‘Dancing’ results: More filler than a Twinkie

The Wednesday results show is always a rough go for “Dancing With The Stars” (ABC, Tuesdays/Wednesdays, 8 p.m. ET). As difficult as it is to drag 10 dances out over two hours on a Tuesday night (one dance every 12 minutes), it’s even harder to drag zero dances out over one hour.

Of course, “no dances” means “no competitive dances,” but not quite “no dances.” It means, among other things, that Joey Lawrence and partner Edyta — who has to think she’s living the good life after spending the last two seasons dancing with Evander Holyfield and George Hamilton — repeat their quickstep at the request of the judges. This week, given that the couple had received the first 10s of the season and been crowned the obvious winners of the night, that they would get the encore performance seemed like a foregone conclusion. Still, it was fun to see Joey’s nearly manic energy, which has only increased as a result of the confidence he gained from Tuesday night’s strong showing.

Just as Tom Bergeron promised on Tuesday night, we also got to see a group jive by the celebrities’ professional partners, performed to the house band’s well-intentioned rendition of Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell.” The dance itself was impressively kinetic and certainly imposingly aerobic, but it felt like both a waste of the jive and a waste of “Rebel Yell,” as the song and the dance were markedly ill-suited to each other.

Another one of the new season’s time-fillers is the audience feedback segment, in which those who were “lucky” enough to see the dancers do their stuff live offer their opinions about the performances. Unfortunately, the segment has fallen flat both last week and this week, as the show is too generously inclined toward its participants to show anyone saying anything genuinely negative. A clump of fans lining up just to proclaim in rehearsed chirps that Mario Lopez “has it going on” do not contribute very much to the entertainment.

When the first three couples were finally pronounced safe from elimination, the script was a repeat of last week’s, where two of the safe celebrities were not entirely surprising (Joey and Emmitt Smith) and the other was something of a head-scratcher (country singer and apparent non-mambo enthusiast Sara Evans). If Sara’s fans are formidable enough to protect her during a week when she struggled with a wiggling Latin dance, it’s safe to assume she isn’t going anywhere soon.

The filler gets oily
And then: Julio Iglesias. Following in the footsteps of last week’s performance by Tom Jones, Iglesias showed up to accompany a rumba by professional dancers Cheryl and Maksim. He apparently has a new album of romantic covers out, and he offered ‘80s relic “I Want To Know What Love Is.” Between this show and “American Idol,” the light hits of 1980 to 1995 certainly can’t claim they haven’t been given every opportunity at a renaissance. His rendition was so oily that it could have slid across the floor on its own, making the results shows two-for-two in offering awkward visions of aging practitioners of the music of love, both of whom were corny even before they entered the realm of self-parody where they currently reside.

You will recall that in the Slim-Fast Dance Challenge, we are following the adventures of dance student and shake drinker Tysonia, who this week encountered the tango. In the segment’s undeniable highlight, Tysonia was taught proper head position by being forced to peer at her trainer through intentionally misapplied false eyelashes. It may sound like insanity, but Tysonia’s partner is a professional, so if he says eyelashes, then eyelashes it is. Come to think of it, that may be exactly what Harry Hamlin needs to loosen up and find his inner Astaire. Between that and Tuesday night’s laughter yoga, Harry would almost surely rise to the top, or at least he would look gorgeous at the bottom.

After the professional jive and the professional rumba, there was a professional tango even more tangential to the show, as the dancers weren’t even ones who regularly appear as celebrities’ partners. Undoubtedly, the tango was technically skilled and would score high in competition, but in offering several minutes of a discipline few are familiar with performed by dancers few have heard of, “Dancing” is probably overestimating its viewers’ true passion for quality ballroom dancing and underestimating the importance of familiar personalities and the possibility that Jerry Springer will pull a hamstring.

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