I hardly think a lower age limit of, say, twenty, would limit the pool of available pros or celebrities all that much. And, yes, I recognize that Julianne won twice before she was twenty. So what? Tony’s in his mid-thirties. Kym Johnson, the Australian champion, is in her mid-thirties. Most of the pros are in their mid or upper twenties. Louis van Amstel is 37, and he’s one of the best dancers they have.
As far as the celebrities go, hell, most of us have never heard of any of them before anyway, so it’s not like they have to go to extremes to get “big names.” The few whom anyone has heard of at the beginning of the seasons are usually lousy dancers anyway. There’s been exactly one person who’s ever won that I’d heard of before they appeared on DWTS, and that’s Kristi Yamaguchi (just short of 38, btw).
I’m just thinking that in a culture where, instead of the children wanting to grow up, the grown-ups (as a whole) want to be teenagers, it might be nice if there were a few publicly enjoyable things that were strictly in the province of adults.
Oh man … the roast was the best part of the finale! I sure hope they continue with it. The judges “Smokin’, Croakin’, and Flamin’”; “Gilles, you may not have had the biggest role, but you sure had the largest part”. That man is funny!
I found most of Jeremy’s lines to be obvious and unfunny and in the case of Melissa, downright mean, but I did think Smokin’ Croakin’ and Flamin’ was funny. In general, though, I find the roast idea to be awkward and unnecessary and I wish they would skip it.
I agree. I found a number of the remarks to be mean-spirited, and only a few (some of the ones mentioned here, but not all) to be at all funny. They pay this guy to do comedy?
Of course, I haven’t found “Dance Center” to be particularly funny either. And if I could go the rest of my life without seeing Jimmy Kimmel, I wouldn’t mind a bit. So it may be that my idea of funny is not in line with the majority of the people here at SDMB (or earth, for that matter).
I’m not going to defend either Roaster Guy or Kenny Main as great comedy out of context – but in the context of having fun with a show I enjoy, nope, I enjoy it and laugh at it. What I love about DWTS is the combination of cheesiness with the acknowledgment of the cheesiness – the show takes itself seriously in terms of the commitment to the competition, but doesn’t take itself too seriously. I like the willingness to poke fun at itself, exemplified by the choice of Tom Bergeron (who I think I’ve mentioned a few times I have kind of a crush on, because I think he’s legitimately funny both with scripted stuff and with ad libs) and by the decision to do roasts and satires within the show.
Agree that we can skip the teenagers, though. The need for a seriously sexy attitude in most of the Latin dances makes for some skeevy moments when they’re danced by young uns.
Shawn has had much more coaching on how to win gracefully (and practice winning things, too).
Was I the only one who was sort of skeeved out by the prom thing? I remembered it during the recaps. The “older man sets up mock prom for teenager” vibe just seemed like an exploitative situation.
I thought it was a perfect formula for making a teenage girl get a serious crush on a young man, and as such, ill-advised on his part. I didn’t find it skeevy, but her very youth makes her vulnerable to the possibility of seriously crushing on her partner even without a “prom.” We’ve seen it happen with much older contestants (where fortunately, at least in the ones we know about, it was reciprocated). This is particularly true for a young Olympian, who practically by definition has had abnormal lives, and I would think would tend to be very inexperienced in this kind of social interaction. I guess what I’m driving at here is that I’ve assumed for quite some time that Shawn has a really bad crush on Mark, and that Mark doesn’t reciprocate because she’s so very young. He treats her like a girlfriend in some ways because that’s kind of part and parcel of being her partner, but I can easily see how a girl that young could misunderstand it, and his throwing a “prom” for her wouldn’t have helped.
I think I’m projecting here; I could easily see myself in her shoes feeling that way. I hope she’s either smarter or less vulnerable to that than I was at her age (lo, these many years ago).
You’re right, he’s 23. It still seems exploitative to me. Maybe part of that is that it is practically a tradition for male professional dancers to exploit female students who are crushing on them. Usually it’s elderly widows bilked out of their life savings, but Shawn also seems innocent and vulnerable.
**Oy![b/], just as Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford has his Sports Curmudgeon character, I shall dub you our Dancing with the Stars Curmudgeon.
These kids today with their dancing and their jumping and their hipping and their hopping. Why in my day we put on nice clothes and danced properly! Adult swim works well at my pool – why not on Dancing with the Stars!
This is supposedy a show about ballroom dancing. As I said with respect to the “youth” competitions they’ve had during some seasons’ results shows, as far as I’m concerned, it’s inappropriate for children to do this kind of dancing as a public performance. It’s fine to have competitions attended by friends and family, but when I hear a man in his sixties describing a twelve-year-old’s dance with the words “It had passion,” I get squicked out. I also don’t care much for hip-hop. Just a matter of taste, there. Nothing wrong with it, but I’m just not wild about it, and supposedly this show isn’t about it.
But there’s more to this. We’ve become a society where, rather than children eager to grow up and assume the privileges (as well as the burdens) of adulthood, the adults not only try to be teenagers themselves, but they glorify adolescence in both its virtues and its flaws. For example, I think the movie Heathers was a wonderful satire on the adult glorification of teen-aged angst, which we’ve now seemed to make a requirement (or at least a virtue, signifying depth rather than the sulkiness and brattiness that it often is in reality). Since I don’t find teenagers particularly appealing (harkening back to when I was one, they just aren’t all that), it seems to me that we could at least reserve a few privileges to grown-ups, and maybe create at least a few incentives for wanting to exceed seventeen.
So, sure, I’ll be a curmudgeon, if a female can be one. But please understand, it’s not that I think my generation was great and these kids today suck. Although, when I see some kid shuffling along with six inches of tightie-whities showing and his pants crotch around his knees, I must say I want to smack him silly. Fortunately, that particular fashion seems finally to be passing. I hope.
Wait, Oy!. If you’re talking about a desire for them to get rid of the stuff with the 10 and 12 year old dancers having competitions, then I’m right there with you. I find those to be awkward and not compelling to watch.
If you’re saying that they shouldn’t have a Shawn Johnson or a (whatever his name young actor guy from last season), then I disagree.
I also didn’t like the young dancer competitions on results night for the past couple of seasons. I don’t mind having them dance on the show (the kids from Maks’s studio were cute). Adding the competition thing and especially the judges’ commentary was just not to my taste.
As to the rest of my taste, I like DanceCenter - I’m just sorry they only got to do it once this year. I’m not so much a fan of roasts and I don’t find Roaster Guy funny, so when I didn’t laugh for the 30 seconds or so that I watched, I felt no problem with fast forwarding the rest of the way through that section.
I have no problem with the teenagers doing latin. My problem with Shawn during those was that she couldn’t pull off the emotion (some teenagers can. Some adults coughMelissacough can’t).
I find it distasteful to watch them tell a teenager to make a dance more passionate or seductive. Especially a girl like Shawn, who seems to me likely to be less experienced than a typical girl her age because she’s spent all of her time being a gymnast. But, seriously, I find the sub-adult dancers, both pros and “stars,” generally distasteful. Doesn’t mean they’re not capable dancers. I just find it conceptually distasteful, and I don’t see any lack of available pros or “stars” that makes it necessary. They could set a lower age limit of twenty and still have an abundance of people to choose from in both categories.
I see I’ve rather over-used the word “distasteful” above, but I don’t know what other word to use. What I feel here is less than disgust, but headed in that general direction. The whole business of very young dancers on national TV seems unseemly to me, if that works better.
ETA: If that makes me a curmudgeon, I can live with that.