Dancing With the Stars: Week 1 Results

The first week of the season certainly had a lot of hours of programming. Two separate two-hour performance nights, punctuated by an hour-long results episode, for a total of five hours.

If you didn't watch, or didn't watch all of it, here's a look at how the celebrities scored. The first number represents their score on the first night, the second is the second night.

Brooke: 23 + 26 = 49
Toni: 22 + 23 = 45
Lance: 22 + 21 = 43
Warren: 21 + 22 = 43
Misty: 21 + 21 = 42
Cody: 18 + 23 = 41
Maurice: 18 + 21 = 39
Kim: 19 + 18 = 37
Susan: 15 + 22 = 37
Ted: 18 + 19 = 37
Rocco: 14 + 21 = 35
Cloris: 16 + 16 = 32
Jeffrey: 12 + na = 12

As you can see, there were some surprises. Warren out-dancing Misty? Brooke blowing everyone away?

There were also some non-scored surprises. For example, 82 year old Cloris has the body of a 69 year old. Unfortunately for her, 69 is still too old to perform any dance moves. The fact that she's uncomfortably doddering and slow on the floor is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that she's uncomfortably uninhibited and foul-mouthed when she's not dancing.

Other notes of interest:

Elimination #1: Jeffrey Ross

Jeffrey was cast as the "Adam Carolla" of the season, but he, sir, is no Adam Carolla. Adam makes a living by being an entertaining personality in spontaneous situations, while Jeffrey is known for his stand-up comedy, which translates poorly to this format. Even his one-liners were lame (he said he was less cha-cha-cha and more ha-ha-ha). Combine that with the creepy eyepatch and the godawful dancing, and you had a very predictable, and very deserved, first boot.




Elimination #2: Ted McGinley

I'm not sure what happened with Ted. He was likeable enough, with a level of humility that was appropriate in the context of dancing on TV. He wasn't the best dancer, but he certainly wasn't the worst. In fact, he scored better than Cloris and Kim, which means that he generated fewer votes than either of them. You would think that the attractive, middle-aged man would have done well with the demographic that supposedly watches this show. But I guess he was just too forgettable when it came time for voters to pick up the phone, which is a shame. Not so much because he was terrific, but because some of the other dancers were so much worse.


Biggest Insult: Judge Carrie Ann gently told Kim that she wasn't "at the level of the other dancers." It hurt because it was true (with the exception of Cloris). The famously derrierred Kim had an inspired song choice when she danced to Sir Mixalot's "Baby Got Back," but she looks lost out there.

Best Line:
A couple of standouts, but Maurice cracked Kim and I up when he got his score and blurted out "Winner, winner, chicken dinner!" An instant classic. Runner ups include Cloris, who became the second contestant to call Carrie Ann a bitch, and Jeffrey, who said "I thought Edyta was supposed to be easy on the eyes" (she scratched his cornea, and he sported a spangled eye patch all week as a result).

Best Personality:
There were a lot of genuinely appealing people, but Warren's ebullience is just too (ahem) big to overlook. He can't dance as well as Emmitt Smith could, but he's even more fun.

The Contenders:
Brooke, Toni, Lance and Warren had the best cumulative scores for a reason. Give yourself a pat on the back for each of these stars you predicted would make the final four. There are lots of other people with potential, but these four are looking good right now.

The Danger Zone:
Things look pretty bleak for Cloris, and Kim. Really, if anyone other than Cloris goes next week, it's a travesty.


The Pool:

With two eliminations and two sets of performance results, our pool scores were all over the place. Because it's the first time some people have seen the scoring, and because there were double-eliminations, I over-explained everything.

The first night, your Top Scorer (TS) pick was the person that you predicted would win the season, and your Bottom Scorer (BS) was the person you predicted would be first eliminated. Discounting Brooke's top score, which no one predicted, 8 bonus points were awarded to anyone who had Lance or Toni winning (which turned out to be everyone but Dawn and Kim). The three people who picked Jeffrey to go out first got 16 additional bonus points for BS (the fewer people get it right, the more points those people get).


At that point, the pool looked like this:

1st: Mike, Lisa 1024 (+24)
3rd: Kim 1016 (+16)
4th: Matt, Rick, Carl, Paul 1008 (+8)
8th: Dawn, Experts 1000 (+0)

After Jeffrey was (deservedly) eliminated, the scores changed again. Everyone who predicted Jeffrey out first got a 50 point bonus, while the rest of us lost some points:

1st: Mike, Lisa 1074 (+50)
3rd: Kim 1056 (+50)
4th: Matt, Rick 998 (-10)
6th: Experts 990 (-10)
7th: Dawn 980 (-20)
8th: Carl 978 (-30)
9th: Paul 968 (-40)

For the second performance night, five people got 10 point bonuses for correctly predicting that Toni would be the Top Scorer (TS). Meanwhile, Paul and Paul alone got a big 40 point bonus for being the sole person to predict that Cloris would be the Bottom Scorer (BS). The Experts also gain 40 points for the same reason (but since they're a nonentity, they don't detract from Paul's bonus). That left us here:


1st: Mike, Lisa 1084 (+10)
3rd: Kim 1056 (+0)
4th: Experts 1030 (+40)
5th: Paul 1018 (+50)
6th: Rick 1008 (+10)
7th: Matt 998 (+0)
8th: Carl 988 (+10)
9th: Dawn 980 (+0)


Finally, Ted got the boot, marking the second and final elimination of this hectic week. Not a soul among us predicted him out second, so we all lost some points-- but some of us lost more than others. Here are our current standings:

1st: Mike 1074 (-10)
2nt: Lisa 1014 (-70)
3rd: Kim 1006 (-50)
4th: Experts 1000 (-30)
5th: Matt 988 (-10)
6th: Carl 978 (-10)
7th: Rick 958 (-50)
8th: Dawn 950 (-30)
9th: Paul 938 (-80)


So as it stand right now, Mike has gained almost every point you could gain in this pool, and has thereby earned his lead. Lisa and Kim are battling for second, and the rest of us are just glad we're not Paul.