Desperate for Perfection on Dancing with the Stars Finals
Watching the first night of the finals of Dancing with the Stars left me a little disappointed. Here we are with the finalists of Mel B, Marie Osmond, and Helio Castroneves, but none of the performances left impressions of perfection. The judges picked the first dance style then left it open for a freestyle performance.
Spice Girl Melanie Brown and partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy were first up doing a cha cha, the first ever dance the couple performed for DWTS. They showed a lot of improvement over the weeks of competition, but they weren’t perfect getting a score of 28. Their freestyle looked too easy to show off the advances made by Mel B. She didn’t look challenged, especially for a dance in the finals. The judges reflected this with a score of 27.
Marie Osmond and Jonathan Roberts are the surprise couple in the finals, voted in by the fans. The judges pointed out that Marie is not technically superior in her dance steps, but she entertains the crowd. But maybe not this time… Her samba fell way short of perfection getting a 24. Then Marie’s freestyle was downright freaky with that doll theme. Marie’s supposedly “one of the top designers in the world with dolls,” but translated into a dance, the thematic routine was just bizarre. This got the lowest score of the night with a 22.
However, I still have to acknowledge Marie’s charisma and connection with her fans. After getting all 8’s for her samba, the look of disbelief almost had me sold and wanting to vote for this scoring travesty! She coulda sold me a used Toyota Camry at that point. Just look at the disbelief and sorrow.
After her freestyle, Marie commented that “she’s in the finals, is almost 50, and just did flips in the air. Gimme a break.” Unfortunately, this is the finals and getting a break is nowhere to be had at the peak of competition. Wouldn’t you rather have seen Jennie Garth and the choreography of Derek Hough in the freestyle finals (a MILF and a DILF?)? Yeah, me too.
Lastly, Helio Castroneves and Julianne Hough had a shot of perfection, but they too fell short. The judges picked one of Helio’s poorer performances, the jive, for his repeat performance. Even though the fans went crazy after the number, the dance did have a lot of flaws and mistakes, nowhere close to perfection. From a scoring standpoint, they redeemed themselves with their high octane, almost perfect freestyle getting a 29 out of 30. But it felt like the judges conceded scores of 10 since this was the last dance of the night and comparatively was better than the freestylings of Mel B and Marie. Head Judge Len Goodman gave Helio and Julianne a 10 but looked disgusted when he said that was the best freestyle of the night by miles. I’m thinking the desperation for perfection led to this score more than anything else.
One note. Did you catch Fly Girl, Carrie Ann Inaba, give a verbal bitch slap to the Spice Girls when critiquing Mel B? Funny. Wonder what the Cheetah Girls thought about that?
The two-hour finale is tonight at the same time the UH basketball team takes on the Eagles of Coppin State. Will perfection be found on the dance floor Tuesday night?
Related: DWTS Season 5 Recap
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