All I could think about while watching Shannon Elizabeth was, “That is the youngest washed-up person I have ever seen.” It’s not really an indictment, in a lot of ways — was she ever really afloat in the first place? When she said, “I’m best known for being in American Pie,” I just thought, “Wow, that was a long time ago, Legs.” Of course, my attention to her fading version of “fame” was upstaged by my attention to her outfit, the bottom half of which consisted of red panties and short fringe. I am serious! Red panties with fringe over them. I realize that ballroom dancing takes you into No-Pants Land fairly frequently, and that some of the professional women (especially Edyta) often offer you unconventional views of their hipbones and such. But this just looked like underpants. It literally looked like she was supposed to put on a skirt and she forgot. I grant you that I have natural sympathy for women who have trouble with the ridiculous heels that this competition requires, but I don’t understand what that has to do with forgetting your pants. There’s a tendency to equate very long legs with grace, until you remember what baby giraffes look like. In, say, their first ten minutes of life.
Oh, man, Monica Seles. She happens to be dancing with Jonathan Roberts, who is my favorite of the male pros, and when he first saw her in rehearsal, I found his expressions of concern, then terror, then despair, then amusement to be just about the funniest thing the show has ever produced. “Oh,” you could see him thinking. “It’s going to be like that, is it?” His comments about trying to make her “look softer” reminded me of Tootsie, which is not the association you’re looking for. One of the things that always fascinates me about this show is the way a person can be so perfectly coordinated in an athletic event — think of how smoothly and crisply she has to move as a tennis player — and so uncoordinated in dancing. I’m sure she didn’t come to this show thinking she’d prove how good other athletes really are, but that’s her function thus far. My sense was that his key instruction to her for their foxtrot was probably “Go limp.” A good professional dancer can make you look a lot less incompetent than you actually are, and this is where she wound up. The scary thing is that the foxtrot is probably the least punishing dance for really uncoordinated people. Look out, quickstep!
I will now tell you the story of my relationship with Marissa Jaret Winokur. “Oh, she’s cute. She’s so happy! Wow, she’s really happy. She’s…she’s sure happy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many teeth in all my life. Wait, she’s with Tony Dovolani? HA HA HA! He is the guy most likely to complain about getting the plus-size girl, that’s for sure. She is really giggling a lot in practice. I think he’s going to hit her. She is really too happy. Wow, she’s getting on my nerves. Okay, here’s the actual dance. WOW, that is an unnatural smile. What PANTS is he wearing? I guess he needed them to compete with her teeth. I do not like this dance. It has so little dancing — did he assume she couldn’t dance because she’s the fat girl? Because she can clearly dance. But I do not like her. Okay, I kind of want her to fall down. No, wait — that’s skating. I guess I want her to trip over her feet.” It is safe to say she is the first person to whom I have ever heard anyone say, “Okay, for ballroom dancing, you really need to be a little more subtle with your emotions.”
Priscilla Presley is apparently such a private person that she is currently holed up at a hotel while a stand-in dances around wearing a wax cast of her head. Seriously, she is moving into Michael Jackson territory, plastic-surgery-wise. It didn’t help that I watched this on a giant HDTV, but I really don’t think it would help to watch it on your cell phone; she would still look terrifying. That’s not what cheeks look like; why does she have that where cheeks should be? What happened to her mouth? Look how beautiful she is in that picture with Patrick Duffy! Do you know how much more beautiful a naturally aged version of that lady would be than this? I understand the lady has had a difficult life, but…my God. She’s really a reasonably competent dancer, once she gets into rehearsal, but I can’t watch her; it’s uncomfortable. The weirdness of her lips affects her speech. She was actually helped by the ridiculous tanner-oriented makeup routine, because at least she didn’t look so pale, and…well, enough about that. The good news is that she’s a substantially better dancer than Monica “Stompyfoot” Seles and Pantless McGillicuddy, and while she’s kind of vampire-ish and scary, I understand her terror and support her in being over 25 and willing to get out there and do this. I wouldn’t mind seeing her stick around for a while, but I encourage as few close-ups as possible, because they make me feel bad for her. I was happy for her that she was good, because she was SO nervous, but still.
How about that Kristi Yamaguchi? She always was the normal one. In the years when skating was going wackadoodle all over everybody’s ass, Kristi Yamaguchi was always a wonderfully normal human being, or so it seemed. And she’s definitely the breakout on the women’s side, in terms of both grace and technique. Surely, she’s had plenty of ballet training, and her comment about having never had to think about the position of her feet before seemed a tiny bit disingenuous. Still, seeing a pleasant person learn something new and be good at it is one of the things that sells the show. Furthermore, as Tara pointed out when we watched this episode, she’s one of the few people who’s ever looked good in the particular nude color she was wearing. That color has washed out more people than Cannonball Run sequels, and she looked like five million bucks in it. It may just have been the contrast with her hair, but there was something about it that was just perfect. You can count this as two professional lucky seasons for Mark “Partner-Dater” Ballas, who got Cheetah Girl last time and Former Skater this time. They’re saving up to hit him with Sally Jessy Raphael next year, is what I think.
I absolutely love Marlee Matlin. I find her funny, adorable, ballsy, and very relatable. When she explained that she’s profoundly deaf (”but I sleep great,” rimshot!) and seriously doesn’t hear much in the way of the music at all, it was hard for me to imagine what it would be like for her trying to dance. Not just because it would be hard to keep track of the beat, but because if you don’t have the structure of a piece of music, it would seem to me that memorizing a sequence of steps would be exponentially more difficult. The difference between memorizing a high-school cheer that goes with a chant and just randomly memorizing a sequence of moves. Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought that would be at least half the difficulty of her situation. I loved the fact that her partner — Fabian, the new guy — was so open about, “So when I saw her, it was like, ‘Yay, Marlee Matlin!…oh, shit.” I mean, you can’t blame him, and if he denied it, he’d be lying. I doubt he’s ever taught a deaf person ballroom before. I also loved the part where she was like, “I have to feel your ass once, and then we’ll be done.” See? I can relate. She danced really well, in the end — she’s got a good amount of natural ability, and I’ve certainly heard people with far less of an idea of where the hell the beat is than Marlee Matlin had. Maybe once, I could see that she was a little bit lost, but relatively speaking? She did fine.
All in all a good group — but for natural ability, hands-down: they’re going to be chasing Kristi Yamaguchi all season. Early boots Monica and Shannon, long runners Marlee and Kristi, question marks Priscilla and Marissa.
