

Wow, looking at that past winners list, I only really have issues with Nick and Sabra. All the other winners I could make a case for why they deserved to take it all even if they weren't my personal favorites of their respective seasons. SYTYCD is just a quality show, y'all.