Could this be Springer’s last ‘Dance’?

Could this be Jerry’s last dance?
Jerry Springer, who danced last, has probably seen his best days on the show. His heartwarming waltz of a couple of weeks ago and last week’s slapstick samba are the most rewarding experiences he’s going to have.

Now, dancing against so many people who are so clearly becoming dancers when he is not, he has settled on pure sketch-comedy farce, not making any effort at all to perform the dance. He has solid, funny chemistry with his partner Kym, who seems to be an enormously good sport, but it’s incongruous to see several skilled dances followed by Jerry, dressed in an over-the-top matador getup, strumming and smashing a prop guitar.

The judges have clearly seen all they care to of this, and after giving him a break last week, they busted him down to an 18 this week, clearly trying to send him home. Len and especially Bruno (who gave Jerry a still-generous 5) can take most of the credit, since Carrie-Ann gave Jerry a 7, rather appallingly scoring him only one point lower than she did Emmitt and Joey.

Disco fever, baby!
The much-ballyhooed group disco was short, all things considered, offering each of the five couples only a handful of seconds to show off. Unsurprisingly, it evolved into a stud contest between Mario and Joey. The action was fun to watch, even though Mario took advantage of the Michael Jackson music (“Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”) to drag out everything he taught himself when “Thriller” was popular.

Jerry learned to do The Sprinkler for the occasion, which is about what you’d expect at this point. The couples also got to try lifts, which allowed Emmitt to leverage his physical strength by tossing Cheryl up in the air. Because he didn’t follow this move by dropping her directly on her head as it appeared he might, he created the desired effect.

After the disco was over, the week wrapped up with an interview with Sara, in which she explained her decision to leave the show last week after some of the more upsetting events outlined in that now-famous divorce petition. She said that she chose to focus on her children and family instead of disco, which is hard to argue with. It did, of course, rob the show of an intriguing dilemma in the form of Sara’s apparent inability to be voted off or even land in the bottom two, no matter what. Would she have won the entire thing, no matter how hard the judges tried to get rid of her? Now, we will never know.

If the judges win, this will be the week that Jerry makes a graceful exit at just the right time. The next lowest scores went to Monique, but for her to lose, Jerry’s fans would have to make a very strong showing in a week when he made a very weak one. There’s no doubt that Jerry’s fans are tenacious, but even they may at last be out of steam.

Linda Holmes is a writer in Bloomington, Minn.

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