Dancing with the Stars 1 - Episode 1 Summary

'What the hell am I doing?' By PhoenixMons

**Disclaimer**

This is uncharted territory in the summary world, so I'll try to keep the 'summary snark meter' to its maximum while still analyzing the actual dancing abilities of the stars.

Now, part of why I wanted to summarize this show is because I myself am a dancer. And yes, I'm a 'real' dancer: profesionally trained and with all sorts of national dance recognition. I thought this would be the perfect show for me to summarize as such. Plus, my husband hates watching dance-related shows with me because I yak and critique the entire time...now I have an outlet for my multitude of criticisms! Yay!

Now...let's get on with the show. Tom Bergeron hosts (save me now) and hopefully he won’t fill the evening with references to his other hosting duties of the past or with uber-corny jokes. I’m thinking that’s asking too much.

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Now…first things first, let's check out our 'stars':

Evander Holyfield - A heavyweight in tights...boy this is gonna be fun!

Rachel Hunter - Previously seen on a slew of other reality shows, apparently trying to milk her DAWdom for all it's worth

Joey McIntyre - formerly of NKOTB (and I can happily say - with a straight face - that I was never a fan) - tried to make a comeback as a solo artist in the late 90s - it was not pretty.

Kelly Monaco - of Port Charles/General Hospital fame. Jeez, her 'real' name even sounds like a soap opera name (my guess is it's a stage name, but if its not...well, she's got a groovy name)

John O'Hurley - Okay, am I the only one who noticed the fact that his name comes from two characters from Lost? John…Hurley…methinks ABC is trying to send us subliminal messages or something.

Trista Sutter - Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but being on a crappy reality show (not once but twice) and having an even more crappy televised wedding does not a star make. And moreover, Trista was a Miami Heat dancer. She's seemingly got a leg up (pun intended) on the competition with her dance background. We shall see as the competition moves on...

Couple #1

We begin the show with Joey McIntyre (“Singer”) & Ashly DelGrossa (“US Rising Star Latin Champion”). Joey claims to have been mostly a hip-hop dancer (which is analogous to saying that Britney Spears is a singer) and is glad to be learning some professional dancing. Ashley claims to have had a crush on Joey from his NKOTB days and wants to make the ladies in the audience jealous when she dances with Joey. They appear to have fun together (probably because Ashley isn’t exactly hiding her fan girl crush and Joey is enjoying being crushed on for the first time in 20 years).

And now to the dance…they will be performing a Cha Cha Cha (as opposed to a Cha Cha) to the song “Crazy in Love”. Now, I’m not exactly sure when “Crazy in Love” turned into a Latin dance song, but I think this is by far the worst part of the show. While we’re at it, why not Green Day’s “American Idiot” or 50 Cent’s latest hit, “Just a Little Bit”. Can’t you just envision the on-stage chemistry enhanced by such lyrics as “I wanna unbutton your pants just a little bit”?

Joey’s starting pose is something of a cross between Michael Jackson’s ‘Hoh!” and the “I’m the king of the world” from the Titantic. He looks very stiff and needs to relax his shoulders.

He gets more comfortable as the dancing continues and lo and behold, there actually DOES appear to be some chemistry between Joey and Ashly. They look comfortable together, Joey looks like he’s enjoying himself and his dancing is actually not too shabby. He ain’t walking home with any Ballroom dancing awards, but he looks like he’s taking this seriously. He had some good hip action and the footwork (while it was nothing difficult at all) was executed fairly well. The choreography obviously took into account Joey’s strengths and weaknesses and overall, they started the show off very well.

Let’s hear from the judges.

Len Goodman: looking for portrayal of rhythm, fun, and wiggly bums. “A Fabulous way to start this off”
Carrie Ann Inaba: “You could be a little sharper on your feet”
Bruno Tonioli: “Shoulders were a bit arched from time to time”

Headed backstage for some rather pointless banter with with Lisa someone...I’ve seen her somewhere before and after tonight, I hope I never see her again. Her interviewing skills leave much to be desired.

And the scores:
7 - 7 - 6

Couple #2

Next up: Rachel Hunter “Supermodel“ & Jonathan Roberts “US Rising Star Latin Champion”. Am I the only one wondering what the hell Trista’s ‘star’ status is going to be?
The rehearsal clips
“I’m not a professional dancer, Jonathan, if you cared to notice”. Yep, we noticed, but we don’t really care. And btw, Rachel is a textbook AD/HD lunatic (as am I). Her attention span is less than zero. This should be funny.

Dancing the waltz to “Three Times a Lady”

Rachel looks graceful and her arms and posture are definitely her strong points. She can thank her catwalk/posing background for that! She does not, however, appear to connect with the song or have any chemistry with her partner whatsoever. But they delivered a pretty solid performance considering they’ve only been working on this for 5 weeks.

Len: waltz looks for beautiful posture, hold and a few steps coming back together “not my cup o’ tea”
Carrie Ann: “you have gorgeous feet and beautiful posture”
Bruno: “You are a turquoise dream…Cyd Charisse lives!” - talk about exaggeration…picture Rachel Hunter in Something‘s Gotta Give…yeah, I didn‘t think so

Corny Tom joke #546

More useless little bits of backstage ’drama’. It’s really not worth the five seconds it’d take me to type up the backstage Q&As, so I am not going to bother. They’re worthless.

The judges scores:

7 - 6 - 7

And our first two couples are now tied…and we move on to a commercial break, but not before Tom gets in another corny and totally unfunny joke.

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