We're back after a bit of a break to discuss this holiday season's national championships, and what better way to start than with the women at Japanese nationals! We discuss what our strategy would be for picking a three-person Olympic team, heartbreak for our perpetual pewter medalist, and why Japanese TV's special graphics and program speed maps should be used at all ISU competitions.

Records were broken in the final Grand Prix event of the season for the women, and we discuss the scoring ceiling we are quickly approaching (and some of the many changes we'd like to see made to try to rectify it at the next ISU Congress), why competitive career longevity is so appreciated by not only fans but also other skaters, and some young skaters from smaller federations with lots of exciting potential for the future.

Some unfortunate withdrawals made this final Grand Prix dance event a bit of a smaller one, and we discuss why we shouldn't be so afraid of negative GOEs in ice dace scoring, why twizzle and lift issues in particular can be so costly to overall scores, and our confusion over the many mashups of totally unrelated music selections in this year's rhythm dances from a lot of teams.

The men wrap up the regular Grand Prix season with another event of great highs and lows and wild inconsistencies. We discuss skaters making improvements versus those making similar mistakes in multiple events, how consistency across both programs helped to prevent a Russian sweep of the gold medals here, and whether skating on the JGP would be a better way to ease into the pressures of an Olympic season for an inexperienced competitor.

This week saw the final Grand Prix event of the season, and we begin by discussing some amazing pairs skating (and some unfortunate issues in pairs elements). We express our hopes for this year's Russian Nationals in pairs, get excited over programs bringing more acrobatics into pairs skating, and lament the toll that the past year's struggles have caused for some strong experienced pair teams this Olympic season.

We wrap up this week with the women's event, which was a bit of a messier one this week. We discuss the continued unfortunate correlation between free skate start order and high scores (and why it makes it so important to have a clean short program), the value of a nice triple-double combination, and the potential risks and rewards of changing programs mid-season when you have little time between competitions.

This week saw a bit of a messy dance event with some inconsistent scoring, and we discuss some really unfortunate falls, twizzle issues being scored generously, teams whose skates we enjoyed more here than in previous outings (but whose scores were disappointing), and more music edits we would suggest for some of the teams here.

There were some solid skates in the men's event this week, and we discuss some examples here of skaters without a quad in the short program being at the top of the rankings (with skaters attempting two finishing far below them), why when following our advice of skating 'easier but cleaner' you need to make sure that you actually do skate clean, and the confusing status of Olympic hopefuls from France and Russia.

This week's pairs event saw an interesting battle for the podium, and we discuss how some choices in the filming of this event makes it difficult to assess what issues might have arisen on certain lifts, how relieved we were to see some consistent throw triple flips in this event, and the difficult balance between getting competition experience and getting burnt out and injured.

We wrap up our NHK recap with the men's event, which was a bit better skated overall than some of the earlier Grand Prix events. We discuss the pros and cons of Olympic pressure spread out among a variety of skaters rather than focused on just one or two, why ending with weak spins can mar the overall impression of an otherwise strong program, and the lost experience for some young talented Japanese skaters who had to miss out on formative JGP experiences for the last two seasons.