DWTS Week 3, Part 1: A Little Respect

Twas a fun episode of "Dancing With The Stars" tonight. It was Story Week, and thus every dance had to tell a tale. Some of them were more engaging than others, obviously...let's jump right in and talk about just how they all played out.

• Jennifer & Derek (24/30, samba): Jennifer just keeps continuing to impress. Well...mostly. I thought tonight's samba was loads of fun, and pretty well-danced, but was a bit of a step back from last week. Her Week 2 jive was fast, furious, and impeccable in the footwork department...whereas this week was the first two for the most part, but lacked a bit in its precision. Normally I wouldn't be quibbling about how clean the steps were (well, not as a condition of how much I liked the dance), but Jennifer has proven to be an excellent dancer so far. With this being her third consecutive score of 24 so far in the competition (though I agree with the booing audience last week that the judges lowballed her with three 8s for her jive then), she's got to show a bit more growth, or she may end up flatlining competitively. Still, she's kept her place as a main contender for the finals, and as we learned from her 'teacher look' tonight, she looks especially attractive in glasses. Also, she and Derek have proven to be masters at spicing up the portion of the show where the judges' critiques occur...after laying/sitting on the floor last week with Tom, and re-doing a portion of their samba this week, I'm excited to see what weird hijinks happen next. (But no fainting. :) )
• Florence & Corky (20/30, waltz): Tender moments alert! Florence talking about her late husband and how she was (sort of) dedicating this dance to him was incredibly sweet. (The fact that this happened with a beloved 76-year-old entertainer who I've never seen cry, as opposed to a 20-something starlet who weeps every five seconds probably helped...) Her waltz tonight was classy and nice (like "Edelweiss"...mostly just wanted to rhyme there, but I also do really love that song), but it felt a bit slow. Carrie Ann was very astute in pointing out that Florence needs to work a bit on keeping her motions and dancing smooth and flowing...it wasn't quite clunky, but it wasn't quite legato (if you'll forgive me inserting a musical term here :) ) either. Florence should be safe this week, but she'll need a good amount of voting power (I have a feeling she has a strong fanbase) to make sure she sails through. (A thing I noticed while looking at her 3 scores so far...each week's she improved by 1 point. Hopefully that momentum picks up a little bit, yes?)
• Kurt & Anna (23/30, foxtrot): After we saw what resembled a charming audition for "The Game Plan" (AKA the surreal image of a former NFL football player wearing a tiara and having a tea party with his daughters), Kurt danced a pretty nice foxtrot. It was a bit awkward at times (another astute moment from Carrie Ann...his arms were kind of all over the place), but it was fun (how the heck did they do the rain effect?? Could the audience see it, or was it just a TV thing? Am I a dork for not knowing this?), pleasant to watch, and even a bit retro (in a good way). (It also ended up being the last more traditional foxtrot of the night, as the producers dealt both Bristol and The Situation some decidedly un-foxtrot-y music that put their partners in a bind. More on that later...) Kurt doesn't quite scream to me "best dancer ever!" or anything yet, but I really like him, he's still incredibly charming, and he's making good progress. What more can you ask?
• Margaret & Louis (18/30, samba): And yet again Margaret can't get no respect (sorry for the bad grammar, I was trying to be a bit random there... :) ) from the judges. For the second week in a row, she gave a good show, but was slapped with straight 6s from the judges. I thought her samba was very good--it was flashy, it didn't play the humor angle up too much (as in it was fun, but it didn't veer into caricature), and Margaret certainly brought her dancing skills. (It did lose a bit of steam as the dance went on, though...the first half definitely packed more punch than the second half.) Although I agree with the judges that she lost a bit of control as the dance progressed, I would definitely given this a 7, at least...but perhaps because of the crazy costumes (a large headdress? Nice. The particular color scheme used? Hmmm...) or something, that was not the case tonight. I hope despite being the lowest scorer this week, Margaret gets a few more chances on the dance floor to iron out her technique and add some more finesse to her dancing, because tonight showed that she really does have true potential.
• Audrina & Tony (26/30, waltz): My, how Audrina has come a long way from evading the Unknown Girl curse in Week 1. She earned the first 9s of the season! (Anyone else sad that it took until Week 3 this year? I know having someone get them out of the gate, like a few in past seasons, is a bit of a downer because it means they're usually shoo-ins to win, but still, I like high scores, and it's been weird not seeing much of them until this point.) Her waltz with Tony was simply beautiful...a poignant story (someone dreaming of dancing with their off-to-war soldier/Marine again), and some absolutely gorgeous footwork and technique. Audrina's facial expressions were nicely understated as well, which really helped accentuate the power of the narrative. The best dance of the season? Score-wise, yes, and although waltzes tend to be less exciting than, say, jives or sambas, I would venture to say overall...yes. Audrina's really catapulted herself into a contender, and although she's one of the more low-key competitors (both personality-wise and fame-wise) this season, as long as she keeps dancing as well as this, she'll be gliding through all the way to the finals.

That's all for Part 1. (The other 5 dancers will follow in a post to come, well, posthaste. :) ) See you in a bit, and for now, viva la DWTS! :)