This dress -- considering it's the finale -- is shockingly similar to the giant yellow tullesplosion she wore a couple weeks ago. Tyra, you have already wandered pillowy as a cloud! We need a new move!
The shakeup here are the earrings, which, the longer I watched, I started to suspect were actually a headband. If you look closely at the photo, you can see metal coming out the top of the earrings that looks way bigger than a hook would be, and when I stare at her HEAD, I start to wonder if she has a metal headband that her hair is trying to hide. This is my theory and I'm sticking to it, and may explain why she didn't put up her hair even though she totally should have.
In case you wondered if it was as poofy as it looks. YES. It was.
Bruno
Bruno's silver suit is snazzy.
Derek Hough
Derek's velvet tux is, too. His solo dance from the middle of the show was pretty cheeseball, though? Pleasant, but boring, and not really worth the interlude.
Carrie Ann
And I like her a lot, but this dress is TERRIBLE. It looks horrendous while she's sitting down, and she almost never stands up, so i doesn't matter how the rest of it is. The color is blah on her, the top is utterly tortured, and she deserved way way better. It's just so wilted.
Nelly and Daniella
So, I guess they were repeating a favorite routine, but... amped up? I missed a bunch of them so I don't THINK I featured these outfits before, but they look really nice. I didn't realize this was Daniella's first season and I think she actually did a great job -- Nelly took some loosening up to get into the cheesier performance aspects of this, but she really got him there by finding little ways to play to his strengths.
Nelly and Daniella
Their second routine started off to Megan Thee Stallion and then went to a Biggie song, and I think it really sincerely was his best work. He seemed SO HAPPY out there and he was giddy when they got perfect 10s (these judges, though, are REALLY REALLY liberal with the perfect 10s so far). One of the judges said this felt like a Grammys performance, and it honestly really did.
Also, apparently Nelly got dinged early on for wearing sneakers, so then he had custom heeled DANCE SNEAKERS made for himself every week. He's auctioning them off for charity, which is nice. He sounds like he was pretty crushed they didn't win.
And then all of a sudden we got a wide shot and TYRA HAS CHANGED and it's into something fabulous and it did not get the drama it deserved? This should have been her damn entrance dress.
LOOK AT HER. SHE HAS HER OWN HALO.
They kept sticking her behind a railing, which afforded us the best look at the dress they were willing to give us. I sincerely love it. The colors are dreamy. MORE OF THIS.
Kaitlyn
Kaitlyn's first dance was the toxic tango, in the same costume I already wrote up; her second was "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." I don't love her work as much as America or the judges apparently do, but that tango really was good. This one was fun enough, too.
Nev and Jenna
I assume this is a regurgitated costume, but I think I ALSO missed this one, or at least didn't write it up here. These two are doing a lot of weird performance stuff -- Nev was all up in there snarling? -- and they showed Misty Copeland saying she wants him to come dance with her. He, to me, is 200% playing to these opportunities at this point.
Nev and Jenna
Then they did a Singin' In The Rain routine, complete with props...
... and then actual rain...
... and then finally an aerial hoist. I don't know if it's down to the imagination of the dancers, or what, but those are two HUGE setpieces -- theirs, and Kaitlyn's -- and they felt like intentional kingmakers, in a way. But I have to say that I thought Nev and Jenna's best work was the contemporary dance last week. That felt wholly original; this felt hokey and too evocative of Gene Kelly. The judges ate it up, but Nev needs his own identity.
Justina and Sasha
I love her so much. She IS joyful. And I don't always think she gets the production values of the others, and she isn't doing all the fancy mid-air somersaults and cartwheels and shit that the others are doing; she's finding other ways to be interesting and joyful and to show skill, and I'm bummed she came in fourth. I mean...
Kaitlyn gets a giant swing and Nev and Jenna got RAIN and FLYING, and Justina only got to dance with herself for a second and then writhe in front of a couple special effects on a screen.
She held her own, and the lighting they put on the dance was swirly and elaborate, but it's going to be hard to get viewer votes when you aren't getting to go as movie-set big as some of the others.
And then THIS, which is like if the Black Swan crashed into the mirrorball.
Look at all those shards. I kind of wish Tyra and Derek had rehearsed something together that DID end with her smashing into the disco ball. NEXT TIME.