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Finally! The last of the dead weight has been dropped from 'Dancing With the Stars.' It was the elimination I had been salivating over for weeks, because now the competition is really on.
During Monday night's performances, the leaderboard got shaken up once again, with first-time front-runner Romeo plummeting all the way to the bottom and Ralph Macchio shooting from the bottom to the top for the third time. All the contestants had to perform two routines -- an individual dance and a group number -- with the two scores being combined.
Dragging the bottom of the leaderboard alongside Romeo was Kirstie Alley, who, even though she suffered a fall and lost a shoe in past weeks, had yet to find herself in serious jeopardy of elimination until she raked in her lowest scores to date. Meanwhile, aspiring lap-dancer Kendra Wilkinson somehow managed to pull in a better score, albeit by just one point. Week after week she skirted elimination when she should have been the one to go, seemingly becoming this season's version of Bristol Palin.
But I can finally thank the 'Dancing' gods -- and voters -- for kicking Kendra to the much-deserved curb this week. While she danced surprisingly well in week one, she never really got any better. Once she found her niche -- skimpy outfits and bouncing her "assets" -- she just kept doing the same thing over and over. For some reason, the judges always ate it up and scored her way higher than she deserved. And then there was her attitude ...
Going into this season of 'DWTS,' I was neutral on Kendra. I wasn't a fan of 'The Girls Next Door' or her current self-titled reality show, but I thought she was entertainingly cartoonish with her bubbly Elmer Fudd-sounding laugh. But clearly I either hadn't been paying enough attention or her previous reality TV appearances have done some polishing when it comes to her personality. She started to lose my respect the week she mouthed off to the judges, and continued her downward spiral with her foul mouth, farting and general obsession with proving she has an aversion to anything "elegant."
Now it's time to focus on who might make it to the finals. With Kirstie and Chelsea Kane rounding out the bottom three this week, it's going to get harder and harder to guess who will go in the next couple of eliminations leading up to the grand finale.
While Kirstie has had her share of mishaps and might seem like she should be the next casualty, she has way more charisma and dancing ability than someone like Kendra could ever dream of. If she can just stay focused, she might actually stand a chance of being in the finals. But next week the stars must once again master two dances, which could prove difficult for her. While she appears to be a fan favorite, there might very well be a point where they turn on her because she's made one mistake too many. (Unlike the rest of the remaining contestants, she has yet to top the leaderboard.)
As for Chelsea, it was the second time she's been in the bottom two. Both times she and partner Mark Ballas have wound up there after "risky" dances -- this week's futuristic "biker chick" paso doble and week four's 'Harry Potter'-themed performance. Now, whether their bottom-dwelling status was decided by an actual lack of votes from viewers or the show's producers remains to be seen, as host Tom Bergeron usually points out that the bottom two are not necessarily who's really in jeopardy.
It's interesting to note that neither Romeo nor Hines Ward have ever been in the bottom three on elimination night, which could be a sign that they're destined for the finals. But it's literally anybody's game right now, as there's still no real front-runner -- although Hines and Ralph are in a dead heat when it comes to topping the leaderboard the most.
So, good riddance, I say! (Funny that it was her first stab at elegance with a fully-clothed, rather traditional tango that got her voted off ... fickle fans, indeed.)
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