I will be the first to say that I am a tried and true member of the #BooCrew and am 100% biased. OK, it's out there. That said, I have not taken it easy on Cody and his DWTS journey. I was transparently underwhelmed during his first performance on the show and I thought his second performance was tough to judge because it was a marked through rehearsal run. Still, I am rooting for him to bring the mirror ball trophy back to Peloton HQ, come Hell or positive COVID tests.
Speaking of, as we all know by now, Cody has tested positive for COVID and didn't perform in the ballroom once again on Monday night's DWTS. His future has very much been up in the air due to his and Cheryl's diagnoses. But even COVID did not stop him from performing a jazz routine to "Gimme More" by Britney Spears, side-by-side with Cheryl live. It was a performance we (and he) have been waiting our (and his) whole lives for, and it did not disappoint.
Patched in from completely different locations, Cody and Cheryl were challenged with not only performing a duet on, essentially, a glorified Zoom call, but doing it all while battling COVID-19. The two did a great job with the hand they have been dealt, but the judges didn't seem to think so. It went from Cody's motto of "fuck shit up" during a Britney song to "this shit is fucked up," if you ask me.
Let's get into what the judges had to say. Carrie Ann Inaba felt that the performance "wasn't as great as I know you can do," while Bruno Tonioli added it was "very difficult to judge." Well, yeah, Bruno! It is difficult to judge, but I presume it is also difficult to perform. If we're going to say things are difficult to judge, why are we even having them perform in the first place?
The pair walked away with an 18/30, landing them at the bottom of the leaderboard (but out of danger for the night). In my professional opinion (no really, I'm a dance teacher), Cody did not miss a single hit throughout the entire routine. And while a jazz routine may not be as difficult as some of the other styles of dance we saw on the ballroom stage Monday night, the choreography did have a lot of footwork that a non-dancer would not have known. My only notes are nit-picky: he needs to loosen his neck and use his point of focus to emphasize the choreography, and he needs to work on pointing his feet. I would have given these two at least a 22 for the week.
My question now is: What happens next? If Cody isn't cleared to perform in (let alone travel to) the Los Angeles ballroom by next week, will he need to perform again via live video? And if so, are the judges going to use the technical aspects of watching him in 2 dimension against him? It's getting painful to watch Cody, week after week, be criticized for doing the best he can with the circumstances he's in. I want him there as much as the next person, but the look on his face when the judges hurl a tough critique at him makes me want to give him a hug and say, "You didn't get this far to only get this far." If you know, you know.
Images: ABC