Because of last week’s inane and lackluster challenge, I was prepared to resign to a downhill series of challenges. I mean, Britney Spears? I know she’s trying to revive her career and all, but it doesn’t make a Britney Spears challenge seem like anything more than an extreme product placement. Well, that said, it pretty much is a hamfisted attempt at promoting the exiled princess of pop, but I have to say, the challenges this week were pretty cool. More than that, this challenge finally gave the crews the chance to incorporate sex appeal and playful sass into their performances (technically, Fly Khicks do this every week, but you know what I mean).

Dude, Beat Freaks… dancing to “Womanizer?” For a bunch of bgirls who are constantly dubbed “hard” and “thugs,” they seriously proved that it doesn’t mean they don’t know what sexy is. Rino Nakasone played the part of “Secretary Spears” and looked amazing, especially since she already has the same hairstyle. And who knew she was hiding that stunning figure underneath those swaddles of baggy clothes? I was doubly impressed with the fact that the other girls pulled off their “male” parts so convincingly well, only to shed their suits and rev up the sultry femme factor through the roof. Absolutely amazing. Only a group of playful tomboys could’ve pulled off a performance like this. I just have to ask, though, what the hale is “crispy” supposed to mean? Did JC decide to coin a new meaning for “crispy,” or am I just not urbandictionary.com enough? Cris….py?

Like Beat Freaks, Quest Crew approached gender roles with creativity and spunk. I expected and still expect to see this group pull off more entertaining acts to come, but I definitely did not expect them to come on strong with a dose of “Mhmm, girlfren” this week. These boys managed to pull off a silly hyper-feminine vibe, all the while pulling off crazy ass tricks, like Victor flipping over Dom, who was flipping over Hok—all of them blindfolded. Their combination of comedy and and daredevil tricks made the audience flip their lids, and I’m totally frettin’ for all of the other crews that have to compete against them.

Okay, so Team Millenia was in the bottom two yet again this week, and while I definitely felt that other teams were more deserving of this (Flykhickscough), I’m not shocked about it. They were pretty muched assed out from the get go; both Team Millenia and Boxcuttahz had the misfortune of ending up with the dumbest challenges of last week’s episode, after all. And being the comeback kids, “bottom two” was starting to sound less like a death sentence than a challenge to bounce back. But what is up with them losing to Ring Masters? Ugh?!

With this season’s line-up of crews, I was not putting my money on Team Millenia as the grand champions, but I definitely expected them to stay in the game longer than they did. More than that, they pulled off a wonderful performance tonight, and like the judges mentioned, Kristine Bueta (”Madonna”) danced her tail off. It wasn’t the best performance of the night, but it sure as hell was better than Ring Masters‘ performance, which was creative—I’ll give them that—but still incredibly lacking in terms of choreography, especially compared to Team Millenia.

Misc. notes:

Although I wasn’t impressed with Strikers All-Stars in the first episode, they definitely made me take a double-take last week when they executed that epic multi-man monkey roll, but at the end of the day, they were a little too Stomp for me. Tonight, these guys managed to channel their energy into “Gimme More” and turned it into an incredibly masculine routine. It doesn’t get any more manly-man than a huge phallic object, now does it?

Dynamic Edition, you guys are great cloggers and kind of adorable in a folky way, but I’m afraid that cheerfulness is what’s going to do you in. It’s either Man Up, or Man Overboard.

Fly Khicks, GO HOME.

Next week: WHACK TRACK CHALLENGE! The crews will have to dance to cheesy songs—I can’t wait for this!