Wrestler has chokehold on ‘Dancing’

This week’s “Dancing With The Stars” (ABC, Thursdays, 8 p.m. ET) featured the quickstep (for the men) and the rumba (for the women), meaning that the women were tested on slinky sex appeal and the men on their ability to freely prance without embarrassment. The good and the bad sorted out with striking similarity to last week.

Stacy Keibler, wrestling hottie, and her partner were saddled with Nelly Furtado’s icky “I’m Like A Bird” as their rumba, and they still pulled it off. This is thanks, in part, to the fact that Stacy’s partner either has a transparent case of wanting to sleep with his celebrity dancer; or is an evil genius cynically trying to exploit the impression that he has a transparent case of wanting to sleep with his celebrity dancer.

Stacy received a 9 and two 10s, the kind of score inflation that makes it easier to understand how Kelly Monaco managed three 10s for a performance in last year’s finale. What will the 10-giving judges do if Stacy improves at all next week? Underline the “10” on the paddle? Apply glitter?

Also having another strong week were Drew Lachey and partner Cheryl, who is the pushiest and therefore most effective of the professional coaches. Drew looked good in practice, so it was no surprise that his quickstep was strong. It was, on the other hand, a surprise to see the song “Neutron Dance” revived after years of invisibility. Come to think of it, many of us wouldn’t mind seeing Drew Lachey actually do the Neutron Dance, whatever it may be.

Wastin' away again in Rosaritaville
The most notable improvement of the week from someone who wasn't wretched last week came in the form of the lovely Giselle Fernandez, whose swoonworthy partner Jonathan (fortunately) helped bring out “Rosarita,” her inner sex kitten, for their rumba to (unfortunately) “Take My Breath Away.” While Giselle’s rumba may still not have been as kittenish as Stacy’s, it was one of those dances where the celebrity has such a good time that you want to applaud at the end.

Still hanging around in “fair to middling” territory was Tia Carrere, who met a hula coach and not only loosened her hips, but wound up throwing her partner a few deadly lustful glares of just the type that make the rumba difficult for people like last season’s Trista Rehn Sutter, who has never given a lustful glare to anything except a pink sandal with ribbon roses on it.

Also mid-pack: George Hamilton, who took another step toward self-caricature by being unable to perform the suave quickstep as a result of his bum knee, despite the interventions of his chiropractor and sports medicine guy. George’s goofy top-hat-clad dance, as the judges noted, incorporated everything from Charleston elements to tap-dancing, lacking only anything resembling a quickstep. More on-target was George’s Master P mockery in his post-dance interview, where he claimed to be doing it all for the guys back in the ‘hood.

Jerry Rice was quick (har har) to see the parallels between the quickstep and his previous career in football, so he took Anna, his partner, to run some footwork drills at the stadium. It doesn’t take a genius, incidentally, to note that the silly practice-footage segments are going to get very stale in a hurry once the most obvious gimmicks are exhausted. Someone had better be working on some backup plans.

Still, once Jerry and Anna got out on the dance floor, it was hard not to root for the big lug. When an unlikely candidate like Jerry Rice is happy to commit to something conventionally believed to be as sissified as ballroom dancing, it actually seems infinitely less sissified than… well, we’ll get to Master P. Jerry, for the moment, is near the middle of the rankings.

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