There were some real highs and lows in the NHK pairs event, and we discuss some scary twist mistakes, the real potential to see a Japanese team at the Grand Prix Final this year (and even to see them make a big splash there), and why having a fun, playful program can really set you apart from other teams taking a more traditional approach to Olympic season programs.

The women's event at NHK was a greatly reduced one due to withdrawals (including one in the warm-up)but we saw some exciting skating here. We discuss why completely omitting a jumping pass in the free skate might not be the worst strategy in the world, why playing it a bit safe and avoiding injury might be one of the best ways to make it to the Olympics, and why excessive use of voice overs can feel condescending to an audience.

This week was the 2021 NHK Trophy, which had a number of withdrawals, but some interesting head-to-heads in the dance event. We discuss why in the current scoring system getting good GOEs is more important than getting your levels, changes to musical arrangements that we think would improve some of the programs here, and an increasingly interesting battle for the lone Olympic spot for Japan in dance.

We wrap up the third Grand Prix of the season with the women's event, and discuss whether there's any possibility of scoring changes being implemented at the next ISU Congress, skaters struggling with injury and those who are coming back strong from them, and why planning to do jumps anywhere close to the boards is just a bad idea in general.

This week saw a pretty solid dance event, and we discuss some lenient tech calling and judging across the event, some musical arrangements that don't make a ton of sense and could use some editing to be more effective, and why the filming at this event and overuse of extreme closeups was not only frustrating, but made it really hard to tell what was going on when things went wrong.

Though the men on the Grand Prix continue to be inconsistent, we saw some strong individual skates this week. We discuss Lutz setup time as a potential indicator of nerves, which Italian men are now falling prey to the curse of rough short programs, and why it's never a good idea to try to do the same jump three times in a row in a free program.

This week saw the first edition of the Gran Premio d'Italia, and we begin our recap with the pairs! We discuss a strong team who has been unfairly impacted by COVID travel restrictions (and whether they can turn that into an advantage), why a team who can get all of their levels can afford a jumping mistake or two, and our concerns about skaters who admitted to feeling ill at this event.

Men's figure skating is always inconsistent, and that continued in this week's Grand Prix event. We discuss our continued frustrations with numerous talented skaters not living up to their potential, plead once again with skaters to try to strategize to be cleaner with easier technical content, and advocate again for skaters to not risk skating while injured and causing potential long term damage, even if that means stopping in the middle of a program.

This week's Grand Prix dance event had some similar technical issues to last week, but a lot of fun programs, and in our recap we discuss just how vital it is to fake confidence in a dance program (especially if you're not) if you want to improve your scores, why we prefer retro music and dance styles in the rhythm dance to hip-hop generally speaking, and why even amazing choreography can't guarantee a good program if the skaters aren't really feeling the music and the style of performance they've been given.

This week's women's event at Skate Canada International was a high flying one. With a huge number of women attempting triple axels in competition, there we no shortage of things to talk about. We discuss the unfair disparity in the way start order impacts PCS, the risk versus reward of trying these exceptionally difficult elements in competition, and a return to form for some skaters we've been missing lately.