Master of fan manipulation

Rice gets into the zone
Speaking of improvement, Jerry Rice rebounded from a disappointing performance last week with a surprisingly refined foxtrot. Jerry has always been hard-working but a little imprecise in the actual dancing. This was the week he got much sharper. Suddenly, he looked like a man who knew how to dance. It's nice for everyone, including judges, to be reminded that Jerry Rice is as capable of learning to dance as Tia Carrere, and even if he's from football and she's from "Wayne's World."

Also making a nice showing was Lisa Rinna, whose paso doble with partner Louis had all the snap and passion that the dance is meant to have, in spite of another extraordinarily strange choice of music — here, "The Final Countdown." (It's safe to say that no number of monkeys sitting at any number of typewriters would ever have looked at the words, "Name two songs appropriate for the paso doble," and typed, "'Thriller' and 'The Final Countdown.'") More and more, Lisa has a bit of Kelly Monaco in her as she makes a nice recovery from her early slinky-underdog status.

So in the actual final countdown, the leaders of the pack are Drew and Cheryl. They're closely followed by Stacy and Tony, Lisa and Louis, Tia and Maksim, and Jerry and Anna. A bit south of them are George and Edyta, and then far, far down the road, nowhere near anyone else, are Master P and Ashly. Can they hang around for yet another week? Given that three times they've been by far the worst team and three times they've returned, the smart bet at this point is fairly clearly not betting at all.

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