Dancing with the Stars -- DWTS -- Spring 2011

Someone needs to buy Romeo some chapstick so he can quit sticking his tongue out. He looks like a frog. His dance was good, but that was really distracting.

Jericho is growing on me and is a really good reminder of how good a pro Cheryl is. However, the two of them doing a Viennese waltz to “America the Beautiful” was a bad musical fit. Almost as bad as the rumba to “Proud to be an American” (danced by the Aussie). I don’t think theme weeks are inherently bad, but this one was not well thought out.

Have any of the damned theme weeks been thought out? Has there ever been a week of DwtS where they didn’t have half a dozen songs hideously inappropriate for the dances they were supposed to be doing?

Foxtrot to American Woman, which last time I looked, was not exactly a paean to America (and was absurd to try to foxtrot to)? Seriously? Proud to be an American, which was so cheesy that I was sure I remembered it from Wag the Dog (which caused me to watch that after DwtS, where it turned out the song I was thinking of was The American Dream. :smack:)? Where’s the vomit smiley when you really need it?

I thought Karina’s attempt at integrating a two-step into a samba was clever and technically skilled, but Ralph was not at his best this week. She might have been better off with straight samba.

Chris looked fantastic. It’s so easy to lose sight of the fact that Cheryl won two out of the first three seasons, and she’s really, really good at making non-dancers look good with her choreography. She got kind of over-shadowed by the Hough clan for a while, but she’s just as skilled as ever.

I guess Petra’s quickstep was OK, but I just don’t enjoy watching her. She leaves me utterly cold.

Romeo must be dealing with some serious issues, but thus far, he’s really managing to deal with them effectively. He seems so painfully anxious to remind the world that he is black and male and cool, but underneath that he is so very, very anxious to please, and he’s done a darn good job of letting that part of him dominate his performances. It’s like there’s this really sweet kid who has been told over and over that he will be an utter failure if he isn’t cool enough. When he manages to let that go, the really sweet kid shows through. And the really sweet kid is a good dancer. Props to Chelsea.

Hines appears not to have passed puberty. Kym is a genius. That man doesn’t seem to have a romantic or dominant bone in his body; he’s just a nice big, goofy kid. But she really teaches him to fake it well. Louis is wrong. Dancing doesn’t have to be any more honest than anything else; if you go through the right motions and your audience has the right expectations, they’ll read the emotions in for themselves.

Kirstie’s foxtrot seemed quite flat. But I just can’t over how much Maks seems to be enjoying this season, and what a difference that makes to his own appeal.

Kendra, welcome to DwtS rather than whatever daytime talk show you’ve been in so far. Not enough time in hold, but very nice dance.

I thought Mark’s choreography was just fine this week, and Chelsea danced very well. It was a fun, festive samba, just like a samba should be. Chelsea could use some hips. I don’t mean she needed more hip action: that was fine. She just needs a little broader hips. I kept thinking her bottom was going to slide down to her knees because she didn’t have enough hips to keep it up. I wonder if they superglued it on to her.

Results show just aired. No big surprise.

Sorry, can’t discuss dancing right now, not when I’ve had to sit though songs like those.

You know, looking back on it, I can’t even see the damn point. It’s been over six decades that we went to war for a righteous cause. Our Afghanistan and Iraq boondoggles pretty much demolished any claim we had to the moral high ground and are bleeding us dry. There is nothing inherently good or noble or honorable about dying for our country, something which his been painfully obvious since at least the Vietnam War. As for the civvies, well, you’d better start giving them jobs and homes and futures before you start preaching to them about how wonderful America is. This tribute struck me as at worst offensive and at best lazy.

But even the laziest reality show needs to put some thought into the presentation, and for DWTS, that means music. Oh, boy. Y’know, I’ve come to expect a certain level of thoughtless inertia from our pop culture. If it’s a video game franchise with any kind of dance music, it will have YMCA (and nothing else from the Village People). Loud, dramatic movie trailer? O Fortuna. Cheery commercial? Walking on Sunshine. Sports team won the national championship? Some slow-paced, shrieky operatic number sung by a flamboyant homosexual. I’m just saying if it’s America-themed music, there’s a lot to choose from. Heck, have a song performed by the band America, just for the hell of it. But no, we had to have God Bless The USA for the jigaafillionth time.

Huh…well, here are my power rankings. From least to most annoying song.

  1. Chelsea Kane - Party In The USA
    I think it speaks volumes that this took the top spot. Really, so long as you don’t have to actually look at Miley Cyrus, this one’s perfectly fine.

  2. Romeo - New York, New York
    Frank Sinatra is actually a nice fit for this show, given his cabaret background. Okay choice. Think the city’s kinda overrated myself, but let’s face it, nobody wants to do a song about Albany.

  3. Petra Nemcova - Viva Las Vegas
    Fast-paced rock & roll doesn’t exactly say “ballroom” to me, but at heart this is a song about devil-may-care hedonism. You certainly could do worse for a fluffy reality TV competition.

  4. Chris Jericho - America The Beautiful
    I’ve heard arguments that this would make a better national anthem than The Star-Spangled Banner. I don’t agree; it’s nothing but insipid glurge, and the word “God” has no place in a song with any official significance. (And before you ask, “under God” was added to the Pledge of Alleigance at the height of Anticommunist hysteria, I think it’s completely out of place, I’m appalled that it’s still in it, and I always thought making dumb kids pretend to pledge alleigance to anything was stupid anyway). More or less par for the course for this week.

  5. Ralph Macchio - Sweet Home Alabama
    What’s worse than a song glorifying Southern redneckitude? A song not glorifying Southern redneckitude, in fact rather shamelessly mocking it, which DWTS pretends is glorifying what it is mocking. Dumb, dumb song choice.

  6. Kendra Wilkinson - Yankee Doodle
    Blech. From insipid glurge to mindless jingoism. Getting into “actively hate” territory.

  7. Kirstie Alley - American Woman
    Why does seemingly no one remember what the freak this song is about? You can download it from Amazon.com. Both Guitar Hero and Rock Band have covered it. It’s not like it’s some forgotten relic. If Libya had a version of Strictly Come Dancing, this is one of the songs I’d expect to see on it. Oh, and bonus points for the implication that Kirstie Alley is completely undesirable and should just go away.

  8. Hines Ward - God Bless The USA
    Wow. Just…wow. I never thought it was possible. DWTS took the most schmaltzy, syrupy, goopy, glurgy, loaded, trite, simpleminded, empty, ear-bleeding, stomach-churning, vomit-inducing song imaginable…and made it worse. This…this is like fouling a sewer. Like poisoning cyanide. Like blowing up rubble. Just incredible. Would it have been that freakin’ hard to find a male singer so you don’t have to BUTCHER THE LYRICS? Huh? It didn’t help that this was on pretty much nonstop rotation during the entirety of Operation Desert Storm, made a resurgence after 9/11 (boy, those were the days, huh?) and, much YMCA Absolutely. Will. Not. Die.

Seriously. This Is My Country would’ve been a thousand times better. Heck, the only reason we found that song so irritating was that the Chevy commercials played the same 15 seconds over and over ad nauseum. One minute and change, no problem.

<Sigh>…here’s looking forward to something good next week. It absolutely has to be better, that’s for sure.

The highlight of the results show for me was Anna and Jonathan’s dance. I wish there was more of it. Have they changed the results show dances this season? I would have sworn they used to show the dancers throughout the entire song. You’d see the singer in the background as they danced. This season we’re getting long stretches of only the singer, then a few seconds of dance and then back to the dancers. That’s disappointing especially since this is a dance show.

I love Mike Catherwood’s package with the bloopers. Did Chelsie Hightower lose her falsies? I know they are stuck inside the bra, and I can easily see how they could fall out while dancing. Or was that her bra? I can’t imagine how a bra could fall off. The shoulder straps wouldn’t let it hit the floor like that.

I’m disappointed that we lost another wonderful celebrity tonight. Petra was such a breath of fresh air. She was there just having fun and raising awareness for her foundation. I know she wasn’t a great dancer. But, there’s others on the show that aren’t much better.

DKW, just to give you a heads up - next week is supposedly Guilty Pleasures week. That apparently means songs you’re embarrassed to admit you like. Considering what they apparently weren’t embarrassed to like this week, that’s kinda scary.

I get the impression that Maks knows the he and Kristie will stick around as long as they appear to like each other (the creepy Svengali thing with Brandi last year hurt Brandi’s chances) and that he takes over as the hot one.

Kristie has a sense of humor about herself, which must make her a lot of fun to work with.

Yeah, I don’t think it’s an act, because I don’t think Maks is that good an actor – he seems to genuinely be having a wonderful time with Kirstie. This looks like one of the most “yeah, we really are friends” partnerings of recent memory to me.

I missed last night (my massive nerd crush on Simon Schama, who was speaking at the Free Library, trumped any need to see a shirtless Maks again) – anything interesting happen?

Hanson was on!!! (I don’t know if you’d find that interesting, but they’re my favorite band, so I’m terribly excited about it.) They’ll be on tonight, too.

He had a shirt on (though unbuttoned and open while tucked in) but he was completely clean-shaven. Boring.

Maks wasn’t shirtless, and he and Kirstie did a nice samba. The music seemed a tad slower than your typical samba, so Kirstie didn’t die during the performance.

Chris got contender’s anxiety, and delivered a tango that was less than ideal because he was too tight.

Romeo was really, really good, dancing the waltz to My Heart Will Go On, of all things. Very fluid, very romantic. He seems to have left the brat behind, at least for the moment. He got a 10 from Carrie Ann, and 9s from the others.

Chesea did a quickstep that was fast, fun, and clean as a whistle, and got the same scores as Romeo.

Kendra did a samba, and ended up on the judges’ desk, shaking all she had in their faces. Bruno called it “The Revenge of the Stripper.” I think there’s a good chance she’ll be the one to go home tonight. It’s not that she’s bad; it’s just that the others are either better dancers or more appealing. But Louis has done an excellent job of keeping her out of Montel-land and on dancing.

Hines did a nicely flowing Viennese waltz.

Karina took a tumble on the dance floorearly in the Paso, and Ralph hauled her up and got her back to the dance very well. It was admirable.

I felt bad for Ralph and Karina. It looked like they could have gotten very high scores last night. Karina got tripped up in Ralph’s long coat. They recovered but the judges couldn’t give them any tens.

I’m a little worried about tonight. Sure Hope Ralph gets another chance to dance.

Chris Jericho had the weakest dance last night. He may be in the most jeopardy tonight.

I bet they give Ralph and Karina the encore so they can do the routine without the fall.

I’d like to see Kendra gone, but her dance wasn’t bad at all. I do think that Chris Jericho may be in danger, which would be sad.

Sounds like a good show. It’s at the point in the season where there are very few bad dancers left, and it’s down to who was least good on any given night.

Alas, I’m only going to see the second half of the show – it’s a 90-minute Glee tonight.

Haven’t gotten to see it yet. Thanks to severe weather alerts.

I see it’s reported that Jericho got axed. Not surprising. I thought Cheryl was way off her game in that dance too. I wondered if she’s dealing with that thigh injury from a couple weeks ago. It may have been the weird music that wasn’t appropriate for the dance. Or maybe just an off week for both.

Chris was clearly expecting that result. Sorry it wasn’t Kendra, who I’m starting to really dislike.

I agree with you, but on the plus side, at least the lowest judges’ score for the evening went home. Since I’d just as soon eliminate the audience voting altogether, I really can’t complain when the lowest scorer is eliminated.

I’ve been very surprised at Romeo’s progress. He is getting better every week. I never thought he’d drop the hip hop attitude and embrace dwts. But, he really seems willing to do whatever Chelsie asks.

Hines has surprised me too. I thought he did great this week.

I’m enjoying this season a lot more than the last one. The personalities are so much better and genuine.

The 1 NIGHT I’m not up to see Kimmel! SONAVABITCH!