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Dancing with the Stars: Season 2


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The Miliosr Report - Week Eight (Season Finale)

Overall Impressions

(1) While I understand ABC's desire to make the most of their hit dancing show, four hours of programming was excessive to the point of exploitation. The recaps and recaps of recaps (and recaps of recaps of recaps) often brought the momentum of both the performance and results shows to a screeching halt. Unfortunately, since the results episode brought in 27 million viewers, I fear this will be standard practice for all future seasons.

(2) So nice to see Kelly Monaco in the audience and specifically referred to as the winner of Season One. While I wasn't a Kelly fan, I thought ABC treated her badly with the dance-off. She won Season One fair and square and she should be accorded the respect due to the winner.

Scoring by the Judges

01 Drew/Cheryl (87 points)

02 Stacy/Tony (86 points)

03 Jerry/Anna (80 points)

Miliosr's Impressions

Round One

Jerry/Anna (foxtrot)

Stacy/Tony (jive)

Drew/Cheryl (paso doble)

I thought Round One was a bit of a draw. Drew/Cheryl and Stacy/Tony were both very good. The surprise for me was Jerry. He was light on his feet, the posture was good and he looked like he was enjoying the moment. For the first time, he was a dancer (or at least the embryo of one.)

Round Two

(All three teams did a freestyle routine)

Truth be told, I didn't like any of these. I would award Round Two -- barely -- to Drew/Cheryl on the basis of the lifts and such. But, to me, it was more like gymnastics than dancing.

Jerry and Anna were exuberant but "bad" Jerry was back with the stiff hips and the slow footwork. Loved the feel of it but, really, it wasn't anything you couldn't have seen already in a club sequence from an early-70s Pam Grier movie.

Stacy and Tony's freestyle was a complete dud. Whatever else I may think of the Drew/Cheryl and Jerry/Anna freestyles, both teams came out with all guns blazing. The Stacy/Tony freestyle just never got going. When I heard the Saturday Night Fever music, I was expecting an explosive routine. Instead, it was just boring, side-by-side disco moves that didn't look all that hard to execute. I put the blame for this squarely on Tony who choreographed an unimaginative routine that didn't make use of Stacy's technical excellence.

Round Three

Jerry/Anna (cha cha cha)

Stacy/Tony (samba)

Drew/Cheryl (jive)

I thought Stacy and Tony were the clear winners of Round Three. Their samba was one of their best efforts of the entire competition but, as we shall see, it wasn't enough to save this team.

Jerry and Anna's cha cha cha was OK -- nothing special. Drew and Cheryl appeared to be having an off night. They got stuck in a corner at one point and never used the entire dancefloor to their advantage.

Stacy's Ouster

Stacy finished an undeserved third in the competition. She was a consistently better dancer than Jerry throughout the competition and during the final performances (the freestyle wasn't her fault) and she had earned a Final Two spot.

Unfortunately for her, the high marks from the judges from the get-go masked the fact that she wasn't polling all that strongly with the audience. Her only hope for making it to the Final Two would have been to finish first with the judges and then finish second in the audience vote ahead of Drew. Once she finished second with the judges, she and Tony were done for.

She deserved better but I don't think she will look back at this experience in a negative way. I have the feeling she will reap many opportunities in the entertainment world as a result of her participation.

Drew and Cheryl

Once Stacy's name was called, I think Drew knew he had it in the bag. Kudos to him for trying to maintain the "suspense" for another 40 minutes before Tom Bergeron crowned him as the winner.

I am very happy with Drew and Cheryl's win as I thought they were consistently excellent throughout the competition. While Stacy edged out Drew in terms of technical excellence, I think Drew and Cheryl outdistanced the other teams in two areas -- choreography and chemistry. Cheryl's choreography was strong week-in and week-out and she was very good at highlighting Drew's strengths and hiding his weaknesses. The chemistry between the two was palpable and they were the team that best conveyed the sense that you were watching a performance instead of just watching steps being executed.

Congratulations to Jerry and Anna for finishing second. I wouldn't have put them higher than fourth but I have to say I admire Jerry's persistence in trying to master something that did not come naturally to him and for showing that a male who dances is someone to be admired.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I thought Season Two was a big improvement over Season One. Some things still need work (like the singing for the routines) but the show really found its footing the second time around. I don't know if it was skillful casting or just plain luck but ABC found a group of celebrity amateurs who -- for the most part --worked very hard and raised the bar as far as what would be expected in the future from celebrity competitors. Comparing Season One to Season Two, I wonder if Kelly Monaco and John O'Hurley would both have made the Final Four in Season Two given competition like Drew/Cheryl, Stacy/Tony and Lisa/Louis.

The show now goes on hiatus until the Fall. The Miliosr Reports will be back at that time. See you then!!!

Edited by miliosr
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Season Two Runner-Up, Jerry Rice (on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS as I type), has a new book, "Go Long."

I wonder if the title refers to his endurance in DWTS. :rolleyes: Says he of the show, "It was huge! I didn't understand the magnitude of it."

"I remembered the first routine she showed me and I said, 'I can't do that!'" he continued. So he watched the other dancers, singling out George Hamilton, and figured to succeed, he had to play to the judges and the audience.

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