‘Dancing With the Stars’: Last Dance
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Ladies and gentleman, America has a new champion dancing star: Olympic speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno. Whoever predicted that he should win must be a genius! If you enjoyed crushing on him when he was a champion speedskater, now you have a whole new reason to set pictures of him as your wallpaper on your computer. Just because that information could easily be relayed in two words (‘Ohno wins’) didn’t mean that ‘Dancing with the Stars’ was going to refrain from airing a gaseously bloated results show.
Two hours! Was that really necessary? A ‘history’ of a television show that’s a few years old? Countless ‘behind the scenes’ interviews and trotting out the professionals and also-rans? Wasn’t really necessary. With the crowning of the champion though came the most obvious weakness of the show: it’s pure fluff, sheer entertainment. Which is not a fatal flaw, but the show lacks a little heart when compared to its Tuesday night competitor, ‘American Idol.’ Apolo Anton Ohno will, like the rest of the cast, return to a life of appearances and agents and autographs, but on ‘American Idol,’ a bunch of kids who weren’t famous last year are famous as hell this year. With the end of ‘American Idol,’ we get to look forward to hearing gossip from the tour, hearing about who got a breast enlargement and who is actually forming quite the little career. With the stars, well, they’re still stars.
Except maybe for Laila Ali, whose star maybe rose the most of the three finalists. Who was previously known as ‘Muhammad Ali’s daughter who boxes,’ will now be remembered for breaking a few stereotypes and becoming half of a hot TV couple. Watching her lose in her grown-up tomboy way (pretending to cry and then confessing that she was ‘pissed’ about losing), viewers had one final glimpse of her partnership with Maksim Chmerkovskiy. Those two had some serious chemistry in a cool, not corny way. It says a lot for a show, actually, that ‘Dancing’ had the viewership it did when it’s compared to the hype, youth-factor and tie-ins of ‘American Idol’. For the heart-tugging ‘Dancing’ lacks, it made up with good old fashioned entertainment, superlong results shows, and hey, Clay Aiken! (Photo courtesy ABC)