‘Dancing with the Stars’: Or, like a bat dancing gracefully out of hell

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Although the results shows are usually the weakest part of ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ Tuesday night’s was more entertaining, or, at least, provided more fodder for conversation than usual.

First of all, we’ve never been sure what’s up with Meat Loaf in general -- is he for real? A rocker? A stage character? One thing is for sure, though -- his singing is meant for ‘Dancing With the Stars’: It’s interpretive, overly dramatic, has enough tempo changes that one song could feature four dances, and like the show, it’s really hard not to enjoy but still makes you feel a little weird about liking it.

The musical guests who perform on “Dancing With the Stars” sometimes seem like they don’t really want to be there, but if there’s one thing that can be said about Meat Loaf, whenever he’s performing, he definitely seems like he wants to be there.

The recap show featured actual humor last night as well.

Sometimes Jimmy Kimmel’s bits are amusing, but his bits with Guillermo the parking attendant aren’t needed every week (unless they’re to serve as ads for his late-night talk show, but ‘Dancing With the Stars’ would never plug something…would it?) However, the fast-moving, absurd insult humor in Kenny Mayne and Jerry Rice’s “SportsCenter” parody was entertaining enough that we looked forward to Part 2 of the bit instead of dreaded it as another bit of time-killing. (Thank goodness too that someone suggested maybe it’s time for dear Apolo to de-soul-patch himself).

And then, there were the dancing children. Certainly these 9-to-11-year-olds should be commended for their skill and talent and work ethic. But watching little kids dress up and behave as the adults do on the ballroom floor, with that crisp, motorized sensuality...well, it’s a little weird.

We’d prefer to think, as we do with beauty pageants, that it’s an event for adults only, even if we know it’s not true.

The actual results were not really noteworthy. John Ratzenberger (“J. Rat”) had a good run for himself, although he certainly was not voted off too early. We appreciated that although he did go the route of the older gentleman who relies heavily on the dance gimmick, once he was done dancing he didn’t try to work the ol’ charm too hard. We look forward to seeing his partner Edyta Sliwinska playing Gisele Bundchen’s sister in a B-movie one day.

(Photo courtesy ABC)