Hump, Marry, Kill TV Checklist: Will You Duet With Me?

Hump: Summer Thursdays have officially become reality TV night (RIP, comedy). FOX is back with their stalwart summer staple, So You Think You Can Dance — although it has been reduced to one episode a week this season to allow for FOX’s newest summer reality debut: a dating show hosted by George Lopez. I’ll just pause to let that sink in for a second.

Moving on...the premiere of SYTYCD brought auditions in New York City and Dallas, which provided a welcome bit of dance-style diversity. In Dallas, a member of the corps in the San Francisco ballet, eager to take his career beyond the tights (to wit, he wore in an extremely, ahem, defining pair of gym shorts for his audition), danced for Nigel, Mary Murphy, and Lil C. Daniel Baker is an Australian contemporary ballet dancer, but the screeches coming from teenage girls in the audience, post-performance, felt more reminiscent of a One Direction concert than anything else. Baker was these girls’ golden god. Mine, too.

In case it wasn’t already obvious, Nigel handed Baker a ticket to Vegas. And then Baker bounded over to the judges’ table in his slim-fit gym shorts and hugged all three of them. Never in my life have I actually wanted to be in Mary Murphy’s shoes, but for that brief moment, I did.

Marry: This past Sunday, Comedy Central broadcasted the premiere of Aziz Ansari’s latest stand-up special, Dangerously Delicious. And I have to admit, I wholeheartedly enjoyed it. I once saw Aziz at the Comedy Cellar here in NYC, and he was basically a huge a-hole to the audience, for lack of a more diplomatic way to put it. I suppose that’s kind of his thing — pretending he’s above it all — but when he’s being taped doing a stand-up gig for Comedy Central, he’s all charm and smarm to the audience. Gone is the Ansari I saw at the comedy club, who hadn’t even memorized his routine despite the fact that he’d definitely performed those jokes several times before.

I’m willing to overlook several things on my “Oh No No” list to marry Aziz, too. Underneath his stand-up bravado is a super-nice guy from South Carolina who went to NYU, is ridiculously clever, and most definitely has sheets with a very high thread count on his bed right now. I think it’s really the last one that sold me. But if I can’t have Aziz, I’d be totally okay with his nice friend Brian (that’s a semi-joke for those of you who watched the special).

Kill: I love John Legend, I really do. We were in the same department at the same college (didn't see him at the last reunion, though) and his fiancée Chrissie Teigen is one of the only "famous" people to whom I'll reply on Twitter (she's hilarious, is what I'm trying to say). But, as one of the four "music superstars" on ABC’s new foray into the singing reality show competition field, Duets, he's a bit insufferable. Basically, each superstar needs to choose a duet partner from of a pool of applicants who appear to have been found on Craigslist and pre-screened by producers with background checks (we hope) — and in that pool, Legend essentially looked for a back-up singer.

In my opinion (and trust me, I don't profess to be a music expert; I played the piano and violin horribly as a child), when you search for a duet partner, you want someone who complements your voice through harmony, not a voice identical to one that you already use to sing backup on your studio albums. But John Legend clearly sought the latter in the first episode of Duets. I get that his voice might be difficult to harmonize with, but he appears to possess a certain amount of musicality and the ability to differentiate between pitches and keys; he should be able to find someone who can rise to the challenge.

Robin Thicke is a close second, though, because in the end he just wanted to pick a pretty girl America would like. His wife Paula Patton must be so glad. Also, does he ever not act sexy? Like, slow your roll, Robin Thicke. I hardly even know you, and you just tried to impregnate me through the TV.