Bring back "Thin Ice"

[OrioleBeagle]

ABC needs to bring back "Thin Ice". Change the format from two episodes to several weeks with different skaters each week. The winners from each week will return for the finals. Each team should have a singles skater with a pair skater or an ice dancer. (NO singles with singles, pairs with pairs or dancers with dancers or pair skaters with dancers.)

Stefan Lambiel would have done a lot better in last year's show if he had been paired with an ice dancer.

[luCN]

oh,consider how bad ABC's skating with the stars is ,I don't think they can do a good show this way either...

[pixie cut]

Thin Ice wasn't an ABC production. It was a time buy.

[museksk8r]

The singles skater + ice dancer is a cool idea.
Awesome pairings would be:

Abbott + Davis
Verner + Pechalat
Lambiel + Delobel
Czisny + Poirier
Kostner + Bourzat
Kozuka + Shibutani
Suzuki + White

[Susan M]

oh, consider how bad ABC's skating with the stars is ,I don't think they can do a good show this way either...

I don't think this follows, though. There is a huge difference between the two concepts, in that Thin Ice teamed two, World podium level skaters. Skating with the Stars teams "stars" most folks haven't heard of/don't care about and who don't skate well with skaters most folks haven't heard of/don't care about.

IMO the problem with Thin Ice was not so much the concept but the execution. I agree the pairings were ill-considered but the bigger problem was that they were trying to skate on miniature ice in a hotel. For me, the joy of watching high caliber skaters is the way the move across the ice, and you lose that when they have to cramp their skating to fit on a dinky rink. I don't recall what happeded in htis particular event, but too often this postage-stamp-ice problem is only compounded when they try to make up for it by adding tacky show moves like headbangers and Detroiters.

The final problem (and this seems to permeate all show and exhibition skating today, whether SOI, pro competitions or ISU exhibitions) is that nobody seems able to chose great music well suited to this form of entertainment anymore. Taken individually, some numbers are effective, but added up, the total effect is blah. I have found this true, for example, of every Disson show I've watched to date. Even All that Skate, with such a stellar cast, has left not a single program I can call to mind two months later.