Meet the new DW same as the old DW

I was reading a summary of The Hunchback of Notre Dame on wikipedia and learned this isn't a two-way street love story. Esmerelda saves Quasimodo's life by giving him a drink of water, but she's too grossed out to let him kiss her hand in thanks.

Maybe Charlie's playing Phoebus here - the guy Esmerelda loves, not knowing he doesn't 'love' love her in return but more like just wants to bang her. Between one thing and another Esmerelda dies a horrible death, although not before escaping a mob or three and an execution or two. Wikipedia notes that at one point Phoebus's actual betrothed

Fleur-de-Lys later neglects to inform Phoebus that Esmeralda has not been executed, which serves to deprive the pair of any further contact—though as Phoebus no longer loves Esmeralda by this time, this does not matter. The novel ends with their wedding.

I get all verklempt just reading the abridged version.

The blog's gif-ing of this year's World Championship free dance, which defeated Carmen at every outing, is coming along much more smoothly than I expected, although as usual I have to pause to screen cap moments of special note and then do gifs isolating stand-out moments in the program, along with the primary task of gifing the program in sequence.

In the spirit of Hunchback as summarized in wikipedia, I'll start with the first gif:

which is called "Charlie bashes Meryl in the face".

Then there's the "dance" spin. I had to slow-mo it to focus on the details which made it too long, so the gif had to be split. First:

Kurt Browning called this a 'difficult' spin entrance. I call it the "shot put."

You know what's a harder spin entrance Kurt? One that is skated.

As usual, Charlie is handling Meryl's rotational impetus himself with a mighty hoist into the air and then yanking her into rotation, but he's a beat behind her. I think he's piggybacking. He swings her down into the rotation and waits til she's in it to rotate himself off his grip on her. He's sort of riding hers.

Though this is slo-mo, the regular speed version is none too speedy.

Of particular note, Charlie seemed to be doing something weird with his working leg during the position changes. I kept having to slow it to see what it was. Was he kicking it funny, jumping from one foot to the other or what? Then I saw - he HOPS. Of course he hops. At the end of the spin he's on an inside edge and he hops on the same edge to keep the rotation going on that edge.

Of course the 'hop' into that deserving-of-level-4 two part twizzle pass just makes rotation in that instance HARDER. Physics is flexible like that. All math is.

Then the end of the spin:

They don't immediately do something two-footed after the spin this time - the exit from this spin IS two-footed. Be it noted that Charlie puts his "free foot" on the ice before the final rotation is completed so the final part of the last turn is completely two-footed.

Charlie does so much posing out there he's reminiscent of another era.

The spin above is an example of the spinning their partisans claim make them the best spinners in the world. Get in on it from two feet (Meryl gets literally yanked into it out of the air from her partner.). Naturally, arrest the momentum out of it with two feet and slowly stand up on two feet aaaaand stop. That's the kind of level of difficulty and quality of execution ice dancers should be aiming for. And the speed! <fans self>