by I hope I never hear the name “Carrie Ann Inaba” spoken in a fake British accent, or any other accent for that matter, again for as long as I live. I was going to post my outrage over the sham show, Dancing with the Stars, last week when Joey McIntyre was wrongly thrown off the television program, but I held my fingers until the final decision came down last night.
Are we surprised that Kelly Monaco, an ABC Soap Star on General Hospital, beat the wonderful John O’Hurley in last night’s final on the ABC Television network? Kelly did not dance well in her final performance and she knew it.
When all the judges kowtowed to her by giving an obviously imperfect performance three perfect “10” scores you felt the fix was in and, by the look in her astonished eyes, Kelly felt the fix was in as well. You can win well or you can win cheap and Kelly Monaco won on the cheap. The problem with the show was that the best dancer, Joey McIntyre, was repeatedly bashed by the judges to falsely lower his score so the voters at home could not rightly rescue him with our vote.
Joey was the only “star” who knew how to move his feet, keep rhythm, and make the dance a performance. Joey was the star of that show in every way and I’m glad he, and his professional dance partner Ashly DelGrosso, knew there was the stink of something rotten amongst them and they never took the ridiculous judges’ comments to heart. There was a major problem with the technical direction of the show over its brief run that I would also like to address. When you watch dancing you need to see the dancer’s feet at all times. The face and upper torso are important, but seeing how the feet move in space is vital to enjoying and evaluating the performance.
Too often during the competition we were exposed to torsos and the back of audience members’ heads instead of being able to see the pattern of the performers’ feet on the floor. That directorial miscalculation is common in television. Television is about faces, not feet. The Wade Robson Project on MTV last year had the same problem — we saw a lot of “jazz hands” but we never saw the feet in performance! When *NSYNC were hot they would often dance live on television and they were spectacular. However, 99% of the time, you never saw them move in unison and you could not see their feet because the television director would only show their faces.
All their coordinated dance effort was wasted for the television audience. There was one notable *NSYNC performance, however, on Saturday Night Live, when the director bravely took a wide shot of the stage, locked down the camera, and let the boy band do their stuff on their silly hit song at the time, Bye, Bye, Bye. It was electrifying to finally see, in a single established shot, how *NSYNC moved together with precise feet and body control. While I’m on this jaunt, I also want to mention that a singer is not always a dancer.
How can you tell?
When a singer moves their arms and not their feet, they are not dancing! The worst offender of the singer/dancer combo is Britney Spears. Here’s how you can judge for yourself if she is a dancer or not. Watch her in a concert performance. She might move her feet a little bit but those AROUND her do the dancing to trick you into thinking she is dancing, too.
Britney just moves her arms around. A few singer/dancers who earned that title the hard way are Prince, Janet Jackson, *NSYNC, Madonna and Sammy Davis, Jr. I won’t watch Dancing with the Stars again even if it returns next time starring Jerry Cooney, Tina Louise and Demond Wilson because Joey McIntyre was ripped off last week and John O’Hurley was ripped off last night and tearing down true talent is a betrayal I cannot abide.
I don’t know what’s worse – the fact that television is so creatively bankrupt that this show even made it out of the pitch meeting or the fact that an obviously intelligent person like yourself not only watched it, but spent this much electronic ink on it.
Of course it’s fixed everything is corrupt reality is never real and people always like pretty girls more than new kids on the block.
Rudicus —
Welp, I did watch every episode, and you’re right that the two male judges had womanlust because the women stars could do no wrong in their eyes. Their scores were predictable and laughable.
The only judge who had any early merit was the one with the name I refuse to pronounce or type again and I was with her as the last thread to sanity until last night when she did the right thing and gave Kelly a “7” but then belly-flopped away all her hard-earned integrity with the final “10.”
There is no doubt Kelly Monaco is an attractive woman but she wasn’t the best dancer last night or any night before.
I agree with everything you wrote. But I’d like to add that since Kelly hardly ever wore a full dress, it just makes me wonder how many guys voted her in just to see if her costume would malfunction again.
Hi Bonnie!
Oh, I know Kelly received a lot of votes based on her tremendous body.
Go do a Google image search on “Kelly Monaco Nude” (use the quote marks) and you’ll see precisely why she is popular as a person, but that doesn’t excuse her awful dancing.
I understand why those images may have affected her win. 🙂
I saw the previews for this show on TV, but they never piqued my interest. I’m glad I didn’t waste my time. As Rudicus said, television has been creatively bankrupt for quite some time.
Speaking of pretty people, did you see the commercial for Big Brother 6 yet? They all look like versions of Barbie and Ken, with equally plastic personalities. I think I’ll pass on this one. 😉
Hi Deborah —
I would have replied to you sooner but I was watching the premier of Big Brother 6!
I also subscribe to the BB6 Real Play live feeds.
I love reality shows because you can, if you’re lucky, get some interesting insights into unscripted human nature.
I have to go watch “Being Bobby Brown” now. 🙂
i have the same exact Seiko.
also, i like that your Rolex now only moves backwards. maybe it’s trying to tell us all something.
Hi Robotnik!
Hey, it’s cool to know you have the same watch and thanks for commenting on my Rolex post.
I agree with you on the backwards movement. It’s a little eerie. 🙂
Give me a moment to wipe the egg off my face. Okay, much better. 😀 I really was going to pass on BB6 last night. But then my husband roped me into watching it with him.
I agree with you about the reality shows and human nature. Most of the time, people are predictable. Then, someone comes along and socks everybody with a surprise. Remember Adria and Natalie in BB5? That was the best series so far.
Ha!
Deborah you are so funny!
I’m glad you watched BB6 last night. It was pretty good! I’m watching the live feeds today as I work on the “Hand Jive” book and there was a fascinating conversation about education vs. jobs and the point the loud, obnoxious, woman missed was that money is not the only reason you attend college. She is uninterested in training the mind. She wants a fast way to $40,000 a year but she won’t go to college to get it. Sad.
I think I’ve watched every Reality show or at least tasted most of them. The worst, by far, was the Britney Spears catastrophe. She ruined years of careful promotional pruning and glossing the span of a mere few weeks. Britney showed us the uncouth idiot behind the shine and I doubt her career will ever be the same.
I didn’t like Adria and Natalie last year. I felt BB5 was the weakest of all the years due to the macho preening of the men and the women! My favorite BB year was the first. The people were real. They were funny. They didn’t know how to play the game so they were human and ordinary in an extraordinary circumstance.
I missed the first three BB series. As for BB5, what I liked most about the show was either getting ticked off or laughing at these idiots. I’ll have to check out that feed because I missed the first 10 minutes.
I’m a believer in education, whether you earn it through college or on the street. A good mix of the two is best. I’ve met some college grads who didn’t have a clue.
As for Britney Spears, I was never impressed with her to begin with. Both my kids hate her. So the one song they played by her was a spoof of “I’m Falling Again.” It was called “Oops, I’m farting again,” depicting her eating a can of beans and farting fire. They’re boys, what can I say?
If you like BB you will love the live feeds because you see everything happen in real time in the house 24/7 so when the show airs you already know everything that REALLY happened and not the way the editors want you to think it all happened. It’s pretty fun!
It is especially fun after the live show on CBS to jump on the feeds and watch the aftermath in real time.
RealPlayer will give you a free 3 day pass so you can see if the BB6 feed is something you want to keep watching or not.
I agree that to be successful today you need both the street and the advanced schooling or you’ll be sorry on either end.
Love the Britney story and your boys! Harr! 🙂
Other shows I watch are The Apprentice and The Amazing Race. I loved the last season of The Apprentice, which had college grads competing with street smart folks. I rooted for the street smart group because, although I earned an AS from a trade school, I don’t consider myself college educated. Most of my education came from the School of Hard Knocks.
At any rate, I watched Tana (the street smart gal) rise to the top, only to bomb because she got too full of herself. She blew off the mayor of NYC and referred her “employees” as the Three Stooges. Not only have I enjoyed learning about what it takes to run a business, but the interaction between the contestants.
Glad you enjoyed the Britney story. 😉
Hi Deborah!
I think The Apprentice editors tricked us all season long with the hideous Tana. You don’t become that insensitive and boorish in one show — you’re always that way — and she wasn’t clever or talented enough to hide her monster side in the final task so there’s no way she successfully hid it all season long.
I think the producers made a specific editorial choice to hide her bad side and then really punish her in the final task by showing “the real Tana” so she could not possibly win. I loved that tactic because all season long I saw through her and I knew Tana was a big fake.
Tana was from Iowa. I grew up in Nebraska and I was surrounded by that kind of false, peppy, personality that hides demons behind a brittle mask.
That decision to punish her in the end was probably made by the production staff because she likely treated them the same way she treated her team in the end.
Editing is the best revenge! 🙂
The Amazing Race is one of my favorite shows.
Singers And Dancers
From a very informative post on dancing….