So, is it a retrospective when it’s a re-airing years later ?? I’m going with yes  As I mentioned in an earlier post, we can’t promise that we will do these every week, and we can’t promise they will be as long as the regular Cheesecake Awards…but we can promise that we will try to be our obnoxious selves.  On with the show…

The Bad Acid Trip Award: The old “kaleidescope” opening credits

Courtney: Soooooo glad they got rid of that cheesy nightmare – damn near gave me a grand mal seizure.

Heidi: I think I may have actually had a seizure every time it was on because I’m lacking in recall.

The “Trying Too Hard” Award: Brian Fortuna

Courtney:  Admittedly, I actually missed a good deal of this season when it was originally airing, since I was still in college, working, and too broke for TiVo But what really struck me is that Brian (who I had all but forgotten about until that opening pro number in week 1) was just…too much.  The dude seemed like he was trying waaaayyyy too hard to make an impact and carve out a niche for himself on the show.  The face pulling, the exaggerated dance moves, the overgelled hair, the jewelry – just…no, dude.  He was like young Derek and Mark lite – but not as talented.  And quite possibly the best part of watching these old episodes years later? You already know that he ain’t going to be around for very long – kinda makes me wish I had a tin can phone system that could reach the past and tell him “Dude, you may as well dial it back about 5 notches…you’re not gonna be around much longer, anyway.  Don’t strain yourself.”

Heidi: The thing that got me is what still gets me with Mark sometimes. The SMILE. Jesus dude. Almost constant, fake looking, very big smile.  Mark has that same glazed look from time to time where he would habitually have a smile on his face but it doesn’t seem to reach his eyes or he’s not really feeling it. It’s like perma-face or something. Hard to explain.  Brian does kinda look like Derek’s younger, squirrely, annoying brother.  The less attractive brother. But everyone knows that to be a Hough you have to have blond hair and blue eyes.  Freakishly strong genes in that family.

Courtney: Brian could be the weird cousin of the Hough family.  Kinda like cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch…never did quite understand his purpose.

The Early Incarnation of the Troupe Award: The opening pro dance on the week 1 performance show

Courtney: Even pros have a learning curve, kids That opening pro number looked more to me like something we’d see from the troupe these days - felt kinda low energy, there were some synchronization issues, and the overall impression was just kinda “meh”.  Plus the ladies’ dark green costumes almost seemed too muted to really match the high energy of the music.  Elena was like an early, dark-haired, slightly more understandable version of Oksana – it had been awhile since I heard her talk, but I forgot how thick her accent was.  And Brian? Totally an early version of Sasha. I guess this could still be considered the “formative” years of the show, as I recall most of the really good pro dances didn’t start until seasons 5 & 6.

Heidi: Oh thank god, I thought it was just me who watched that number and found it to be severely lacking compared to 5 & 6.  Everything was out of wack on this sucker – of course, Edyta was present and she and Alec always seem to have trouble with synchronization…but I don’t think it was them this time. It was the whole thing. There was a high level of suckage.  I blamed my reaction on the zero Derek quotient, but I guess that wasn’t it if you saw it too.

Courtney: There was one bright spot to that whole ho-hum pro dance: did you see Julianne & Tony doing a star lift at the end??! I had forgotten what a freakishly good lift team those two were.  For those unaware – the star lift is widely considered the hardest lift to do in ballroom dancing/figure skating.  And this is the only one I think we’ve ever seen on the show…and probably will ever see, as I don’t think there are any other female pros as daring as Julianne and strong as Tony (and he ain’t getting any younger).  Chelsie’s pretty good, but I don’t even think her lifting chops compare to Julianne’s.  *sigh* Those were the days…

Heidi: You’re right – I did see that and it was impressive. I do seem to recall that there are other pro dances where they do the cray cray stuff. And do it well.

The Award for Dancers Most Likely to Have Road…I mean Ballroom Floor Rash: Cheryl and Anna for NOT Sliding across the Floor on their bums during the first Dionne Warwick Pro Dance

Heidi:  Hehehe…please don’t tell me that I’m the only one that saw this. The men do that turn, holding the women off the floor and then they let go so the women can slide across the floor a little way? Well Anna and Cheryl came to a very abrupt stop. You could almost hear the sound of skin against wood. Aren’t they wearing something on their legs though??  Sure didn’t look like it. I laughed.  And said “ouch”.  And then I laughed again. I am mean.

Courtney:  If it was a choreographic choice, the only reason I think they picked it was because camera blocking would have messed up a full slide.  It did look rather abrupt…and painful.

The “You Don’t Know What You Got Until It’s Gone” Award: Samantha Harris

Heidi: Yeah, so I was marveling at how good Samantha was and thinking, “yeah, be careful what you wish for” – then she totally bungled the elimination. They’re getting ready to tell someone they’re in the bottom two and Samantha blurts out  ”Paulina and Alec” way before she’s supposed to (and she stumbled all over it) – then to try to cover it, starts announcing all the remaining couples names. So who were the ones also in the bottom two? Paulina.  Who ended up going home? Paulina.  :::rolls eyes::: Then she totally messed up the camera blocking for her and Tom’s segment in the balcony.  But hey, she still had a better night that Brooke probably would have.

Courtney: Yeah, I kept musing over the fact that Samantha was such a natural at the whole hosting thing – great ad libber, rarely stumbled over words, and had more than one facial expression And I thought Samantha was the better dresser, too – no weird hairdos or freakishly tight dresses. But yeah – the Paulina flub was pretty bad.  Then again, I think it’s kind of hard to be flustered about it when we already knew she was marked for death…another plus of retrospective viewing of DWTS I still have to wonder what Brooke did in her hosting audition that just blew the producers away…I can’t imagine that Mel B. or Melissa Rycroft could have crashed & burned that badly.  Did they just like Brooke’s boobies?

The Award for Oxymoronic Script Writing: The Writer Muppets for “Dionne Warwick and the sexy salsa version of ‘Do you know the way to San Jose’”

Heidi: OMG, really?  How did Samantha manage to say that without busting out laughing? Seriously – look at that sentence, then listen to the song and watch the presentation of it on DWTS results show. A) Neither the song nor the singer are sexy. To quote Simon Cowell “Very cabaret, darling”.  B) Putting two young chicks in skimpy costumes and have the kinda sorta salsa together also makes the song neither sexy nor salsa. They kinda looked like back up singers from Tony Orlando and Dawn or something. Only they weren’t singing, they were kinda dancing. Kinda.

Courtney: Did they pull those two chicks off the corner, slap some costumes on them, and just command them to “dance!”? It was seriously making me laugh – you could tell they were either forgetting their choreo or never had any to begin with, because one always seemed to be watching the other to see what they were going to do next, and were always a second or two behind them.  I think towards the end they gave up on the dancing and tried to play up the girl-on-girl factor: “Ooh, look, we’re acting like we’re gonna kiss…sexy, no?” And Dionne seems to barely remember the words to her songs, let alone try to infuse them with some sex…then again, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” always seemed rather repetitive to me…just a bunch of “San Jose”, “freeway”, “L.A.” and “lose my way” strung together with a bunch of murmuring in between.  I think I was more entertained watching Dionne duke it out with Starr Jones on Celebrity Apprentice last year…

The Award for Best Bit that I Don’t Remember Ever Seeing Before: Jimmy Kimmel and Guillermo Dancing Tango

Heidi: If you can call it dancing. More like we’ll diagram all the steps out on a fancy board, but we can’t actually do them so we’ll hold hands and jump up and down.  Guillermo could use a good waxing. He should talk to Tony.

Courtney: Sorry, I thought this was weak sauce compared to Dance Center – and it rather baffles me why they chose Jimmy Kimmel of all people to do this segment.  I mean, I know he talks about DWTS on his show, but I generally don’t find him funny.  Jimmy Fallon? YES.  Jimmy Kimmel? Not so much.  But I guess I’ll give this one an E for effort…and Guillermo did look rather fetching in his tango getup

The Lurking Premonition Award: Donny Osmond cheesin’ it up in the audience

Courtney: Yep, he was attention whoring as far back as season 4, kiddies – and just think: it would still be another 4 seasons before we’d see him on the show. Plenty of time for him to lurk around in the audience.  Ugh.

Heidi: I have to admit, after listening to what Tom said when pointing out Donny (“…has a new show called blah blah airing blah nights on blah…”) I LOLed.  So, Donny goes on DWTS to promote some new show. Said show presumably fails, so he decides he needs to one-up Marie and go on DWTS.  And he’s never been the same since.  Seems a tad bitter that people actually won the show AFTER he did. Like they should have just ended it when he won, like they couldn’t do better. :::rolls eyes:::