Yeah, so he didn’t really have a shot but it breaks my heart a little that an attention-whoring Reality “star” gets more votes than an Astronaut and pioneer of his day. Then again, I grew up in an age when we looked up to people like Buzz Aldrin for their accomplishments and deeds, nowadays all you need is a reality show to be famous.
I feel old.
Now get off my lawn!
I disagree.
In the past year, I’ve taken two beginner level dance classes (they were styles of dance I’ve not done before). I know what someone who’s never danced before looks like after 5 weeks at 1 hour each week (so very little reinforcement and a lot of time to forget) in a group class with little to no one-on-one attention.
Even given that the Paso is a mean 2nd week dance (I don’t remember anyone doing really well on it until later in the competition), based on my observation, Kate (who started with three weeks of intense practice and is now getting five days of one-on-one dance instruction for four(?) hours a day from a world class dancer/dance teacher) is below average. The typical housewife or factory worker isn’t going to be on the PCD’s level, but they’d probably be better than whatever was going on on Monday night.
Yeah, I agree – shouldn’t have exaggerated. The PCD is a lock for final three. with Evan and … someone else, possibly Erin; possibly Niecy, I think. It’s a weak field, other than the top 2.
Some very bad choices this year – Buzz Aldrin was a bad choice, Jake was a bad choice, and surely they could have come up with a butch athlete who has some sense of rhythm instead of Numberboy? I think Kate Gosselin was also a bad choice. Please, producers, in future seasons, require some kind of minimal level of body competence before you put someone on the show. Please.
What do you mean by this? I’ve only seen her when she was on SYTYCD and not DWTS, so I’m curious.
DWTS is about ballroom (and Latin) dancing, with no other genres at all, unlike SYTYCD. Because of the design of the show, the expectations of the judges, and the capabilities of the (more or less) untrained “stars,” the show doesn’t push a whole lot of boundaries in terms of choreography or performance.
And that’s fine – the show embraces that. It’s cheesy, it knows it’s cheesy, and we fans love the cheesiness. We are occasionally given a dance that really, really works as a performance (Derek’s futuristic paso doble last season will live in our hearts forever), but mostly this is about ballroom dance.
Lacey can’t quite come to terms with the cheesiness of it all, though, and she keeps trying to inject some level of hipness into what she does. That’s problem one. Problem two, which is related, is that she does her choreography with an eye to the performance, the overall presentation, which means that she’ll work relying on the skill level of the better dancer – herself – and kind of “fill in” with her partner around that. Again, not in tune with the vibe of the show, which is to show off the partner, who is, after all, the “star.” The pros who continue to do well season after season use their partner as the starting point, and work towards presenting that star well, whatever his or her skills (or limitations). Derek does this really well, Tony does this really well, Kym does this really well.
I think Chelsie is guilty of this same thing - she dances and flashes around her male partners sometimes - just hoping to slide by with her skills vs. her partner’s abilities.
I agree with this, and will add Cheryl to the people who do it really well. But I don’t see the cheesiness. Not hip != cheesy. Ballroom and Latin are styles of dance with rules. Sticking to the rules isn’t cheesy, even though it may not be hip. But your analysis is right; I think Lacey has trouble with accepting Ballroom and Latin for what they are rather than trying to make it “cool”, and with accepting her proper role as frame rather than picture.
Btw, I still go to YouTube now and then and search for Futuristic Paso. What a great performance! As if I needed anything to cement my respect for Derek as a choreographer.
I don’t think the dance genres per se are cheesy, but the attending frills – spray tans! spangles! – definitely are, and I think a lot of the filler material, humorous commentary, etc., is cheesy as well. Needless to say (and yet here I am saying it…), I don’t think cheesiness is necessarily a problem – it’s not exactly a secret that I love, love, love the show – but there’s a very retro, family-friendly feeling to the show that in the year of our lord 2010 comes across to me as “cheesy.”
We may just be arguing semantics, though – I’m not invested in that word, if you’ve got a better one. 
OK, well, yes, the world of ballroom is in and of itself pretty cheesy, what with all the sequins and stuff. But it’s a very self-aware cheesiness, at least on the show (I’m not so sure in the real world of competitive ballroom dancing).
But the retro, family-friendly quality is something I’d actually describe as wholesome, rather than cheesy. As I said in a different season’s thread, one thing I like about the show is the absolute sincerity of it. Irony gets tired after a while, and on DwtS, only Tom Bergeron is ironic, and he, as the Greek Chorus, is allowed.
Yes, we’re quibbling about words. Can you of all people think of a more fun thing to quibble about? 
Kudos to all of you. This was the most wonderfully erudite discussion of a dancing competition reality TV show I’ve read in a long time.
Speaking as someone who has glued rhinestones in her cleavage and spray-painted her husband’s eyebrows to match his hair, oh yes, we know it’s cheesy, even in the real ballroom world.
I guess that’s good. I’m not sure. I wonder if you’d enjoy it more or less if you didn’t realize it was cheesy.
I wonder about people like the Houghs. One of the things about Julianne that I used to like was her real-world comparative good taste in choice of costume. Often she managed to dress in ways that wouldn’t get her laughed out of a non-ballroom dancing forum or picked up on charges of street-walking. I can’t remember ever seeing Derek in truly formal dress, i.e. tux or white tie; he’s almost always either in some kind of character costume or extremely self-effacing in his dress (black pants and white shirt). They grew up within the ballroom dance culture; I wonder if their dress is not a kind of very polite, non-confrontational rebellion from or rejection of it.
Kinda off-topic, but how many people have seen the movie Strictly Ballroom? After several seasons of DWTS - I’m ready to rewatch it.
That movie is what I had in mind when I questioned the world of competitive ballroom dancing’s awareness of its own cheesiness. But the attitudes in the movie were exaggerated and from a different era even when the movie was made; Luhrmann was satirizing the ballroom dancing culture of his relative youth in the seventies (he was born in 1962), which had (he said) moved on even before he wrote the play in the mid-eighties. Or so I recall from the Bonus Features on the DVD.
Tonight was a major improvement for everyone. Even Kate was watchable.
Pam is definitely improving. She could be in the top three. Erin and the Pussycat Doll are struggling. I was very surprised with Nicole Scherzinger. She seemed out of it tonight.
I’d like to see Chad go next. The guy couldn’t even focus on his performance. Flirting with the judge? WTF? He’s supposed to be concentrating on his footwork.
Oh yeah, Niecy please stop with the tribute dances. It makes judging very awkward. I’m sure her brother was a great guy. How can the judges criticize the dance without kicking his grave?
Dance because you want to and leave it at that.
First time I ever watched this. I foudn it amazingly boring. I was impressed with Pamela being able to do the splits though.
All right, I haven’t really had anything to say before now (I found the early weeks painful to watch, especially Buzz Aldrin*); I’m going to punch out everything I got right now before going to bed.
Re. ringers: Given that they guarantee a watchable performance with no tedious drama, painful-to-watch blunders, or stupid excuses each week, I say let’s have more of them. Seriously, all this hemming and hawing and snittiness over mediocre scores is getting incredibly old. Just once I’d like someone to say, “Yeah, it wasn’t that great. Whaddya gonna do?”
I saw Nicole for the first time tonight, and she was great. Elegance, poise, fluidity, grace, everything you’d expect from a champion. I agree that it’s far from a lock at this point, but I don’t care, I just want her to show everyone how it’s done week after week.
As for…Pete, is it? (the one who was 2nd lowest last week)…he’s definitely a bit rough, but he’s my sentimental favorite, and I definitely want him to go as far as he can. It’s very simple: He’s actually having fun out there. He’s smiling and laughing and hamming it up and treating this exactly like the silly spectacle it’s supposed to be. Know how he dealt with the near-elimination**? He put it behind him! Oh, sure, he didn’t enjoy it, but today’s another day and everyone’s starting from zero, so why make a big deal of it?
This is the first time I ever saw two sets of scores. Could someone fill me in on this? It seems so sudden, but if it was a spur-of-the-moment decision I think there would be more talk about it. Personally, I think it’s a welcome addition, if only because it makes it twice as hard to bail out a pathetic scrub with a flood of votes. Time to face the real world, VFTW!
** I hope it’s sunk in for everyone by now that there is no such thing as “nearly eliminated”. It’s in or out. Well, maybe if scores carried over, but you can guess the odds of that ever happening.
Jake, actually. And yeah, he’s not all that good at the moment, but he seems to have the right attitude, as opposed to, say, Kate, who is driving me round the bend with her incessant whining (as edited by the producers, at least).
It’s an one-off experiment for now, and, frankly, one I hope they don’t repeat, as it didn’t seem to really add anything interesting. All three judges handed out individual technical and performance scores that were either dead even or within one point of each other, pretty much across the board. I have no idea whether real ballroom competition uses such a system, but at this level it seems needless complication.
Random thought of the week: I’m coming round to the notion that the rumba is actually one of the hardest dances for non-pros to do well. Some combination of slow pace and difficulty varying the steps and moves enough to give a distinctive performance, I guess. Nicole, as usual, was best this week, but even she had problems with it.