Today, I am merely here to share with you the moment of pure joy I experienced while watching last week’s Atlanta episode over the weekend. It was a kind of joy I generally only experience when watching a reality show, a moment when, in some kind of blinding phantasmogria of identification or some complete moment of unexpected artistic insight, my whole body rises up from the bed where we watch TV and I declare, “Well, aw shit! Did you see that?”

(I had a little bit of the random identification tonight, watching an old episode of Wife Swap. One mother, a black woman who has legally changed her name to “diva,” is saying to the camera about another family’s child, “if that kid puts his hands up again I’ll have his ass!” Yes! I found myself saying. You, D’eva, should have his ass. His ass clearly needs having. He kicked his father in the balls! My husband had made me some sort of drink out of lemonade, raspberries, and excellent Cuban rum. It helped me understand everything.)

Anyway, my SYTYCD moment was a little bit different, more of a pure joy in the unexpected. But also combined with a vague and happy awareness of how much the show’s editors had duped me. Here comes Appalachia boy, Brandon Norris, staged amongst the ballet and lyrical dancers, the poppers and b-boys.

He is here for clog-hopping:

Or rather, he is here for some booty-popping gender-bending cross genre bootylicious foot stompin’!

I was pleased. Deeply pleased.