'So You Think You Can Dance' season premiere recap: The Hotties and the Naughties

Meanwhile, I finally figured out where Gold Inferno developed the inimitable ''jump style'' that he debuted to America last season: The superstar factory that is Dance Dance Revolution. I think he wears that mask so we can't see him mouthing, ''Up, down, left, left, right and left, up, down, right and left, down, up, right, down, left, up and down, right, down, right,'' to himself as he imagines the stage floor littered with corresponding arrows. Even the music — the best music SYTYCD has ever heard, mind you — sounded like it was right out of the game. I do hope someone cheers the guy up.

Extra-terrestrials get to try out Mia Michaels spoke for all of us, I think, when she told L.A. popper Robert Muraine that she was ''ready for you to unzip your skin and come out like, blaaaah, like you're an alien or something.'' This guy's dancing was stupid, stank, even sick, so much so that it started to inch into the unironically sick — as in, I was getting a little sick watching someone twist, bend, buckle and pivot his body into shapes that mathematicians can only re-create on a supercomputer as they have been deemed theoretically impossible in the real world. But the guy is a born showman, and a born hustler, too, talking Nigel into giving him a ticket to Vegas when it was pretty darn clear the Brit was dead set on having Travis teach him some choreography first. If you thought I was exaggerating when I said at the top of this TV Watch that two minutes of this episode were better than whole episodes of Idol this season, then go back on your DVR and watch just this bit between Robert and Nigel, starting when the judge asked him to do his I-want-to-look-away-but-I-can't back bend to when the two ended in an impromptu pop-locking embrace. Now that's entertainment.

What did you think of this season premiere? Did you want to follow Jonathan Anzalone home? Or would you have rather hung out at the local singles bar with Irina Korenkov-Eller and asked whether ''Rijiy'' is Russian for ''red head'' or ''tighty whities?'' Is it really possible to be racist against tall people? Are you dying to find out what pants Nigel chose to tie together the rugby shirt and Florence Henderson 'do he was sporting in the auditions preview at the start of the show? And when do you think Cat Deeley plans on returning my fourth-grade art teacher's green painting smock? School isn't quite over, Cat, and Mrs. Jackson's class still has to do its finger-painting final exams.

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