(S05E18) While Mia Michaels was a little better during her last guest stint at the judge's table, it was Ellen DeGeneres that excited me the most. I'm a huge fan of DeGeneres, dating back to her stand-up work. And while I think she's hilarious and I love her comedic style, I'm not sure if her presence here made much sense.

GROUP

"Let It Rock," Kevin Rudolf f. Lil' Wayne (Contemporary, Travis Wall)
I'm not sure this offered each individual dancer the chance to shine that Travis indicated it would; either that or they were all shining in the same style. Nevertheless, it was a high energy performance. I actually found the lighting on the costumes a bit distracting from the performances, but as it's a group number, I'm not too worried about it.

(S03E20) Holy smokes. Call me crazy if you don't agree, but I'm calling this the best episode of the season. There hasn't been a standout number one performance every week, but there has always been something that didn't quite work, or didn't quite measure up to the rest. I didn't find that here.

It would seem that the talk about the choreographers stepping things up wasn't just talk as all of them delivered great routines for the dancers to perform. The criticisms were few and far between this week, from me, and from the judges. That would be Nigel and Mary as usual, joined this week by Debbie Allen. After the jump, we'll get to all of the performances, and a rant about Fox scheduling.

(S03E08) It's becoming quite apparent that this is going to be a tough race. The competition is just entering the second week and there really isn't anyone that sticks out as being noticeably below the rest of the group. Depending on the styles drawn each week, every team in the competition has the potential to have the best performance of the night. It should make some difficult decisions for both the voters and the judges.

This week Nigel and Mary were joined at the judges table by Mia Michaels for what turned out to be quite an impressive group of performances. She told Cat that she was disappointed to see Ricky leave and that America got it wrong, putting the best three male dancers in the bottom three. I didn't agree with Ricky being let go last week, but I think she's going a little far there.