Superstar of Dance Dancers
Irish Step Dancers (Ireland Group) – Incredible to watch. Having a bunch of beautiful girls didn’t hurt either. The guy in the front that was kind of running around wasn’t very good, but it was fun to watch.

Robert Muraine (US Solo) – Robert had performed a couple times on So You Think You Can Dance. I still love Robert and he does some incredibly things. I think he had a really poor song choice and the camera angles didn’t do what he did justice. However, I could watch him dance over and over again. Check out some of his better stuff from So You Think You Can Dance.

Carolina Cerisola (Argentina Solo) – I’m sure that Argentina has a better solo dancer than this person. She wasn’t horrible and she got better once the music picked up. However, she definitely wasn’t a superstar. Carolina could have also left the hat out of the routine completely.

Anya Garnis and Pasha Kovalev (Russian Ballroom Duet) – Another set of dancers from So You Think You Can Dance. They should have stuck to their audition for So You Think You Can Dance. This one had way too much foreplay and not enough action. The song was horrible and it wasn’t nearly as good as I’ve seen them do. Whoever choreographed this number was horrible. Pasha and Anya are so much better than this. Russia should be disappointed and should ask Karina Smirnoff to come on the show, but I’m pretty sure Dancing with the Stars won’t be giving her up anytime soon.

Nishi Munshi & Sangita Sanyal (Indian Bollywood Duet) – An interesting Bollywood Duet with 2 very beautiful girls. Something seemed just off. I think maybe the song was too fast and so they didn’t have a chance to complete all the various moves. Of course, maybe I’m just not as familiar with Bollywood and so I needed more time to enjoy the moves.

Sean Robinson (Australian Tap Dancer) – What the heck was he wearing? The problem with tap dancing is that we’ve all seen tap dancing. In fact, most of us have even seen some great tap dancers. Unfortunately, he’s probably not even as good as those other tap dancers we’ve seen.

Bei Zheng (China Ribbon Dance) – Much better than I thought it would be. I guess I was just a little disappointed, because ribbon dancing is much cooler when there’s a whole crowd of people doing a ribbon dance in well synchronized patterns. Bei did represent China well.

Gumboot (South Africa Group Dance) – Definitely not the most impressive dancing I’ve ever seen, but I enjoyed watching it thoroughly and couldn’t stop watching. I think the fact that it was pretty unique made it fun to watch and very entertaining.

Contemporary Dancers (Australia Group Dance) – Some interesting material. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t get over the knee pads. Why have those annoying looking black knee pads. Just looked odd and annoying. A bunch of really great dancers on the floor. Would have just liked to see a little better choreography.

Damien O’Kane (Ireland Solo) – Pretty good. I much prefer Irish step dance in a large group. Also, I would have preferred seeing a girl do the solo, but that might just be because I’m male. I’m surprised the judges scored him so high. Didn’t deserve that high of a score.

Sduduzo Ka-Mbili (South Africa Solo) – A zulu dance? I like the name of the dance. The guy was very flexible. However, it just felt like an odd mix of cheerleading, contemporary and the lawnmower move some high school students might do. A lot of energy coming out of that man.

Georgia Ambarian & Eric Luna (US Duet) – Some absolutely jaw dropping lifts. I once saw the US Amateur Cabaret Championships and it was one of the most thrilling performances I’d ever seen. This wasn’t quite up to that level, but still should have been scored higher than they were scored. 7, really?

Miriam Larici & Leonardo Barrionuevo (Argentina Duet) – Honestly, is this the best Argentinean Tango they could find? Maybe I’m just used to the US version (if that exists), but I was rather disappointed with what can really be an incredibly sexy and wonderful dance to watch. I will admit that the section at the end where they were doing all sorts of quick kicks was pretty nice, but otherwise it felt really flat.

Julia Bantner (Russia Solo) – Seemed like a very russian style, a russian song and a russian look. I enjoyed her dancing a lot and wish that all of the dances would have been as good as hers. Too bad the judges didn’t like it at all. I’d love to hear why the judges scored what they did.

Amrapali Ambegaokar (India Solo) – Incredibly impressive. Could be my favorite dance of the night. A great display of dance from India and an even better example of the types of dances that should have been brought to the show. The bells around her ankles made the spins even more interesting and fun to watch.

Shaolin Monks (China Group) – A stunning performance and a great way to end the show. Some people might say Kung Fu wasn’t dancing, but it was indeed great dancing. All of it except for the little spear stunt at the end. I enjoyed it thoroughly and they certainly deserved the high score they got. The kids were really fun to watch too.

Check out the final Master Scoreboard for each country (not that they really mean anything):
Argentina 123
Ireland 123
China 117
Australia 114
Russia 114
United States 114
India 113
South Africa 112

Hosts
Michael Flately should stick to dancing and stop the judging. He just added nothing to the show. Susie Castillo was surprisingly good. The biggest problem for her is that there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to when we’d see her and when we wouldn’t. I hated that they didn’t have continuity in that regard.

Judges
Honestly, what’s the point in showing the judges. They pretty much say nothing. If they aren’t saying anything, then showing them revealing the scores is incredibly boring TV.

Also, Did China know how to speak English? maybe that’s why he only ever gave a score of 8. It’s the only score he knew how to say. Sad, because there are so many Chinese that speak English better than most Americans. Ok, so he scored a few other things, but it was just embarrassing.

See you tomorrow night. Let’s hope it’s a little better than tonight. It wasn’t horrible tonight, but I expected more from Nigel.

The 60th Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony will be awarded on Sunday, September 21st 8/7c. on ABC.

Here are a few of the nominations:

Outstanding Host For A Reality Or Reality-Competition Program

American Idol
Ryan Seacrest, Host

Dancing With The Stars
Tom Bergeron, Host

Deal Or No Deal
Howie Mandel, Host

Project Runway
Heidi Klum, Host

Survivor
Jeff Probst, Host

Outstanding Choreography

Dancing With The Stars • Routine: Mambo / ‘Para Los Rumberos’
Julianne Hough, Choreographer

High School Musical 2 • Routines: ‘What Time Is It?’, ‘Fabulous’, ‘Work This Out’, ‘I Don’t Dance’, ‘You Are the Music In Me’, ‘For One’
Kenny Ortega, Choreographer
Charles Klapow, Choreographer
Bonnie Story, Choreographer

So You Think You Can Dance • Routine: Hummingbird and Flower / ‘The Chairman’s Waltz’
Wade Robson, Choreographer

So You Think You Can Dance • Routine: Transformers / ‘Fuego’
Shane Sparks, Choreographer

So You Think You Can Dance • Routine: Table / ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’
Mandy Moore, Choreographer

Outstanding Cinematography For Reality Programming

Carrier • Rites Of Passage

Project Runway • En Garde!

Survivor • Just Don’t Eat The Apple

The Amazing Race • Honestly, They Have Witch Powers Or Something

Top Chef • Finale (Part 1)

Outstanding Reality-competition Program

American Idol

Dancing With The Stars

Project Runway

The Amazing Race

Top Chef

Outstanding Reality Program

Antiques Roadshow

Dirty Jobs

Extreme Makeover Home Edition

Jeanne Kazumi Petrone, Produced By
Intervention

Kathy Griffin: My Life On The D-List

Get the complete list of nominations Emmy Nominations

As many of you have probably noticed, I’ve decided to move this blog onto a TV blog network called the Pure TV Network. Eventually this blog will be hosted entirely at the Pure TV Network and I’m still working hard to update the Pure TV Network homepage with an aggregation of all the networks TV blogs.

I’ve already split off a number of blogs and here’s an update from a number of the tv blogs in the network:

Dancing with the Stars Cast Finally Announced – Some intriguing names and new professionals. The best part is that it looks like the cast is rather fairly balanced. I don’t think we can see one clear winner at this point.

My Super Sweet 16 Presents: Exiled – Maybe I’m different, but I always found My Super Sweet 16 to be so over the top that it was almost unwatchable. The idea of “exiling” these teenagers is quite intriguing. Check out Rocky’s coverage of the show and the music from the show.

The Amazing Race 13 Cast – Amy is covering The Amazing Race 13 for us and she offers some interesting first impressions on the racers for TAR 13. Should be a really entertaining season with the personalities they have put together. Don’t believe me? Look no farther than the Hippie Beekeepers on TAR 13.

America’s Got Talent Semifinal Videos (Part 1) – The olympics are over and America’s Got Talent got off to a racing start with some incredible talent. Just watch the videos and see what I mean. The Hoff made a total fool of himself a couple times, but that’s not really news. It’s also worth checking out a video update of Julienne Irwin from last season’s America’s Got Talent.

JJ Abrams Fringe on Fox – If you haven’t heard about Fox’s new show Fringe which is JJ Abrams new baby, then it’s worth checking out. People are saying that it could be as good as X-files. Although most of the cast is saying it’s very different than X-files.

Jennie Garth is set to appear on the game show “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?”. The Beverly Hills 90210 star will appear in the new season this fall along with celebs like Star Jones, Gene Simmons, Dean Cain and Kathy Ireland.

I really liked to watch Jennie Garth with Derek Hough on Dancing with the Stars, but I have a feeling she won’t fair as well appearing on “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” I’m sad to say that I think the answer to that question for Jennie is no. I hope she proves me wrong.