Dancing With the Stars 2009: Week 8

Performance Night:

This week, the dancers joined together for six-person team dances. The team dance scores will factor into the elimination score, but will not count towards the pool. Once again, I find myself short on time, and so won't be able to comment on each individual performance.

I will mention that Melissa has hurt her ribs, and so she was judged based on a dress rehearsal in which she was clearly not giving her all. Tom says she'll most likely be back next week.

Here were the individual scores:


1st. Lil Kim and Derek: 28 (+2)
2nd. Shawn and Mark: 27 (-1)
2nd. Gilles and Cheryl: 27 (no change)
4th. Chuck and Julianne: 26 (-1)
5th. Ty and Chelsea: 24 (no change)
6th. Melissa and Tony: 21 (-8)


Elimination Night

There's a sidebar competition taking place on elimination night in which different pros are competing to be on the show next season. This week, "what's his name" and "whoever she is" advanced.

We're really getting down to the nitty gritty. Usually at this point in the season, there are at least one or two embarrassingly bad dancers waiting to be eliminated. But this year, there is no Cloris Leachman or Jerry Springer or Marie Osmond to stink up the place. The worst dancer is Ty, who has actually improved to the extent that, on a good day, he's legitimately better than a couple of the other dancers on their misfires.

Surprisingly, Ty was not eliminated. He wasn't even in the bottom two-- it was the injured Melissa against Chuck. Country musician Chuck was bounced, along with his two-time champion partner, Julianne. Chuck has been scoring really well with the judges lately, and was an outside contender for the finals, so he must have really failed to generate audience votes for some reason.



The Pool:

The top score of the night went to Lil Kim, which meant major TS points for Kim. No one picked Melissa for the bottom score, so BS points went to those who tagged Ty as the worst of the best.

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

1st: Matt 962 (-50, +0, +6)
2nd: Kim 871 (-40, +30, +6)
3rd: Carl 828 (+50, +0, +6)
4th: Dawn 826 (-10, +0, +6)
5th: Vegas 824 (-40, +0, +6)
6th: Lisa 808 (-20, +0, +0)
7th: Paul 788 (-10, +0, +0)

I had a bad week after predicting that Chuck would win the season, but luckily, my lead was big enough to absorb the hit. Kim narrowed the gap between us, while Carl got a huge boost for correctly predicting that Chuck would go this week. He jumped from the bottom of the pool up to third place. That means that Lisa and Paul are left to fester in the cellar.

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