Women step up on ‘Dancing with the Stars’

Rule breakers
Perhaps the most surprising performance came from Mario Lopez, a very talented dancer already chastised last week for failing to do a proper quickstep. Assigned the tango, Mario and Karina talked about wanting to stay out of trouble, but when they hit the floor, they again broke their hold in the middle of the dance, and they were attacked by the judges once again. Carrie-Ann, in particular, seemed irked, popping off a surprisingly curt “I would appreciate it if you would respect the rules.”

The judges on “Dancing” are used to high levels of diplomacy, but they apparently took the tango violation seriously, particularly after last week. As angry as Carrie-Ann was, it was Len who took the biggest bite out of Mario’s score, dropping him to a 6. That wasn’t just a deduction — it was a punishment for a perceived slight.

Joey Lawrence, unsurprisingly, was a natural at the jive. Dancing to “Blue Suede Shoes,” Joey looked comfortable, confident, and absolutely thrilled, as the plastered-on smile doesn’t seem to have left his face since he scored high with last week’s quickstep. But again, while he and Edyta received uniformly high marks for their dancing, they were also rung up for violating rules — this time, for including lifts and other non-jive-related moves. The scoring effects were exactly the same — Len busted Joey down to a 6, and Carrie-Ann and Bruno would cough up nothing higher than an 8.

So it was a week for the women to fare better than the men in many ways, particularly if freedom from scolding is part of the equation. Despite that overall shift in momentum, it certainly looks like there is no one left to spare Willa from elimination, unless Mario’s two straight weeks of rule-breaking get him in trouble with fans. If that happens, it will just go to show: you don’t mess with the tango.

Linda Holmes is a writer in Bloomington, Minn.

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