October 24, 2006: Double Dancing, Double Standard
Monique Coleman has been all about girl power and "representing the women" these past two weeks, as she remains the last female star standing in this competition. Though she feels the female stars have been judged more harshly than the male stars this season, the more obvious double standard that the judges have been applying isn't so much a male vs female thing as a Jerry vs non-Jerry thing. Their comments to
Jerry Springer go something like this (and I'm paraphrasing): "Jerry, great job for just getting out there and trying. And bonus points for moving around a bit." Their comments to everyone else: "Mario, good job and all, but be careful with the floppy arms.... Joey, well done, but watch the somewhat sloppy turns." The judges admit that Jerry's not doing the same level of dancing as the rest of the contestants, but then they go and give him all eights for his fox-trot, which he sort of walked through. Yes, Jerry is older than his competitors and he did appear to take his dancing more seriously this week. But really, he peaked a few weeks ago with his heartfelt waltz and then his joyous samba. As much fun as he's been, it's time for him to go so that there can be a truly competitive final four.
Speaking of competitive,
Emmitt Smith really stepped up his game this week. He's never given a bad performance, and he's done some great dances, but this week he earned his first 10s with two wonderful performances. While the waltz can sometimes be a boring dance, Emmitt's execution of it was anything but. So light on his feet, he glided across the dance floor. It was my favorite performance of the night, but his mambo was also impressive. I think he's going to pull ahead of
Joey Lawrence and we're going to see Emmitt and
Mario Lopez in the finals. That makes it sound like Mario is a given to make the finals, and of course it's not safe to assume anything in a competition like this. But barring a major dancing mishap on Mario's part or a sudden fan backlash against A.C. Slater, he most likely will make it to the final round. His dancing last night was smooth and entertaining as always how much fun was that in-sync jive? And how much fun would it be to see Mario and Emmitt go head-to-head at the end? Both are so light on their feet, both give such lively performances.... It would be a good matchup.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The finals are still a few weeks away, and Joey and Monique are still in contention. Monique did some solid work, but she did run into a bit of bad luck this week, none for which she is to blame. First she got her foot caught in her dress, but she kept dancing and didn't let it affect her quickstep. Then she had the misfortune of having to dance the paso doble to an '80s song (the only poor song selection of the night - the producers are getting better with this overall), and at the end of the dance Louis appeared to just drop her on the ground. Ow! And despite opening an umbrella indoors, good luck seemed to rain on Joey as he finally improved his dancing after a few weeks of going downhill. His
Gene Kelly tribute was cute and well done, and with his mambo he was noticeably looser and really seemed to be enjoying himself.
Perhaps Joey will get a chance to improve some more. He started climbing out of the bottom two last night after tallying last week's votes with this week's judges' votes. But this week's audience vote is still a wild card. Jerry rightfully heads into that vote with the lowest score of 64, but his fans may save him again.
