I will use part of Karen's Cleveland review as a starting off point for my review of the Detroit show on Saturday night.

<< There were a lot of no shows and it seemed like the first half was over in a flash. No Dorothy, Sarah Hughes, Sasha, Irina, Lloyd and Isabelle (the women behind me said she was pregnant) and I'm sure a few more that I can't think of right now. >>

We didn't get any of them either, although I could swear that I saw Lloyd in the closing Bolero number toward the end. (I could be mistaken on that and it might have been one of the acrobats). I heard from a friend that Dorothy's injury turned out to be much worse than they originally thought, but again I could swear I saw her out there during Bolero skating right next to Todd at one point. There aren't that many ladies in the show with that short brunette haircut and I don't think it was Oksana Kazakova.

We always get add ons here in Detroit. This year we had Jaime Silverstein and Justin Pekarek skating their Latin OD and Jennifer Robinson skating to Nancy La Mott's The Summer Knows/Summer Me Winter Me.

I thought for sure with the coordinated opening number costumes this year that I would actually get to see Todd wear his for once. But of course Todd proved me wrong by once again wearing his #1 Eldredge Detroit Red Wings jersey for the opening number. Landed a double Axel in that.

A few miscellaneous notes before turning to Todd:

Philippe Candeloro tripped over his own two feet doing crossovers early in his Braveheart program and went down hard. He got up slowly and left the ice holding his lower back. It was initially announced that he was injured and couldn't continue, but then he came back out and started from the top, skating as well as he normally does. The only other fall that I remember was Oksana Baiul. And I think the fall on Michael Weiss' sit spin might be planned, because I know someone in the first half wiped out on a simple move and I am thinking that it was him.

If my eyes weren't deceiving me, Evgeny Plushenko landed two triple Axels in his new exhibition program. Elvis also landed a triple Axel.

I must be the only one who was hoping to see Todd skate to NY, NY because I had to miss the Grand Rapids stop on the Winter tour and had not yet seen it live. It is a fun program and Todd seemed to have a great time skating to it. The first jump was a double Axel which appeared to be a planned triple that went wrong in the air and Todd really opened up on the second rotation. It was a scary looking jump, but Todd was able to turn it into a clean double Axel. But he got right back on track after that, landing a triple loop, a very nice triple Axel, and a triple toe loop. Great crowd response both before he skated (he is always introduced here as "Detroit's own") and after with a partial standing ovation.

Back to playing off Karen's post: << I did love the finale and I am another fan guilty of watching Todd through the whole finale and missing some of the other skaters. Todd didn't miss a beat throughout the entire finale. He really looked sharp!!!! >>

Pretty much the same story here. I did watch a few of the other featured skaters, like Dan Hollander. But most of the time my eyes were on Todd. He spent quite a bit of time not too far from my section, but there wasn't enough light on him at that point to get my camera to take a photo. Todd landed a triple toe loop in his solo spot and the double Axel with the other guys near the end.

Todd and the rest of the COI cast have a few days off in Detroit before they head to Nashville for a Tuesday night show.