Dancing With the Stars 2009: Week 3

Performance Night:

The third performance night featured two difficult dances: the elegant but fast-paced Foxtrot, and the notoriously hip-swinging Samba. Of note:

The biggest news of the night was the mathematical assassination of Steve Wozniak by the judges. In case you didn't know, he made headlines last week by accusing the show of being fake in some ways, and has clearly been butting heads with the producers behind closed doors. He apologized publicly for suggesting that the voting was rigged. But apparently the show was out for blood, because the judges gave him a total score of 10 points. This is the second-lowest score in the show's nine season history. It wasn't a great performance by any means (Woz did "the worm" at one point), but it was far from the worst performance ever. What's more, their comments were really harsh, with Carrie Ann Inaba saying that "it gets old at some point," while Bruno called it his worst performance ever. The whole show thrives off of people doing their schtick, and they've never suggested that mugging for the camera has been anything but laudable, even when it was hard for the viewers to swallow. Steve basically came out with his seemingly genuine nerdy persona, and the judges tore him apart. I think it gives the show much more of a black eye than it gives Woz.

Many of the other performances were complete train wrecks. I suppose this must have been the first time that they've only had a week to put together a routine from scratch, and it really caused some meltdowns.

Steve-O messed up so badly that at one point he was just kind of walking after his partner, Lacey. He ended by falling onto the stairs at the back of the stage. He looked properly embarrassed, and seemed to have done much better in rehearsals.

Both Holly and Denise were similarly terrible, completely losing the beat of their songs at times. Each of them looked very awkward. The judges were tough on both of them, and rightly so.

After two weeks of sleepwalking, Chuck and his girlfriend/partner Julianne finally performed up to expectations. The sudden turnaround means that they either decided to work hard this week, or were following a conscious strategy to save their best for a little later in the season, knowing that there are plenty of terrible dancers to be booted off first.

Gilles, Melissa, and Shawn all split top honors, getting a well-deserved 27 points apiece from the judges. There are some extremely bad dancers this season, but at least there are enough really strong dancers to make the final outcome unpredictable.

Here are the scores. The number in parentheses indicates the change from their previous performance (if any):

1st. Gilles and Cheryl: 27 (no change)
1st. Melissa and Tony: 27 (+1)
1st. Shawn and Mark: 27 (+3)
4th. Lil Kim and Derek: 25 (+2)
5th. David and Kym: 24 (+8 = most improved)
6th. Ty and Chelsea: 23 (+3)
7th. Chuck and Julianne: 23 (+3)
8th. Lawrence and Edyta: 20 (no change) = 36
9th. Holly and Dmitry: 17 (-1) = 36
10th. Denise and Maks: 16 (-5 = biggest slide)
11th. Steve-O and Lacey: 15 (+1)
12th. Steve and Karina: 10 (-7)

Elimination Night

This week, I learned how much the celebrity dancers get for appearing on the show. Apparently, they are all paid a flat fee of $200,000, no matter how early they are eliminated. The top three finalists get a bonus (winner gets $100K, and the other two get something less than that).

I also learned how the scoring works. Each dancer gets a judge score that depends on the percentage of total judge points they receive. So, if the judges awarded a total of 100 points, a dancer who got 15 of those points would get 15%. Then, they get another score that's dependent on their percentage of total audience voting. So, if 100,000 audience votes were case, a star who received 15,000 votes would get another 15%. Adding the two percentages together gets your total.

Now, the show has introduced the idea of the dance-off, so the two people with the lowest total scores have a chance to dance again and get some more judge scoring points. The dance-off can change everything, by altering those percentages.

Steve Wozniak's fan base must have really been out in force this week, because he wasn't even in the bottom two, despite his historically low score. Instead, Holly and Denise faced off against each other. Holly has been a little more likeable than Denise, but she also seems to have checked out somewhat after getting slammed by the judges three times in a row. Denise just seems like a terrible person to me.

I wouldn't have minded either of these two getting booted, but as it turns out, the honors went to Denise, who must have gotten significantly fewer votes than Steve and Steve-O. Well, at least she didn't drag her kids onto the show. I'm sure that would have been coming up had she been allowed to continue.




The Pool:

The three best guesses for TS (Shawn, Gilles, Melissa) all tied with 27 points apiece, so everyone got the Top Scorer guess correct. That means no points are awarded in that category. Five people got Steve as the BS, and receive 6 points apiece for their efforts.

In general, people thought Denise would exit somewhere in the middle of the pack. Only one person had her in the top three (Dawn), and one person had her in the bottom four (me). I don't think anyone thought she was going to have a huge fan base, but her complete lack of dance ability was a little bit of a surprise.



Rank: Name Current Score (+/- elimination, +/- TS, +/- BS)

1st: Matt 939 (-20, +0, +0)
2nd: Vegas 925 (-50, +0, +6)
3rd: Kim 922 (-40, +0, +6)
4th: Paul 912 (-20, +0, +6)
5th: Lisa 885 (-80, +0, +6)
6th: Carl 880 (-40, +0, +6)
7th: Dawn 825 (-100, +0, +0)

Dawn and Lisa had a rough week, each dropping huge numbers on Denise's departure. This sent Lisa from the top of the pool to the bottom of the pack, while it drops Dawn's score into the sub-sub-cellar.

I had a very good week, edging into the lead over Vegas, and Paul's week was even better. He, Kim, and I are all battling with Vegas for the lead right now, while everyone else has a little work to do before they can think about taking the lead.

For next week, please send me a Top Scorer (TS) pick, a Bottom Scorer (BS) pick.