Greatest American Dog Show – Episode 5

by admin on August 8, 2008

This week’s Greatest American Dog Show wasn’t all that exciting. The Best in Show challenge was a ridiculous “dancing with the dogs” performance attempt in which the owners and dogs are supposed to choreograph a dance routine to a specific musical genre.

The dogs hated it, the judges mostly hated it … And most importantly the viewers (this one any way) hated it.

The show opened with crazy Brandy dressing up her Miniature Schnauzer Beacon in pajamas .. and Beacon starts to reject the idea. After perusing the Brandy/Beacon profile page the one thing that really jumped out at me is the fact the Brandy has a clothing line called Cross Training Clothing which she has been wearing throughout … I couldn’t find the web site in a Google search so maybe she needs some marketing help. Or is this crazy stuff calculated to get some product placement and camera time? Does she get credit for being that calculated?

The “Dog Bone Challenge” consists of a balance beam crossing for all dogs without falling into the big pile of mud. The big incentive beyond getting to use the suite is that the winner gets a “Leg Up” in the Best in Show competition .. OOH, they are teasing us!

Setting up the challenge they show us how much Bill is missing his wife, and the care and concern that Teresa is showing for the old guy. Bill says he hopes to win the suite so that he can see pictures of his wife and family.

I was expecting to see JD and Galaxy win this event as well. They were able to watch most all of the other dogs fail and just jump down into the mud to get across, so when JD leapt up to make it look fun for Galaxy as a ball retrieval game, I was convinced it would happen. Suprisingly Galaxy just jumped into the mud as well.

So, the last contestant to be shown Teresa and Leroy end up swiping victory from Bill and Star who had been the only other pair to make it across. In a grand gesture to Bill that you could see coming a mile away, Teresa donated the suite to Bill. Along with the suite went the “Leg Up” … which I thought could have been split up when Teresa gave away the suite.

Best line of the episode though was Bill thanking Teresa for making the gesture, as he looks at a card from his wife Bill says to Teresa — “You’ll be on my Christmas Card list for a long time”.

Turns out the Leg Up is getting to work with Kashaya, Celebrity Choreographer. Huh? Who? Oh, she’s worked with Gwen Stefani and Eminem gettin’ their groove on! Digging pretty deep into the C-Listers to come up with this bonus prize! Only Kashaya thing I can come up with online is a reference to “a severely endangered Pomoan language”.

While Bill is off shakin’ his groove thang, Brandy continues to struggle with Beacon and the others are seen openly mocking her.

The Best in Show competition takes place, and it was so bad I don’t even feel like writing it out here. The only two things to note:

JD has some alter ego with his Hip Hopin’ routine and his dog “G-Money”

Star gets so fired up and has so much fun doing the routine that after it’s over she playfully jumps off the dance floor and runs over to the judges to check out what they are doing there.

It really was a tough tough challenge … none of the dogs really were into it and since none of the owners are real choreographers, they ended up with many more bad routines than good ones. Doesn’t make for very compelling entertainment.

As expected, as Brandy mouths “this sucks” as she’s called into the bottom three & it is time to say bye bye. I was laughing hysterically though as she was making her goodbye lap wearing a ridiculous looking ballerina tu tu. Made it just that much more surreal.

This Week’s Judges Profile