"Dancing With the Stars" Goes 80’s!

Hey everybody! Kelley had the night off, so I’m filling in with this week's DWTS performance night recap. First off, last Tuesday, Chynna Phillips was eliminated from the competition. This week is 80’s week. Which – some of you prepare to feel old – makes it rather ironic that I’m the one doing the recap, because I was only around for about a year in the 80’s. Still, even I could appreciate the opening live performance by the Bangles.

This week, contestants also had taped advice clips from the judges, which made me wonder if they actually shared said advice with the contestants and their pros. Or was it just for the audience to hear?

Hope Solo started off the night with the tango, which caused a rather amusing argument at the judges' table. Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba both seemed to think that she performed well and Len Goodman thought the exact opposite. In the category of reasons why I watch this show, Maksim Chmerkovskiy’s traditional Tom Bergeron ass-slap evolved into Hope giving Tom a bit of a pat as well. One has to wonder how much more of this Tom is going to stand for.

Carson Kressley’s performance, as usual, was so much fun, but – as the judges pointed out repeatedly – contained very little actual dancing skill. His costume started as a track suit, and ended up as a tight workout t-shirt and shorts worthy of a Richard Simmons outfit. Which was a fantastic coincidence, since Richard was in the studio audience and made the appropriate disappointed faces at the judge’s criticisms.

Nancy Grace had a bit of an ego fight with Tristan MacManus in their rehearsals, though honestly all that came across to me was “whine,” on her part and “gorgeous accent,” on his. In her defense though, the producers do tend to show just the difficult parts of rehearsals. Her dance was fairly well received by the judges, though, and she ended up with a higher score than she’d gotten so far.

At this point, they showed a picture of Carrie Ann, Len, and Bruno during the 80's. Carrie Ann looked glamorous, Len looked old and wrinkly, and Bruno looked unbelievably hot. They showed a few 80’s era pictures of the stars and the pros through the whole episode, which was a rather cute touch for the theme.

J.R. Martinez got a field trip to a Latin dance club to help with his samba, and it really paid off. His samba was so good that Len said he would always refer to it in the future to male dancers that don’t know how they ought to do the dance. J.R.’s hip movements even caused Bruno to come up with the Phrase of The Night: "loin shattering sex machine."

Unfortunately, Rob Kardashian’s dance well received by the judges. Honestly, I'd prefer it if he screwed up and went home. He seems like a spoiled rich kid to me, so I was secretly hoping for him to rip his pants during his attempt at the splits.

To help him learn how to shake his booty a bit better, Lacey Schwimmer brought her father in to talk to Chaz Bono. It seemed to help Chaz' confidence, but unfortunately it didn’t really help his score. At least Lacey’s weird polka-dotted dress distracted a bit from that neck beard.

David Arquette’s dance caused another hilarious spat between the judges. It was a pretty good dance overall, but what really stood out to me about David this week was his fantastic little Len impression.

Unfortunately Derek Hough – also known as the real reason I watch this show, especially when he takes his shirt off – and Ricki Lake got fairly negative reviews and fell from a 29 last week to a 24 this week. Honestly I don’t really think Ricki is the best dancer this season, despite appearing at the top of the leader board every week. But Derek usually is such a good teacher and such a good choreographer that he tends to make any partner look way better than they are.

At the end of the show, they announced that next week's theme is Broadway, which is far more exciting than 80’s week to me. What did you all think of the show? For bonus points, what Broadway song are you hoping for them to dance to next week?