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A lot of people were shaken to the core by the death of Candy Abundance and even this week I wasn’t sure I was mentally ready to face another episode as the ball room community dealt with the loss of their sister, especially with an episode titles ‘What Would Candy Do?’ I was sure there was going to be some emotional fallout, a lot of soul searching, and perhaps more of a focus on Lulu now that she no longer has her partner in crime by her side. I had tissue at the ready, just in case.
Thankfully, there was none of that in this week’s episode.
Nope, in fact, for maybe two-thirds of the episode, Candy was never mentioned. Instead, this week’s almost puff piece, palate cleanser (and it looks to be grim again next week) focused solely on Damon and Ricky, the star-crossed lovers who both find themselves tapped for an audition as a dancer on Madonna’s Blonde Ambition Tour, and how each of their Houses dealt with the news.
For Ricky it was a simple decision to go on the audition, pushed ever so forcefully by Mother Elektra who suddenly fancied herself Madonna’s new best friend. As she told Ricky, Elektra does not coddle but she does provide and pulled out a wad of cash for the rest of her children to help give Ricky a makeover to get him noticed at the audition. But Elektra also insisted that Ricky stay as far away from Damon as possible. He assures her that’s old business and he’s moved on. He has but his current relationship is about as supportive as the one he’s getting at the House of Wintour, and he breaks that one off too, mainly because the guy dissed Elektra and how she treats Ricky like a show pony.
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At House of Evangelista, things are decidedly different as Blanca is thrilled for the opportunity this could give Damon … but she insists that he gets the blessing of his dance teacher because he only has one more semester to go before graduation. Damon is clearly the star pupil / teacher’s pet and Ms. St. Rogers is no fan of pop music. But she knows, from her own experience, that an audience of thousands around the world is what Damon needs … no, seeing Damon dance is what the world needs. She is not going to take that opportunity away from him as long as he promises to come back and finish his semester after the tour. He assures her he will.
Damon also assured Blanca that he and Ricky were through but at the audition they seemed a little more friendly than expected. Damon said he’d only talked to Ricky here and there at a ball, and the last time they saw each other Ricky just walked past him as if he wasn’t even there. So we should expect some bitter rivalry to get the spot on the tour but the boys were more than cordial with each other, Ricky even more so after he broke up with his recent boyfriend. But after the first audition, both of them got a callback and that’s when Elektra asked the immortal question, ‘What would Candy do?’
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Wanting Ricky to secure his spot on the tour to suit her own purposes — namely hanging out at the beach with Madonna — she knew Candy would find a way to stop her competition: the infamous hammer, which Elektra just happened to have, and instructed her children to stage an ‘accident’ in which the hammer was forcefully flung onto Damon’s foot, not enough to ‘hobble him for life’ but enough to keep him from the callback. That really didn’t sit well with the children who basically ratted her plan out to Blanca who marched herself over to Elektra at the ball and said if anything happened to Damon, she would kill Elektra. Surprisingly, Elektra demurred to Blanca’s reasoning that this tour isn’t just an opportunity for Damon or Ricky, but an opportunity for the entire community (and even now with ‘Vogue’ hitting Number 1 on the charts, Pray Tell is proclaiming ball room has gone mainstream). She gives Blanca the hammer with the charming, ‘You ruin all my plans, mongrel,’ — and she says it with a smile — but then storms out when Ricky placed second to Damon in a Butch Queen Vogue Femme category. But afterwards, it’s clear Ricky still wants to get back with Damon.
Unfortunately, neither of them booked the tour — and Elektra told Ricky not to come home if he didn’t get it, but we haven’t found out if she tossed him out — but the casting scout had some great news for them, another potential gig: Solid Gold is getting a reboot! Damon is thrilled, Ricky has no idea what Solid Gold is, but the two meet with the casting agent and are notified they both have the job. While the original show had ten dancers, this one will have three and they are two of them. And it’s only a pilot for scale pay. Hey, it’s better than nothing … even though no one will likely see the pilot, not to mention that the whole enterprise seems a bit sketchy, put together on the cheap as a quick cash grab.
An aside: I seem to remember reading once that someone did try to revive Solid Gold and secured the rights pretty cheaply but of course nothing ever came of it, and there’s no mention at all about this on the Solid Gold Wikipedia page. Anyone know if this actually was a thing or did I dream it all and someone Ryan Murphy managed to put my dream into the episode?
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Anywho, the whole Solid Gold 90 pilot was a scream, counting down the Top Ten songs of the week … all ten of them! … with the boys and some Las Vegas showgirl dancing to each song. Now I do have to call shenanigans here for one of the performances to Heart’s ‘All I Wanna Do is Make Love To You’. In 1990, you would never have seen two boys doing a romantic dance together that ended in cuddling. Nope. Hell, we can’t even get a same sex couple on Dancing With the Stars in 2019! Regardless, the whole thing was a hoot. And when it was all over and the boys clearly had a great time, Ricky tried once again to convince Damon he really wanted him back and took responsibility for all the mistakes he made in the past. Damon clearly entertained the thought, but I think he could hear Blanca and Helena St. Rogers in the back of his dead telling him to put Damon first. And he did. And Ricky was cool with it, but it seems that the door is open for their love story to continue.
If it’s one thing the creators of Pose try to do, it’s give us, and the characters, hope for a brighter future.
I’d be remiss if I also didn’t mention the top of the episode where Damon is, in addition to his own dance studies, teaching the ‘bridge and tunnel crowd’ how to vogue, thanks to the popularity of the song. To illustrate just how much of a craze it was, the episode creates a local news segment with the legendary — and previously mentioned — Sue Simmons (whom Pray Tell refused to allow in the ball room to do a story) interviewing a crowd of people lined up to get into the studio. I don’t know if the news segment is based on a real piece, but Ms. Simmons certainly is real and is another example of the show mixing fact and fiction to tell a story (modeling agent Eileen Ford was also a very real person).
What did you think of this episode? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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