Advertisement

Battle of the Blades III Review: Brad and Annabelle get saved

Welcome back to Battle of the Blades, the show that values your time so little they'll stage a half-hour episode on which nothing happens.

That's what we got tonight. Consider the ride on which the CBC just took you, Canada: first, Ron Maclean hammed it up and stretched the announcement of the bottom two pairings out for ten minutes. TEN. MINUTES.

Then, he finally revealed that Annabelle & Brad and Cale & Violetta would be skating for their lives (not literally, this show's not cool enough to have death skates), at which point the couples reprised the mundane acts we saw last night.

Then, Annabelle and Brad were eliminated by the judges, who immediately reversed their own decision by using the judges' save, officially negating the half hour of unentertaining, recycled, non-content we had just watched.

You could read a summary of tonight's episode on Twitter and miss nothing.

I knew this was coming, which was why I grumbled about the introduction of the judges' save in week one. Why in the world should these judges -- these maudlin, prattling judges -- have a save at all? Sandra (dressed tonight in a top adorned with depressive lampshades, by the way) and the rest have proven time and time again that they're completely inconsequential to the competition, that their scores are entirely arbitrary, and that they have no interest in actually "judging" anyone. The very idea that this wholly decorative trio is able to overturn Canada's votes is absurd to me.

But that's what happened. Truthfully, the only positive I can take from tonight's program is that the judges no longer have this asinine option.

Stay tuned next week for Viewer's Choice week, when all the songs are chosen by the viewers, and then, presumably, vetoed by the judges.