A Snarky 2011 "Dancing With the Stars" Wrap Up

Pic of the Day

So the season of Dancing With the Stars 2011 is over and my kudos to all involved for a great show, fabulous performances, good talent and some comedy.

The winner was no surprise at all to me or most anybody in America, I suppose.

For J.R. Martinez is not only a great dancer, he's also a veteran and a war hero. He wears the scars of his encounter with an IED with no shame. He's personable, he's attractive, he's intelligent and creative. What's not to like?

It was a mixed bag with many of the other contenders, especially the second place loser-burger from that attention-grabbing family from hell. For you can never, DO NOT FORGET, have too much Kardashian in your life.

The contenders went home in the following order:

Artest, Ron

Canalis, Elisabetta

Cavallari, Kristiin

Phillips, Chynna

Kressley, Carson

Bono, Chaz

Arquette, David

Grace,Nancy

Solo,Hope

Lake, Ricki

Kardasian, Rob

Martinez,J.R.

Some strange things about the above. As it always seems to go on this series, some really good dancers are sent home early for no other reason that I can ascertain except that the American voters want to keep the lesser-talented in the action a bit longer.

Chynna Phillips should have finished in the top five at the very least.. She scored at least a 21 on her first four dances, was at the top of the leaderboard the first week and scored a 26 on her fourth dance. Yet she was sent home on 10/10/11.

Elisabetta Canalis began the competition rather poorly with a cha-cha that only scored her 15 points. The next week she came back with a Quickstep that scored her a 21, an increase of six points. The for no apparent reason she was voted off.

Kristin Cavallari scored a 19, 22 and 24 on her first three dances and was then, oddly, voted off.

Meanwhile, lover boy Robbie K wallowed in mediocrity at best, never scoring a perfect score save for the very judge-subjective last performance night during the freestyle and flash dance rounds.

Freakazoid Chaz Bono scored 17,17,18,21 and 19 on HER first five rounds. I do not care how many artificial organs this woman has had added to her body, she is NOT a male and now she has a reality show flaunting her weirdness, couldn't have her go home sooner, could we?

Carson Kressley did at least as well as Rob Kardashian, even though the lad was reeling from the divorce of his older sister, the inhumanity of it. At least Carson had a personality of sorts while Rob played the part of the lunk. No wait! You say he wasn't acting? Well one can never have enough Kardashian in their life, do not forget this.

I think Ricki Lake got cheated out of second place. I think Rob, even allowing his heartbreak over the breakup of his sister's marriage, was artificially boosted by judges who gave him high scores on two dance performances that didn't have any specific rules, making the meddling with the voter outcome all the easier.

Remembering that DWS combines the judges' scores with the public votes, to better promote stars of ABC and ABC own shows of course.

I have no problem with what I consider a kind of cheating on this show. ABC pays to put the show on and ABC has a right to try and steer the results to an end that would please the public and pique their interest in new show offerings.

It's just that I want to point it out is all.

Dancing With the Stars 2011: For Hope, too little too late;For Ricki, almost…;For Rob...ah, not so much…For J.R.-Has it all.

Pic of the Day

As of this writing it’s down to the top four in this season’s Dancing With the Stars. They call this the “Semi-finals” . I’m not sure why.

 

Nancy Grace, ah, she didn’t make it. But goodness and praise alleluia, how on earth did she even make it this far? Nancy’s better than Chynna Phillips? Even Carson Kressley danced better than the ever-pouting Grace!

 

First, let’s get this out of the way. The Peoples’ Choice awards is accepting nominations. If interested in nominating Dancing With the Stars, bearing in mind that this IS the PEOPLES’ choice and that DWS is one of the more watched of all the competitive reality shows, to give it a vote, go here.

 

Below, two score grids maintained after every episode, sorted from the lowest to highest, the scores for the performance evening and the total score to date for each contender.

Now about these final four. God bless Rob Kardashian as the boy dances on even through the heartbreak of his sister’s recent marital breakup. He’s not so good; then again, he’s not so bad. If Rob were to win an award it would be for the most steadily improved. Even Carrie Ann said Rob represented what

the show was all about and I almost sobbed. Rob and his partner Cheryl did a quickstep, they scored a score of 27 and a 24 for something DWS calls the instant dance.

 

The instant dance was the jive for this performance evening. The concept behind the instant dance is that there is an extremely limited time for the dance couple to prepare for their performance, proving, I must suppose, that without endless hours of practice and painstaking choreography, does the contender really have what it takes?

 

Nancy Grace, who was eliminated the following night by audience fiat, danced the Tango with her partner. She got a 24 for her Tango and a 20 for her dance of the instant Jive. While I had issues with Nancy and her sparkling witty personality, I thought Len’s rude comment about Cinderella packing up for time to go home to be humiliatingly mean. Like, okay, I got his point, but is denigrating a contender in front of millions really the way to go?

 

Hope Solo, dear Lord all season long this poor volleyball player got beat up for not being sexy enough. As I see it she’s a darn good dancer and I frankly am not convinced that being sexy should be some major criteria of dance ability. By me Hope often danced as well, if not better, than Ricki Lake. Hope isn’t quite as well liked and personable as Ricki and God knows

she’s not sexy enough. Let it not be duly noted that Hope has a partner who is probably the least liked of the professional dancers. I have no stats on that, just a hunch. Maks’ assertion recently that DWS was HIS show was a clue. I take exception with the man’s insistence on dancing shirtless though I shouted with joy that the man couldn’t conjure up a shirtless look appropriate with his dance assignment of the Quickstep.

While Hope and Ricki receive close scores of late, on an overall basis, no way does Ricki Lake out dance Hope at a distance of 257 to 234.

 

Ricki Lake has been one great dancer to watch this season, both in terms of her great costume looks, her steady and very noticeable improvement and goodness but she’s lost some weight hasn’t she? For a while it seemed that Ricki would improve at such a rate that she’d soon pass J.R. and maybe wrest the trophy ball away from him. But it’s like Ricki went so far and….stopped.

Yes, it is what it is and while the contenders in this show improve over the course of time as would be expected, the natural talent is only there to a point. Hope Solo still has lots of dancing improvement left in her. Ricki Lake has reached her peak.

 

Now what could anyone say about J.R. Martinez? This fellow is the best contender, EVER, on Dancing With the Stars, don’t doubt me. First, he’s a natural on the dance floor, that was obvious from the very beginning. Next,

he’s a veteran of the armed services. Finally, he’s a hero, he’s scarred from his service to our country, HE’S why Dancing With the Stars was invented, contrary to what Carrie Ann said.







Order of finish, no great trickery of prediction:

 

• 4-Rob Kardashian
•  
• 3-Hope Solo
•  
• 2-Ricki Lake
•  
• 1-J.R. Martinez

 

May J.R. go on to bigger, brighter and greater things, God Bless Him forever. 

Finally, a video compilation of the most recent dance performances.

 

Dancing With the Stars performance show airs on ABC, Monday nights-8p/7c, with the elimination show the following night, 9p/8c.

Dancing With the Stars-Five Left, Predictions for Top Five In Order

So let's get this out of the way and suffer any scorn associated with my stance. Chaz Bono is NOT a male and I am a bit sick of the pretense we all endure to be "polite". One can, for a weird perversion, have one's breasts cut off. One can take male hormones that make facial hair appear, damn I have facial hair without the male hormones. One can, however it works, be fitted with an appliance around one's genitalia that functions like male genitalia. All of this no more makes one a male than donning a monster costume makes one Godzilla.

Yet throughout this series we are all referring to Chastity Bono as "he" and SHE is NOT a HE. We are born what we are and if we don't like it we can surgically do things to our bodies to imitate the secondary sexual characteristics of the sex we wanted to be at birth. We can also have scales surgically affixed to our skin to better imitate Godzilla. Neither action makes us another sex or a monster from Japan, in that order.

Here's a pic I came across of Chastity when "HE" was a "SHE". The other person in the pic is Jennifer Anniston.

At any rate, good ole boy Chaz has been out of the competition for a couple of weeks now and he sure made a stink about it. Which is a real smile in that Chaz, be it male or female, was one of the worst dancers, EVER, on DWS!

There were seven left this past Halloween week and in honor of the holiday the Dancing With the Stars dances were even more costumed than ever and there was a spooky group dance featuring three contenders in Team Tango: Nancy, David, J.R., pictured below. Team Paso featured Ricki, Rob, Hope, which danced way better than their Tango competitors

As for their individual dance routines, three contenders came out on top, the most surprising of which was Rob Kardashian. Carrie Ann thought it his best dance so far, and this so close to the tragic news of his sister's pending divorce. I thought Rob did quite well with his Tango. Rob tied with perpetual leader J.R. Martinez.

Hope Solo performed well though the poor child can't seem to get sexy no matter how she tries. I thought earlier in the series that Hope would do way better than she has what with being an athlete and with the advantage of youth. As it is she's barely kept up with Nancy Grace, whose days on DWS are now limited. In fact, Nancy was one of the bottom two.

Nancy did not get the boot this past Halloween however, in that David Arquette, a contender who started so awkward but greatly improved, got the audience veto. David dances better than Nancy Grace but David is not very personable, and that's being nice. Nancy has just the cutest twins.

Ricki Lake continues to astound. This past week she had something called a "rib neuropathy" which is what we all get at times when we're winded. The whole thing added the required drama and pathos as we always have at least one injury with one brave dancer suffering the pain to entertain us. Ricki always looks

good when costumed, she dances quite well, she's lost a lot of weight. She's not going to win this thing, however.

J.R. Martinez is a lock to win this thing and I say good on him. First, he IS a very good dancer. Second, he's a veteran of the military forced forever to wear a damaged face from an explosion in the field. Third, he's got a pleasant personality. How on earth could he not win?

This past episode was not J.R.'s best performance but so what? We all have bad days now and again.

My order for the final five:

5-Nancy Grace

4-Rob Kardashian

3-Hope Solo

2-Ricki Lake

1-J.R. Martinez

Below the score grids for the night and to-date, sorted in order.

Below a video summary of all the dances for the performance round of DWS on 10/28/11.

Dancing With the Stars 10/2011, Heartbreak and Surprises

It seems as if every year some of the most promising contenders are eliminated early on. In this season’s Dancing With the Stars, as of this writing, there are eight contenders left. Chynna Phillips and Kristin Cavallari have been eliminated and let us now bow our heads and ask ourselves, seriously, Nancy Grace or Chaz Bono are better than those two? In mid-September both Cavallari and Phillips were consistently in the top three and four, well above Grace and Bono. Sure Phillips messed up her Tango on the performance show of 10/10/11 but she’d been at the top of the scoring all the performance rounds before this mishap.

Kristin was fourth in the overall scoring the night she was sent home, that’s four out of ten contenders at the time. Kristin’s to date score the night of her elimination was 65 while Chaz’ was 52 and Grace’s was 58. Yet she was voted out?

It’s kind of like the election primaries. It begins more on strength, or lack of, personality, rather than the talent for the job. Chaz Bono has the weird thing going on that had her born a female and now dancing Rumbas and Sambas as a male. Nancy Grace has a reputation as a hard-as-nails prosecutor and the scripting has her working the dance floor both in practice and performance with that same persona.

Americans voting for elimination across the fruited plains voted more for a desire to see more of certain contenders for their persona or compelling story rather than the strength of their dance.

With the Republican primary, for example, we had Texas Governor Rick Perry coming out of nowhere to beguile and bedazzle and dominate the headlines. Polled voters, way before any primaries will eliminate or nominate, said in droves that Rick Perry was their man. Same with Godfather Herman Cain. He’s intrigued with his common sense speaking style, the novelty of a possible presidential election with two black men as the contenders, the concept of Cain’s non-political-ness.

Which is not to say that Cain or Perry won’t go on to win the Republican nomination, goodness, as voter polling doesn’t actually eliminate a contender as with Dancing With the Stars. Everybody with any political sense knows Romney’s going to get the nod, but I digress. But it’s how it is with Americans. They wrap their minds around something new, or unique, and for a while it is all the rage.

Chaz Bono and Nancy Grace are unique. Chynna and Kristin were stock models. The voting reflected America’s temporary fascination with the un-ordinary.

Rick Perry and Herman Cain are unique, new to the national political scene, objects of intrigue. The polling reflects America’s temporary fascination with the un-ordinary.

Mitt Romney, God Bless, is such a political fixture, Lord the hair, the affable smile, the glib speech, the constant change in political stands as is a perfect politico’s wont, he’ll get the nod.

Understanding that I don’t necessarily want it that way but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Dancing With the Stars and the Republican Presidential Nominating Process, who knew they were so similar?

As the field tightens, Americans get serious about it all. Too bad Chynna and Kristin got the boot before American’s got bored with the dancing man/girl and the ever-mad TV prosecutor.

This past elimination round Carson Kressley got the boot. Kressley should have preceded Cavallari and Phillips out the door, no doubt, but Carson too had an allure. He’s an out of the closet homosexual, a dancer America wanted to see have a go at it for a few more rounds. But Carson had three left feet that eventually overtook his whacky sense of humor.

So with eight left, let us make some soft predictions. I stand firm on my prediction that J.R. Martinez will win this thing. I think that Hope Solo will improve geometrically to possibly snag second place. Ricki Lake, for now with my God-given right to change my mind, is my choice for third place.

Dancing With the Stars performance show airs on ABC, Monday nights-8p/7c, with the elimination show the following night, 9p/8c.