Bridges takes a fall on ‘Skating with Celebrities’

In a culture that watches skating primarily to see people fall and rack themselves, it's only fitting that "Skating With Celebrities" (Fox, Mondays, 8 p.m. ET) would send home its first celebrity when someone finally took a dive.

The fall didn't come from last week's last-place finishers, Kristy Swanson and Lloyd Eisler. In fact, they were probably the most improved pair of the week. After tanking with last week's slow, boring number, they rebounded this week with a performance that, while still bad, moved much faster. They performed to "Boogie Fever," a song choice only partially excused by the fact that the theme of the evening was "the '70s."

Sartorial disaster did strike with Swanson's unfathomably unflattering pair of bell-bottomed sparkle pants. But the performance, divorced from the ugly outfits, was good enough for substantially better marks than last week, and if you enjoy seeing people grab their own behinds or someone else's, it was pure gold.

Furthermore, Swanson and Eisler executed one of the moves many of us expected not to see, except over the dead body of the show's liability insurer: the one where he swings her around by an arm and a leg, threatening to smack her head into the ice at any moment.

Someone call Bob Saget
On the flip side, the goats of the evening were Dave Coulier and Nancy Kerrigan, who followed last week's lame but well-received "Blues Brothers" number with a lifeless, unpleasant rendition of "Get Up Off That Thing." Coulier comes off in the practice footage like a condescending pill — hard to understand if you only remember him from "Full House"; easier if you believe the conventional wisdom that he inspired Alanis Morissette's "You Oughtta Know."

Coulier and Kerrigan certainly appear to be having the least fun in the group. The ability to convey crippling ennui while James Brown sings "Get Up Off That Thing" indicates a basic spiritual deficit that will not be solved by beyond filing off one's toe picks.

As for skills, Coulier's spin was ostentatiously dreadful, and he presented the worst case yet of the "celebrity" standing around while the professional did the skating. Worst of all, he defended himself to the judges by saying his feminine side was "in [his] other pants," laughing at his own joke in spite of the fact that it landed with a resounding thud.

Bruce Jenner and Tai Babilonia set the standard for cheese last week with their embarrassingly literal interpretation of "Up Where We Belong," and they weren't quite able to top it with this round's "Shake Your Groove Thing." Fortunately, the existence of a groove thing and the shaking thereof does not require a military uniform.

They did, however, come close. While Jenner is expending substantially more effort than Coulier, he is just as much of a clod. And really, nothing makes a man who has little grace appear to have absolutely none quite like purple velour flare-leg pants. Having rid himself of both elegance and dignity, Jenner can be expected next week to punctuate his routine with obscene armpit noises.

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