Bridges takes a fall on ‘Skating with Celebrities’

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Skating away with it
Once again this week, the runaway leaders were Jillian Barberie and John Zimmerman. Production tried to create a measure of drama with the revelation that Barberie pulled a groin muscle going during practice. But just as reality-show viewers have become accustomed to efforts to make foregone conclusions seem less so, people watching this show are well aware that Barberie isn't going anywhere anytime soon, in spite of her clear fondness for saying "groin injury."

Their serious, sleek white outfits for "More Than A Woman" were nothing like the clown suits everyone else wore all evening, and served to emphasize that they are actually skating, and not merely wearing funny costumes and trying not to fall down.

Casting is everything in reality shows, and whoever cast Barberie apparently didn't realize that in addition to the advantage she started with as a former skater, the training from a professional partner benefits her more than it benefits anyone else. That means the gap between her and the other contestants looks bigger, not smaller, no matter how the scores are manipulated. Two of the three judges implied that Barberie and Zimmerman's performance this week somehow disappointed them, but the grousing came off like a suspense-building ploy.

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Deborah Gibson and Kurt Browning finished in fourth place last week. While this week's skate to "You're The One That I Want" featured more impressively absurd costuming and they were obviously trying very hard (to say the least), Gibson is no skater. These two highly theatrical personalities added up to a lot of posing and mugging, but very little skating, just as was the case in the first week. As he characteristically gentle Dorothy Hamill put it, they look great —from the waist up.

Adios, Willis
Todd Bridges and Jenni Meno delivered — well, Bridges delivered — the first fall of the competition during a painfully halting skate to "Jungle Boogie." While Bridges is not the first novice skater to land on his behind in public at the worst possible moment, he happens to be the only one who did it in this particular competition. The fall was enough, combined with their weak showing in the first set of performances last week, to spell the end of Bridges and Meno.

So who's next to go? Next week's elimination will be based on next week's performance alone, so almost anything could happen. It's all about falling on your face, after all, and that can happen to anyone.

Linda Holmes is a writer in Bloomington, Minn.

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