Yes, while last week's episode of "Skating With Celebrities" (Fox, Mondays, 8 p.m. ET) brought the competition's first fall; this week's episode drew the first blood. But we'll get back to that.

The night opened with previous favorites Jillian Barberie and John Zimmerman. While their technique overall is still head and shoulders above the other teams, they made the most surprising mistake of the evening when late in the program, it was Zimmerman — the professional — who stumbled.

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Their program had none of the charm of their last two, they seemed clearly off their game, and their scores modestly reflected that fact. Their banked advantage in basic skating ability gives them room to fall down without being too seriously threatened, but the door appeared very slightly open for another team to sneak in for the win, just this once.

Jenner steps up his game
The stealth sneaks of the week were Bruce Jenner and Tai Babilonia. In their fluff practice piece, we saw them rather amusingly practicing under the watchful eye of her longtime partner Randy Gardner. In addition to being their choreographer, Gardner seems to have put himself in charge of making sure that Jenner doesn't kill anyone with all the unskilled throwing and the graceless hurling and so forth.

When they got to their program, Jenner didn't look quite as impossibly clumsy as he did in the first two weeks, although his team continues its unbroken streak of skating to the absolute corniest possible music. Just as they chose "Up Where We Belong" for movie week and "Shake Your Groove Thing" for '70s week, they chose "Endless Love" for Motown week. If there were a "songs about animals" week, they would be the ones skating to "Muskrat Love."

Impressively, Jenner did manage a death spiral that didn't actually cause death, and they survived the program without any noticeable slips. No big deal at first, this is becoming more and more of an accomplishment as the weeks go by. The real shock set in when Jenner and Babilonia finished ahead of Barberie and Zimmerman, a result that would have seemed impossible in the first week of competition. Jenner isn't good, but he isn't as hard to watch as he used to be.

Coulier, you're no Bob Saget!
Several teams tried to respond to criticism from judges, with the lamest attempt coming from Dave Coulier and Nancy Kerrigan. They made the "hilarious" decision to cross-dress after John Nicks's criticism last week that Coulier failed to show his "feminine side."

Incidentally, one of the best revelations of this week is that Randy Gardner — also choreographing for this team — obviously detests Dave Coulier, seeing him for the unfunny, self-important hack that he is.

Coulier in comedic drag with a red beehive was the easy, lazy way to get back at Nicks. The better way would have been learning to skate.

Despite the fact that Coulier and Kerrigan's routine would have been exposed for the raggedy skeleton it was if they hadn't been wearing absurd costumes, the judges inexplicably complimented their work, and they landed only one tenth of a point behind Barberie and Zimmerman.

If you ever want evidence that the judging on this show sometimes makes no sense at all, watch the Barberie/Zimmerman and Coulier/Kerrigan performances and note that they are separated by the smallest possible margin.

CONTINUED : First blood

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