Nothing speeds up the pace of an episode of “Dancing With the Stars” (ABC, Mondays/Tuesdays) quite like the phase where each pair starts to perform two individual dances a week. This season’s first episode of that type shuffled the front-runners a little bit, while leaving Billy Ray Cyrus and John Ratzenberger scraping bottom — again.

Each couple did one ballroom and one Latin dance, beginning with Laila Ali and Maksim Chmerkovskiy’s quickstep. The quickstep tends to challenge even good dancers, particularly ones like Laila who are muscular rather than wispy, simply because of the fast footwork that’s required. Laila, however, looked great, overcoming the corny cover of “Part-Time Lover” provided by the house band. Laila pulled down 29 out of a possible 30 points, a strong start to a long evening.

John Ratzenberger and Edyta Sliwinska tackled the rumba, often touted as the sexiest of the ballroom dances. She immediately announced that the age difference between them meant that there would be no conventional rumba, and she substituted a sort of elegant glide to “That’s Life,” which John managed to get through in decent form. Their scores were weak, but John received praise from the judges for the big improvement between his appearances last week and this week — from very bad to merely bad.

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Apolo Anton Ohno and Julianne Hough have set such a standard for not only dancing but fun and energy that a restrained dance like the foxtrot was bound to challenge them, and it did appear that maybe something was missing. Neither of them seemed to enjoy that dance as much as they did some of the others, and the drop-off in the sparkle factor was evident. When judge Len Goodman complained that Apolo was good but not great, it wasn’t entirely surprising.

Ian Ziering has been on a Sisyphus-like journey to impress the judges in spite of their repeated insistence that, in some unidentified or unidentifiable way, he wasn’t giving his all. Carrie Ann Inaba went so far as to suggest that Ian should watch Billy Ray to get a sense of how to dance with heart. Ian followed that advice when partner Cheryl Burke invited Billy Ray to rehearsal. While Billy Ray wouldn’t seem to have much of an incentive to help Ian out, the boys seemed to have a good time together, and Ian did receive credit from the judges for letting go during his tango. His three 9s weren’t on par with the best scores of the night, but it had to be gratifying for the judges to stop giving him such nebulous and unending criticism.

As for Billy Ray himself, his reaction to the waltz was both predictable and absurd: he thought maybe it should “showcase” Karina Smirnoff rather than him. Putting aside the oddity of the primary competitor taking a back seat in any competition (Tucker Carlson's chair-sitting notwithstanding), Billy Ray had to know that this would invite disdain from the judges. Indeed, Billy Ray simply gestured in Karina’s direction as she danced around him, and every judge talked about it. Carrie Ann could barely find enough “content” to score, while Bruno Tonioli accused Billy Ray of looking like Vanna White on “Wheel Of Fortune,” just presenting with a flourish.