A light bulb turned on above my head last night. I was discussing “Step it up and dance” Bravo TV’s  latest reality competition show with Tonya.  In “Step it up and dance” dancers are given challenges each week like auditions, then split into a winning and losing team to learn choreography for their final challenge (or “call backs”).

The first few episodes were stale, and the final challenges were like casual rehearsals. The build-up during the show is tepid, and the endings always so anticlimactic.

As I was chatting with Tonya, I began to compare the other Bravo TV competition shows with “Step it up and dance” and realized that the formula is completely different.

In their other shows: “Project Runway,” “Top Chef,” and “Shear Genius,” the contestants have all been creators. In “Top Chef” contestants create their own dishes, in “Project Runway” designers conceive their own fashions to send down the runway, and in Shear Genius, hairdressers create styles revolving around their challenges theme.

To me, those shows are successful partly because of the drama, and partly because a lump of the show is watching each chef, designer, or hairdresser take their ideas from conception to final product in a short amount of time. We’re inside their heads for a few moments, and we watch their decisions effect their overall final result.

We don’t see this in “Step it up and dance.”

If I had my way the show concept would be overhauled, and redone to match those previous shows. Instead of just dancers, they would have budding and aspiring choreographers as the contestants. The challenges would then be revolved around what the choreographers/dancers create (alone and in teams) and how their music, costume selection, casting and other choices effect their work for the final challenge.

Watching a bunch of dancers rehearse, perform for five people, and squabble in an apartment is something anyone could do any day. I think “Step it up and dance” could be so much more.