Wednesday, October 10, 2007


It took two episodes to get there, but it was somewhat obvious where "Dancing With the Stars" was headed this week.

That's right. After three weeks, Wayne Newton danced his last tango.

If it had been any other season, Mr. Las Vegas might have been in this for far longer. After all, there was a time when Jerry Springer seemed to be all but begging to be kicked off but continued to stay in week after week.

But this year, the competition is fiercer than ever — and I don't just mean that it in the Tyra Banks way. In addition to Sabrina Bryan, who's as close to a professional dancer as the show has ever seen, there's Cameron Mathison, the "All My Children" star who's about as determined to win this thing as Susan Lucci was to get her Emmy.

To help him meet his goal, Cam's partner Edita gave him a major pep talk this week about how he needed to up his acting game. (While his tango was fine, all the talk seemed to inspire the guy to do was jut his mouth wide open so that it looked like he'd just gotten shocking news or was about to enter a hot dog eating contest.)

There's also billionaire Mark Cuban who, if the amount of weight he's lost is any indication, is clearly also giving this his all. And there's comeback queen Jennie Garth, who bounced back from that whole partner-stepping-on-her-dress incident last week to perform a tango so sexy that judge Carrie Ann Inaba both gave her both a standing ovation and a hand slap.

And that's not even taking Spice Girl Mel B — whose dancing is getting so good that it's almost becoming possible for me to overlook that accent of hers — into consideration. This week, Scary Spice's jive earned her trio of 9s.

Jane Seymour (whose tango brought Carrie Ann to tears), Marie Osmond (who can't seem to do any wrong in the judges' eyes and who says crowd-pleasing one-liners like, "The tango is a labor of love and I need an epidural") and Helio Castroneves (who fell from grace a bit this week but who's nevertheless a solid contender) are also playing to win.

Only Floyd Mayweather, who seems to spend a bit more time referring to himself in the third person and pimping his pay-per-view boxing matches than he does concentrating on his steps, wasn't able to hold his own in this impressive crowd.

Still, it truly was Wayne's time to go. Despite the fact that he showed his partner Cheryl his 75 Arabian horses (and I do love it when this show incorporates in those sorts of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous moments), despite the fact that he seems like a sweetheart, despite being at the top of his game for decades, the guy really was in over his head here.

I guess, as Newton's Law proves, what goes up must come down. Danke Schoen for the memories, Wayne.

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