And what’s worse is that I enjoyed pretty much every minute of it.
What a weirdly intriguing show. For those of you who don’t know, it goes like this. Several ‘stars’ are paired up with professional dancers. The couple is introduced to the audience via clips from the sessions when the pro tries his or her best to transform the star into a presentable dancer. Then, pair by pair, they come out on stage, everyone applauds, and the dancing begins. After the dance, the couple goes face to face with three judges, who offer their words of encouragement or ridicule. Then the couple goes backstage and chats a bit with a slightly snide woman wearing an evening gown and tons of makeup. Then the judges give their scores, which are added up for an overall score. Then the woman in the evening gown announces the number viewers can call or text to vote for that particular couple (that part was confusing, because I’m not sure which scores – the judges’ or the callers’ – are used to determine which couple leaves. Maybe it’s a combination of the two.) Then, after a commercial break, the next couple.
It’s easy for me to blame this all on my friend John, who says he does not watch television but has been talking about this show since July, and so I will. “Margaret Cho is going to be on, and so is Florence Henderson, and Bristol goddamn Palin,” he’s said, many times. And they all were. Florence Henderson was surprisingly trashy, I thought. Equally surprising was Bristol, who was introduced as, I believe, a teen activist, or advocate, and was – I hate to type this – glamorous. Margaret Cho talked about her weight problem and her mommy. She made her angry Asian emperor face during her performance and, in a maneuver that probably required more skill than any of the evening’s dance moves, fell right out of her partner’s arms during their Viennese waltz and crash landed on the stage. Although the judges did not concur with me, I thought the fall was fantastic.
As long as I’m confessing, here’s another: as much as I rail on dumb jocks and pro sports, oh boy, the football player and the basketball player. The football player – Curt, or Kurt, somebody or other – had his dance partner come to his house to meet his family prior to his training. There was something charming about that, I thought. There was something charming about his dancing as well. I’ll bet he’s polite in the bedroom, or the locker room. The basketball player was even better. He’s tall to an extent that looked grotesque in the footage from the training with his partner. But, when these two took to the stage, it worked. I don’t consider myself a critic but when I was watching him I thought, man, that guy stands up straight – he resembled a very erotic crucifix at one point during his performance – so I was pretty pleased with myself when the judges oo-ed and ahhh-ed over, among other things, his posture. I cannot recall his first name, but his last name, aptly enough, is Fox.
