‘Stars’ is plain old summer fun

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Which brings us to the judging and the scoring — which are two different things. The judges are Len Goodman, a longtime ballroom judge with a perfect poker face, Bruno Tonioli, an almost stereotypically Italian music-video choreographer, and Carrie Ann Inaba, an experienced stage and TV choreographer, most recognized for doing a Lucy Liu caricature in an “Austin Powers” movie. There isn’t an obvious Simon or Paula in this group; each has delivered a fair share of encouragement and critique (usually to the wild over-reaction of the studio audience, the only participants in this show who take it all too seriously). Although Goodman has committed the unforgivable TV sin of over-eloquence, making an analogy to gardens that he intended as criticism but was generally mistaken for praise (giving Bergeron a running joke that goes over his own head).

But the judges’ 10-point-scale (through week 4, nobody’s awarded a 10 yet) is the only straightforward part of the scoring process. The margins between best and worst performance are flattened into a simplified ranking system (1 for worst, going up 1 point for each place), and then combined with a similar ranking for the home-audience vote, the figures for which are, like “American Idol”, a tightly-kept secret. This is further complicated by the fact that the judges’ judgments are limited to the current performance while the audience vote is for the past week's dancing.

In the case of a tie, the rules state that the audience ranking would prevail, ensuring that the "Star" with the lowest popular vote is eliminated, explaining last week's inexplicable result when Rachel Hunter, praised enthusiastically by the judges and always in first or second place, was voted off the dance floor. The only thing more disappointing was when O’Hurley finished his dance too out-of-breath to utter his usual urbane witticisms.

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“Dancing With the Stars” is an hour of eye candy, but much lower in empty calories than most TV guilty pleasures. Trista’s concerns aside, the show’s sexual content is minimal: the women’s costumes wouldn’t get a second glance on an awards show’s red carpet, and even the prospect of O’Hurley’s Speedo is mostly comical.

NASCAR-type spectators anticipating some painful on-stage accident have been sorely disappointed, even when McIntyre leaped over his partner during his jive dance. And the drama over who the ultimate dancing star will be is not the driving force behind this show. It could be argued that there’s more suspense over who they’ll recruit for a second batch of shows, and what it will displace on ABC’s fall schedule.

And maybe that’s the point. Like a successful dance performance, “Dancing with the Stars” floats effortlessly across the TV screen. It’s plain fun to watch, even if (or maybe especially if) you don’t know a tango from a rumba, the Bachelorette from Stacy’s Mom, or a garden from a dance floor.

Wendell Wittler is the online alias of a writer from Southern California.

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