Dancing with the Stars: Dance 'til you drop (your partner on her neck)

We are down to the last four (minus Romeo who was sent home last week), and the show promises a visit to the hospital for someone! Excitement abounds. I may have missed three of the four first dances this week…my bad! There is no excuse, but I have a bit of a crazy life at the moment. We are frankly lucky I still have cable tonight (and by “we”, I mean me).

Ralph Macchio and Karina: Due to the aforementioned craziness, I missed their first dance. I am the worst. Ralph seems to have healed from his injury last week, thank goodness. Their second dance is a salsa, and Karina looks so, so scary. She has gigantic hair and is wearing a skin-tight leopard print body suit that is open in the front, revealing a red bra. She looks incredibly trashy. So much so that I am barely noticing Ralph’s dancing. I guess it ok? He looks pretty trashy too, so it is hard to say. Len says there was no rhythm to the dance, which I agree with. The censors have to bleep Bruno, I think because he calls Karina a “pussy”- it does seem like he really meant as in “pussycat”, a term the Brits are known to use (Bruno is not British, but I don’t know!).  Carrie Ann liked the dance, but his technique wasn’t great. Scores are 8s from Bruno and Carrie Ann and a 7 from Len.

Kirstie Alley and Maks: Missed the first dance, but I did see that Kirstie is looking very slim these days. She (apparently) got three 9s for her first dance, which looked like some sort of waltz while on mute. The second dance is a paso doble. Kirstie is wearing a dumb headband and I am worried she is going to fall on this cape she is swinging around at the beginning of the dance. The paso is ok…Kirstie isn’t a terribly precise dancer, and I keep seeing where she is missing the beat on what are supposed to be powerful movements. At the end of the dance, she jumps up and bonks coconuts with Maks. The judges seem to only have praise for her, but I really thought she was off on a lot of it. 9s all around from the judges.

Chelsea Kane and Mark: Chelsea earned 28 points for her first dance, and I didn’t even see it out of the corner of my eye, so I have no comments about it. She has a boring clip package about her rise to “fame”. Their second dance is the rumba, and Chelsea starts out in a dumb cape thing that made me audibly groan. It is just Mark’s crap, of course. I really don’t like the rumba, probably because I still don’t understand what makes one a good one. This one is very angsty, with lots of pained faces on both partners. Perhaps this is what we want from the rumba? The judges seem to think so—they all praise them highly. Three 10s!

Hines and Kym: Ok, in the clip package, we see how Kym fell on her freaking neck and then couldn’t feel her arms for a while. YIKES. She is taken to the hospital, and I miss the details of what happened. I know…I am like a really great recapper. She seems to be ok tonight, and she dances an Argentine tango with Hines. It is a really strong dance for Hines, and he finally seems to be more emotionally connected to this dance. Also, Kym’s dress is cut so high you can almost see Caracas (Daphne Moon reference!). The crowd goes super crazy for them, and all three judges give them a standing O. Hines breaks down a bit because he is so proud of Kym and also still so worried about her. It is very sweet. Distracting from the sweetness is the fact that Kym’s right nipple is trying desperately to make an appearance on national television. Tom finally tells her about it, and she really doesn’t seem to care (props to her). The judges give them three 10s!

We get a fun clip package of Hines’ teammates and coaches talking about him. What up Polamalu! Their second dance the salsa. Kym also looks a bit trashy, but more like ballroom trashy than street trashy (as Karina looked). Hines seems to get into the dance again, and it makes him fun to watch. The judges praise him highly, and Bruno gives him a kind and unexpected “You are just beautiful”. Three more 10s for these two!

At the end of the show, all of the couples take part in a “winner takes all” group cha cha cha. I sure hope it is the Grease tap out system, because I love that. Hopefully Johnny Travolta taught his BFF Kirstie how to ace this (spoiler alert, get a 30-year old professional dancer/hoebag to dance with you at a high school dance!). Oh damn. It is not the tap out system at all. And here I wrote all this gold about it. The gold stays in.

The instant cha cha pairs up the dancers into two brackets, where they go head-to-head. The two winners face each other in another head-to-head dance, but the final dance is an INSTANT cha cha. The winner will get an additional 15 points and a major edge in trying to make it to the finals next week. This bonus cha cha is in response to audience complaints from the past where a good dancer is sent home at this stage, while a bad dancer *coughBristolPalincough* makes it through to the finals. The first two pairs to dance are Hines and Kym and Ralph and Karina. Both dances are strong, but the judges all agree that Hines and Kym’s cha cha is the better of the two.

In the second pairing, Mark and Chelsea are up first and both of them have very distracting faces. Chelsea is like singing the words to the song, and Mark is making ridiculous faces the entire time. Kirstie and Maks’ cha cha is markedly slower than their competition's. The judges give the win to Mark and Chelsea, though they all claim it was a tough decision.

Good lord, I can’t believe there are still two more dances to go.

Hines and Kym dance first, after only having 4 minutes to practice. Their dance is solid again, and Hines looks slightly exhausted when they are done. Mark and Chelsea have more lip syncing and mugging, and they totally repeat this one move (an obvious one) from their first cha cha.

The 15 bonus points go to Chelsea and Mark. I think this exactly the kind of person the show wanted to save with this dance (over either Kirstie or Ralph, who aren’t as technically proficient as Chelsea).

• Random Celebrity Sightings: Bippity Bosmand in the house, y’all! Regular readers will remember that as my code name for the youngest male Osmond brother. Ok, I just googled him to confirm that he is the youngest, and I all I could find is that he is the youngest of the 5 “Osmond Brothers” who made up the band. Also, his website is www.donny.com. Hilarious.
• Past Random Celebrity Sightings that I missed: according to her twitter feed, Kristin Chenoweth was in the audience last week! I totally didn’t see her, but I love her so I wanted to give her a shout out here.
• Kirstie was back to being utterly incoherent tonight. Is she that hungry? Is she just a loon? We may never know.
• Dumb Shit Brooke Says: This feature is back, mostly because Brooke is so irritating. “If you haven’t voted yet this season, you are LAME!” She actually said that to the camera. Her dress was pretty tonight, so points for that.
• Dumb Shit Brooke Does: Brooke has to flip a coin to see which of the two finalists in the instant cha cha gets to decide the order in which they will dance. Hines calls “tails” and then when the coin turns up heads, Brooke gives him the choice of what to do. It is awkward for a minute as all four dancers know she has fucked up, but Brooke does not. But then Hines is a good sport and points out that it is actually Chelsea’s choice because, you know, he lost the coin toss. Is there really not another woman in Hollywood who is both attractive AND can handle the complexities of a coin toss? Maybe the beautiful Cat Deely is looking for another gig?
• I can’t see Hines going home tomorrow, and I think the bonus points will help to save Chelsea (though maybe they will give her fans a false sense of security). That leaves Kirstie and Ralph, and I think Ralph is more likely to go home, just because Kirstie has more fans.
• Tom said some people might have “empathetic exhaustion” from tonight’s show, and I definitely do. That felt so long!
• Finals next week! I am traveling, but I will try my best to get a recap up on Monday. If you don’t see it, look for it on Tuesday!

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