What dancing? Where are the stars?

It’s difficult to speak the name of ABC’s surprisingly successful “Dancing With the Stars” without invoking a few finger-quotes, like the ones that belong around “Stars.” And “Dancing.” And, as a matter of fact, “With.” Sure, it’s likely that “Wiggling All Around The B-Listers” would lack mass appeal, but that’s what the show entails. In its penultimate episode Wednesday night, the fact that the title represents the perspective of the professional dancer put in the position of steering a person of foggy fame through a ballroom dance makes even more sense.

The celebrity front-runner from the beginning has been  J. Peterman of "Seinfeld," actor John O’Hurley. John (in ballroom, we refer to everyone by his first name, as if he is our personal lindy-hop partner) is a silver-haired, smooth-talking gentleman of a certain age who appears at times to have forgotten that he is not, in fact, a “Seinfeld” character.

He dances with a lithe blonde named Charlotte, whose name rhymes with “ricotta” — only one of many allusions to cheese that the show inspires. On Wednesday night, each couple opened with the foxtrot, which perfectly showcases what has made John totally appropriate for this competition: a delightfully unctuous glide that he successfully passes off as elegance.

The second dance, however, was the paso doble, which he and Charlotte gave a rather literal reading. The matador-bull dynamic that the dance intends was played out complete with cape, not to mention John’s unsettling insistence on referring to himself as “Fernando” in a hackneyed accent.

The paso doble, in contrast to the foxtrot, showcased what makes John intermittently creepy: a tendency toward mugging that can make him come off like an embarrassing relative who gets drunk at a Cinco de Mayo celebration and keeps waving a tablecloth at people and daring them to charge him. The judges, however, scored both dances identically, because apparently, when it comes to ballroom dancing, creepy is the new totally appropriate.

Kelly Monaco of "General Hospital" had a bad start in this competition. Clearly cast as the eye candy, she got on the wrong side of the judges almost immediately and was lucky to escape elimination when the show cut loose first the unsettlingly puritanical Trista Rehn Sutter and then the wildly ungainly Evander Holyfield. At some point, however, Kelly clearly got irritated with being written off as the cheesecake of the week, and she and her scalding-hot partner Alec began to improve.

On Wednesday, their foxtrot, featuring Kelly’s lavender “I’ve always wondered what Cinderella would look like if she absentmindedly left for the ball wearing only her skirt and her enchanted push-up bra” outfit, was surprisingly effective. While it featured the usual repeated opportunities to ogle Kelly as she posed, catlike, it was nice to see her outgrow her klutzy image and show some real grace. Kelly and Alec’s paso doble, on the other hand, was fast and furious. While it was flawed, it was a lot more fun to watch than John waving a cape and stomping around in his too-high cummerbund.

The final couple still in the running on Wednesday night was ex-New-Kid Joey McIntyre and his partner, whose name is Ashly. Yes, “Ashly.” Apparently, the “e” that so many Ashleys are carrying around turns out to be superfluous — who knew? Joey and Ashly have attempted to turn every dance into a brief play of sorts, as they did when he was some sort of carousing military man during their jive of a few weeks ago, and as they did during whatever strange tale of love and ants-in-the-pants they were trying to tell during last week’s samba.

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