Well, that was a very enjoyable hour with a lousy ending.
In the recap, I am very surprised to see Marissa is not actually in tears. Good for her! Shannon wins the “oversharing award” according to Tom, when she says that right before she and Derek went on she “threw up in her mouth a little bit”. Mmmm, sexy. Tom wonders “after a night of upsets, who’ll go home tonight?”
The Encore is a dance which Len explains we only saw a snippet of in the rehearsal footage and they really wanted to see the whole thing. Tom then announces Steve and Jonathan doing “The Mango” with Jonathan in the female role. Too funny. I am relieved no one called Chris Kattan because, let’s face it, the guy’s not exactly too busy to put on some gold shorts and drop by. These are two very secure dudes, I have to say. At the end of the dance, both guys fall trying to strike the final pose, but it hardly matters. Everyone is laughing and smiling while the guys do lots of manly handshaking and pointing, kind of like when John Candy thought he’d put his hand between two pillows in Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
We get another quick recap of the standings, and in their brief interview clip, Tony is so furious, he can’t be bothered to crack a smile, while Marissa’s is plastered on in a disturbing way.
We are about to find out the first two safe couples. Fabian has his eyes closed. Kristi is the first one safe, which I’m glad they went ahead and got out of the way. Next, it’s Adam and Julianne. He hugs her and then says, “Alright, let’s drink!”, which earns him a playful smack. Again, I must admit that I think he’s funny at times. Sue me.
And here we have Kylie Minogue, who’s making a comeback after her battle with breast cancer. She’s brought her own dancers along to accompany her in her first number, the new single, “All I See”. She’s rocking some platinum blonde Toni Tenille hair (yes, as in The Captain and…) along with a sparkly red minidress and some silver pumps. God Bless Her, she pulls it off. The song is decent, and she gets bonus points for singing live.
The audience chat segment from last night reveals that Sabrina Bryan thinks Priscilla Presley is beautiful, Bonnie Sommerville (of Eli Stone) likes Mario, and a couple randoms thought the judges were unduly harsh on Marissa. I tend to agree, even if she annoys me a bit with her excessive perkiness. It was like she’d taken Carrie Anne’s parking space or eaten all the donuts at the craft service table during rehearsal, and I didn’t get it.
The next two safe couples are Priscilla and Louis and, much to Samantha’s very biased delight, Marissa and Tony, whom she announces with a “Yeah!” I guess we know who Samantha speed dialed for on her cell last night. After the commercials, she’s backstage with the four safe celebs and Adam predictably hijacks the segment, joking that Marissa has no friends, plugging his movie, and mock-threatening Kristi and Priscilla. It might be funnier if he knew when to reign himself in.
Ah, filler, how I have missed you so. What follows is the show’s attempt at an April Fool’s joke about how the stars relieve stress off the dance floor. I was half-believing them with Jason’s ship-in-a-bottle building hobby, even with his awful line reading. But they went too far way too fast by “joking” that Marlee is a volunteer on the narcotics squad due to her heightened sense of sight. That’s not even funny. Who thought that was funny in the writers’ room? Shannon is the president of the MacGyver fan club, Kristi enters hot dog eating competitions (nice stereotype), Priscilla has a psychic hotline (more lameness), Marissa surfs, Cristian has a pet otter and–now this actually was funny–Steve says he goes home and “spins out some freestyle rap”. He explains that his “peeps and homies” refer to him as “The Gutemeister General”. He even beat boxes a bit. Suck it, Blake Lewis. MC Gute is in the hizzouse!
Well, here’s something to which I could never do justice. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater does a lovely combination of modern and spiritual dance that is accompanied by gospel singers. It reminds me of Showboat or The Color Purple and is the polar opposite of last week’s Cirque De Soleil deal. I just did a double take–it seems like there was a pretty version of Janet Reno in the audience. Yes, that’s what I said. Janet Reno.
Kylie Minogue is back, doing her big hit “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, which played constantly in the nightclub on the cruise ship I sailed on a few years back. She is now dressed as a chauffer who may also be a dominatrix. Mark and Julianne show up to do sort of a hip-hop cha cha that kicks ass. I really think I saw my all-time favorite dance move, The Lawnmower, in there somewhere! They are dressed in a combination of black and neon green that includes some lace-up booties and a tear-away skirt for Julianne. After the song, Tom tells us, “That’s the same outfit Julianne wears when she fights crime.” Marry me, Tom!
Backstage, Samantha is talking to the stars who still aren’t through to next week. Steve goes all Disney on us and says anything is possible if you believe and goes out of his way to give props to the wardrobe people, whom he just had lunch with recently. Someone, please hire this man. Tom feels he has a future with the Peace Corps.
After Samantha and Tom tell us to send in videos of ourselves dancing, which gives Tom the chance to make some easy America’s Funniest Home Videos cracks, there is a very long and worthless segment with an Expert matchmaker, Pepper Schwartz….if that’s her real name. I started to recap it in my notes, and decided it was so filler-riffic I wouldn’t trouble you fine people. Bottom line is she had all the dancers and stars fill out some personality profile and is deciding who makes the best couple based on only the profiles, since we’re told she’s never seen the couples “in action”. Ew. The way I know this truly useless? She concludes that Kristi and Mark are the “match made in heaven” because of their compatibility. Her dancing skills and legendary figure skating career have nothing to do with it whatsoever.
We’re slowly getting down to the final results, I swear. As the couples stand waiting, Fabian looks completely freaked, and doesn’t blink at all. Thankfully, he and Marlee are safe, along with Jason and Edyta.
Commercials. You know, whenever I see Sam Waterston pitching anything, I can’t help but think of the SNL commercial where he was selling insurance to old people to protect them from robots who would eat their medicine for fuel.
We are told that, again, there will be no reveal of the actual bottom two this week. Cheryl looks pissed! We’re down to Steve, Cristian, Mario and Shannon. Cristian and Cheryl are safe and there is much rejoicing. Shannon and Derek are also through. With only seconds left (maybe you should have cut out the dumb Matchmaker segment, hmmm?) Tom asks Len for his thoughts. He says they both bring great qualities to the show. Tom has to cut him off and says “cue the scary music!” Hee.
Wait a minute…The Gute is out?! What the?! On behalf of my partner EJ, we are both really heartbroken (he doubly so, because of Anna.) This is so uncool. I mean, Mario is a better dancer, sure, but The Gute! This sucks! He shakes hands with the judges and there are hugs all around as he says the show made him a better person. No, Steve Guttenberg, we are better for having spent this time with you! Here’s hoping DWTS keeps you around in some capacity. You rock!
