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So You Think You Can Dance ’s judges managed to make a decision last night, sending home four dancers: Wadi Jones, Iveta Lukosiute, Missy Morelli, and Nick Young. Of the bottom three, the judges saved Ryan Ramirez and Ricky Jaime. Ryan’s save is the most surprising and even mildly controversial. Ricky’s solo saved him and Nick’s sent him home, according to Nigel Lythgoe, who told reporters backstage that the judges switched their decision after the solo dances: “I couldn’t keep Nick having watched Ricky’s performance tonight. We asked them to dance for their lives and the passion that he danced with this evening was just fantastic. It was hard, but we had to let Nick go,” he said, according to E! . Before the eliminations, Nigel all but said Ryan’s solo sucked, so keeping her and giving lots of praise to Iveta made that elimination pretty confusing. Nick’s solo was weak, and I think that Nick and Iveta got pretty screwed by their Bollywood dance; it was a weak routine and far more out...

America’s Got Talent returned for its sixth season last night, and came back strong, both in terms of content and viewers. Ratings were up 17 percent among people ages 18-49 and 21 percent overall, and the show brought its high energy and sense of fun to summer competition TV, which, along with So You Think You Can Dance , is so much better than the spring pair of American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. The premiere featured auditions from both ridiculous and impressive acts, and too much of Nick Cannon, again . As usual, someone who’s producing the series thinks we want to constantly see Nick Cannon backstage either reacting awkwardly or, worse, doing some shitty imitation of what he is seeing on stage. Nick Cannon is actually a great host and interviewer, so I really, really wish they’d stop this nonsense, but clearly someone is infatuated with those cutaways. The show ended with a dance group called Illuminate that was reminiscent of last year’s group Fighting Gravity in that i...