Walk This way

These are embedded here with permission. So much better than I was able to do with windows movie maker. And what a great idea.



77 points. The WTF sets in directly after the twizzles. Meryl's random two footing, walking, kind of hanging out, weird sort of stutter steps, and gliding while being pulled.

There's not even a half-assed indication of a sustained edge after the second twizzle pass.

Look at how sloppy they are - the snow they're creating. Not kicking up, creating. There are ice shavings piling up alongside their skates wherever they go and flying into the air as well. Look how sloppy the free legs are, and the hips. They barely bother to articulate their legs in the polka and barely get the free legs off the ice.

The hops in between, the skipping and scurrying I figure is choreography. The times where she's just sort of there for a beat, seemingly two footing at random, or pausing, I do not understand.

Charlie's skating is a little basic but I guess the full effect is lost without the angel smile towards the audience as he turns his torso three quarters to sweep his arm and throw back his head.

The downside to watching only feet is we can't see when Meryl is being pulled or yanked, and when she's not. We can see that in the choreographic lift (where Charlie's position is a squat) she is set down on a flat and on two feet. 77 freaking points for this and it's just full of Meryl on her flats or two feet getting yanked by Charlie, not to mention one or both of them going two feet to bracket every single element. They cannot skate in and out of their elements. Considering their rivals can, I think that's a big difference. God forbid ISU acknowledge this - they'd lose the manufactured rivalry.



I would really love to use the Finnstep sd here, but it's fairer to wait to compare it to Davis White's Finnstep.

Look at the ease, the freedom of movement, how everything defaults to the edge. The freaking blade run compared to DW - compared to anybody.

BTW - that's just "style". people. "Being good at it" is just one style option among many.

How come Tessa is skating this program? It's possible to cover ice, change directions, change holds without walking, two-footing, going up on your flat while being yanked hither and yon, and all the other random weirdness Meryl does outside of what appears to be choreography? Who knew? But why bother?

In Tessa's choreographic lift, she is set down on a deep running outside edge that carries into the next transition. And in contrast to Charlie, who settled into a squat, look at Scott SKATE that lift.

Without question, Virtue and Moir's patterns are bigger, their skating is obviously more powerful, that their speed is superior to Davis White's is in our faces, particularly in the footwork and pattern sequences, there's more, you know, skating, and just they cover more ice in general. The articulation in the free leg is night and day. That Virtue Moir use their entire bodies, versus using just their limbs while haphazardly posing the rest of the body is also clear.



The only thing missing in the gussied up junkyard of Die Fleuder-fake is the skating. This program should have been called The Road To Nowhere. All the leaping, extravagant gesticulating and flinging, building up to nothing happens.

I don't mean to be juvenile with the Die Fleuder-messing and the Die Fleuderfakery - but what is this program but sleight-of-hand? How to skate your free dance without skating.

In both programs Meryl does a whole lot of weird half-finished intersticial stepping.

And look how frequently they slooooww down with their skipping and trotting. The program is one continuous re-set.



The complaint the entire season by VM critics was they weren't doing enough skating; there were too many static sections. What they should have done is waved their arms frantically into the air while leaping around into nothing, like Meryl and Charlie, because if ever a skating program was one big static section after another, it's DF.

There is no trade-off here. There's no apples and oranges. It's not speed and power versus grace and refinement. It's a slam dunk for Virtue Moir. DW are not trading refinement and grace for speed and power, they are sacrificing refinement (including the blade work that represents the finest skating skills) for the APPEARANCE of power and speed. The appearance is created by non-blade-centric, frantic movement and getting up off their edges.

Virtue and Moir have the skating skills, the grace and refinement, and, what is made obvious in these videos, the speed and power. They do more skating, they sustain their edges, use their skating for their choreography. The skating isn't just something they squeeze into the choreography.

P.S. I knew Charlie yanked and pulled Meryl along but until looking at these videos I had no idea how MUCH he yanked and pulled her along, and when he does it, she's not on an edge and he's often simply stepping from one foot to the other. Their choreography appears constructed to get them skating as little as possible and get them off their edges as much as possible. I also think the pulling and yanking is visual trickery leaving the impression they're in hold. Pulling and yanking isn't hold.

Was that so hard?

 Tesssa & Scott's interview with P.J.Kwong.

P.J. asked each to define what romance means to them. Tessa can't help herself - at first she thrashed like a fish on dry dock and pretended the question was about the romantic elements of Funny Face. Which, you know, isn't really a romantic program. Audrey & Fred in Paris -come on. Let's look at it techically, from a composition standpoint. I could go on for days:

 

Romantic? Funny, we don't think of Funny Face as romantic; it's a
man helping a woman to have more fun, take life less seriously, they
rub foreheads and cheeks together like Eskimos, they stroke each other's
faces a little bit and then end up gloriously in love, but is that really romantic?

To be fair, on the scale of what Tessa and Scott usually do on the ice, that's not romantic. I think what she getting at is saying it's not JUST romantic - they actually do other activity besides paw each other between elements. Activity like having fun together, teasing each other, being playful, holding hands and gliding and twirling, fooling around with different dance styles. So, not romantic.

But then Scott takes the ball:

How crushing for Tessa/Scott shippers. Clearly, he was thinking of:

There she is to his left - his other half. And he didn't even have to find her in the world. Skate Canada served her up on a platter.

Then Tessa says her definition of romance is:

"I think the ability to laugh and be completely yourself with
someone is the most romantic thing ever."

That's got to sting. When has Tessa ever said her favorite thing about Scott is that he makes her laugh?

In their own tightly-wound way, they basically said they love each other and romance is each other. They won't admit that's what they said, but they didn't go out of their way to describe something that couldn't possibly be each other - they described what could only be each other.

And they didn't turn into pillars of salt, nobody burst into flames, people's heads didn't swivel as they pointed fingers and made fun. The world didn't stop spinning and Tessa was still breathing when she was done answering. She wasn't spewing pea soup.

Baby steps, for which they will compensate by sham-messaging just as soon as Jessica can unclutch herself from embracing and intertwining fingers with Sebastien.

Have to give Jessica credit - that relationship was turning toxic but I believe Jessica's drive to remain viable in Canadian skating and postpone engagement with the real world - her status as a demi-celebrity and top dog in Quebec skating is so central to what drives her - that she actually focused, and turned the relationship with Sebastien around - and that (relationships where SHE steps up) is not her metier. But she's got willpower when it comes to her agendas, that's for sure. She doesn't want another worlds medal, she doesn't care much about international results, and she's as ecstatic with a mediocre program skated with meh GOES as others are with near-perfection. Going forward is not her agenda but absolutely, her world as it's been since she's been in senior skating is how she wants it to stay.

At the same time, at Canadians, she demonstrated plainly that she's not some insecure nervous-in-the-clutch figure skater who underperforms despite her deep desire to succeed. That's fans being defensive about Jessica - needlessly. The Jessica they protect is a fantasy version.

The real Jessica doesn't get down on herself. The real Jessica thinks she's fine and if there's a problem it's going to be someone else's problem.  She was one of the few pairs women to keep her composure and hit her elements despite more than one wobble (and a de rigeur doubling of the 3 salchow). She's not nervous, self-doubting or insecure. In the past, she didn't put in the work, she was lazy, she has a great deal of strong, natural technique, great balance and stability and gets deep into the ice. Without those assets in combination with her work ethic in the past, she'd have been even worse.  What's happened in the past with her is her resisting her partner, putting more energy into that than in training, resisting going outside her comfort zone, and also using the ice as a passive aggressive venue if, off ice, someone else's will (Bryce's, say) prevailed over hers in any area either professionally or personally. She'd pay them back on the ice.

At this point it does appear as if she's succeeded in simply putting Sebastien in Bryce's place - only a Bryce who is not pushing for higher level of difficulty, more challenging content, and a shake-up in training centers. Just nice, basic, reasonably consistent pairs programs (Skate Canada-speaking) that keep her in the mix.