DWTS12 Week 5 Power Rankings

WORST THEME NIGHT EVER IN THE HISTORY OF DANCING WITH THE STARS.

I can say with complete honesty that I have never had such a miserable time watching the show as I did tonight.  The music? Horrible.  The costumes? Terrible.  The scoring? Completely assanine. To quote my mother, “Thank god the show was only 90 minutes tonight! I can’t take much more!” And to reiterate something Heidi and I agree upon on Twitter – the fool that thought “American Night” would be a super-duper idea needs to be fired and deported to Mexico (I think I originally said Canada, but Evaine informed us that Canada didn’t want him either :-)).  Anywho…guess it’s time to face the music…

1.) Hines & Kym – I think the judges must have literally just done some crack before watching this dance, because there was no way in hell it was “his best so far”, or even the best of the night.  I thought it was his worst – he barely moved, and the little bit of moving he did do was awkward.  Forget any sort of connection to the music – “Proud to be an American” is quite possibly the least sexy, romantic rumba I’ve ever heard on the show.  Even Hines & Kym themselves seemed shocked at the judges’ gushing – as if they themselves didn’t think it was that great. I just can’t figure out what the judges’ “angle” is for keeping him at the top week after week…are they gonna pull the rug out from underneath him in the semifinals and tell him he isn’t improving fast enough? Would make for a nice “shock” elim heading into the finals.  Or who knows – maybe they just really, really love Hines. Eeee gad…it boggles the mind.*shaking head* Luckily for Hines, he’s got a great score on a night with a decent points spread, and Steelers fans are now voting harder than ever before to counteract the efforts of some overzealous (and idiotic, I might add) Baltimore Ravens fans that are encouraging people to vote for “anyone but Hines” in order to get him voted off.  Ha.

2.)  Ralph & Karina – Ok, now on the flipside, what is the judges’ agenda for keeping Ralph from getting the top-scoring position week after week? This poor guy seems to have really turned into a punching bag…was that samba great, or Ralph’s best? Hell no.  But I think it was underscored by at least 2 points, given the crappy song he was given and the Herculean task Karina had in trying to merge samba with country.  He wasn’t terrible, and kept up reasonably well. For once, I was actually thankful for Carrie Ann – she pointed out how hard it was to do what they did, and how it fit in well with the theme of the week.  But alas, they are still part of the 3-way tie for last place – and you best believe TPTB are gonna milk that for all its worth.  “Early frontrunner tumbles into last place! Can the voters save him from flaming out?” Aaaand cue cheesy graphic of a firework fuse burning out.  I’m thinking that Ralph may be getting the lion’s share of the votes, hence the less generous scoring – but it’s also a boon, since I’m fairly certain that his fans are gonna vote that much harder tonight as a result.  I’m fairly certain he’ll be safe, but I hope TPTB know they’re playing with fire if they are indeed trying to make things more interesting…

3.) Kirstie & Maks – As nutty & off-the-wall as this foxtrot was, it came at a time in the show when I was really in need of a laugh & some entertainment – and thankfully, these two delivered, and they did so in a tongue-in-cheek fashion that made me think that they, too found this theme night just absolutely ridiculous and did this foxtrot in jest of the theme 🙂 I love the fact that these two don’t ever take themselves too seriously – I love the bond they’ve formed, and it’s great to see Maks so laid back and having fun with one of his partners.  As for the dance – not a great foxtrot, but definitely not the worst I’ve seen, and certainly not low on the entertainment factor. And praise Jeebus for John Travolta – the only person that could have salvaged the show from complete failure, and he certainly did. I think these two took the cake for most memorable performance tonight for me – and people continue to love Kirstie, so I don’t see these two going anywhere with a good score under their belt as well.

4.) Chelsea & Mark – *sigh* Just not sure what to make of these two anymore.  I find myself not totally loving their dances, but not totally hating them; and I vacillate between thinking that they could go all the way to the finale and thinking they could be in danger this week.  I guess I’m thankful that Mark at least tried to go the traditional route with this one (as traditional as one can go when dancing to a Miley Cyrus song), and Chelsea wasn’t a total failure – she seemed to at least try to get the hip action, and was thankfully aided by those fringed pants that seem to be kind to those who aren’t as skilled in the hip department.  It was fun, it was cute, it was fairly inoffensive.  I think their voters could possibly rally after last week’s whiplash scoring/critiquing, and their presence in the pimp spot tonight makes me wonder if last week’s stunt generated a lot of buzz for these two…and a good score certainly won’t hurt, either.

5.) Chris & Cheryl – Anyone else notice that the truly “patriotic” songs tonight seemed to get the best scores? I think this may have been a slight case of patriotic overscoring. 🙂 Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Chris – he’s funny, he’s cute, and he’s working hard – but this was just good for me…not great.  He did seem a bit stiff at times, and when he’s uncomfortable he tends to plaster a smile on his face that can look like a grimace.  I probably would have given this a 24…but once again, I think the judges are hellbent on having the whole “it’s anyone’s game!” illusion, so they may have tacked on an extra point or two for good measure.  Bah…I dunno.  I like Chris, and I want to see him do well – but I want to see him really earn a good score, and not just get handed one for the sake of excitement.  We all know what happens when some couples get undeservingly overscored – they stick around longer and don’t improve.  But I’m glad Chris has Cheryl, because she does seem to be pushing him.  Between their high score and their combined fanbases, these two are gonna be safe for at least 2 more weeks.

6.) Romeo & Chelsie – This was the one performance tonight that really made me smile 🙂 Seeing Romeo out there jumping around excitedly brought back shades of the joy I got from watching Sugar Ray dance – I knew Romeo would really get good once he was able to let go and really enjoy himself out there! This was actually a pretty good foxtrot – traditional enough to please fuddy-duddy Len, but with enough exciting open work to make it memorable.  I think Romeo’s excitement may have gotten the better of him a few times, but overall it was a pretty clean, consistent perfomance. The only problem I’m seeing with these two is that Romeo seems to be blooming a bit late – I’m not sure enough, quick enough, to really rally people to vote for him.  He doesn’t have the fanbase of favorites like Hines, Kirstie, or Ralph, and he doesn’t seem to be getting quite as good scores as Chris & Chelsea.  I’m hoping he busts some major moves in the next few weeks to stick around!

7.) Kendra & Louis – I believe my exact words upon seeing this “foxtrot” (note the quotations) were something along the lines of “WTF is this???” I counted maybe 8 bars of actual foxtrot in this dance – the rest was just a silly mess of cheesy jazz hands with a little bit of polka peppered in.  The judges got on Karina’s case for not having enough samba in her samba – yet Louis got away with murder on this one.  The little bit of foxtrot that was there was done pretty sloppily – perhaps that’s why Louis kept them in open position most of the time. Don’t even get me started on Kendra’s fake drama in her package, or her constant blathering about her bodily functions – it’s just digging her deeper into the hole she’s been digging since day one.  Do I think these two are in danger? Yes.  Can I say definitively that they’re going home tomorrow? I wish 🙁 But I think their few-but-fervent voters could save them again, and instead we could lose…

8.) Petra & Dmitry – Now the scoring seems to have set up a possible Petra/Kendra bottom 2 (I highly doubt Ralph is going to be in any sort of danger of not getting the numbers), but I worry that in the end Petra is just not going to be able to scrounge up the votes to beat Kendra.  And it really stinks, but I think she may have finally been scored appropriately for the first time in a few weeks – it just unfortunately happened during a week where she got the same score as 2 more popular contestants 🙁 Her quickstep wasn’t terrible, but she just looked soooo stiff and wobbly – and slow.  Had this dance gotten much slower, she would have just been doing a foxtrot.  Petra fans, take heed: if I were you, I’d vote with all of your might tonight.  Go create several new online accounts to get your votes in, because I worry that it could come down to the wire and Kendra might be able to eek out another week on the show – and I think we’re all pretty sick of hearing about her period by now 🙂 So please…let’s all cross our fingers, and do a little booty-shaking dance to the DWTS gods and pray that it’s Kendra sent packing!

Phew! Glad that’s over…I’m glad to be able to put DWTS behind me tonight, and I’m hoping that they trash American Night permanently and NEVER bring it back again.  Am I the only one that hated tonight? Let me know! Oh, and a few quick PureDWTS PSA’s for this week: as many of you know, Heidi is out of town, and may or may not be able to get her “by the numbers” post done for tomorrow.  I may step in to assist, but let’s cross our fingers that she does it, because she’s just so darn good at it 🙂 Also, our server has a 30-minute outage scheduled for sometime between 10 PM – 5 AM Mountain time tomorrow night – this likely won’t affect those of us in the Eastern & Central zones (unless you’re a night owl), but it could affect those watching out west.  If you can’t get on the site – don’t be alarmed, just wait a little bit and keep trying…we promise we aren’t shutting down.  At least not without a fight 🙂