Underdogs spin to victory on ‘Dancing’

If you know someone who saw the first couple of episodes of "Dancing With The Stars" and then went on a European vacation and has been gone ever since, try this line out on her: "Kelly Monaco won." You're guaranteed a surprised look, if not a muttered swear word.

In case you weren't aware that Kelly was the underdog going into Wednesday night's finale, the producers were sure to mention it about 300 times to make sure you became aware. Despite having looked early on like a hoochie mama with the class of a corn dog, Kelly had slowly improved over the last couple of weeks and ultimately pulled her way into the finals quite respectably. But in the final showdown, she would face early favorites John O'Hurley and his partner Charlotte. Could Kelly possibly triumph?

The evening opened with both final teams performing their favorite dances, a serious error in judgment for a show in which novelty is everything. Most of us watching at home, after all, don't know a thing about ballroom dancing. Our play-by-play commentary isn't so much analytical ("They've really improved the line of their shoulders!") as it is grimly admiring ("Wow, I think I heard her hip pop from here"). We tune in to see a new outfit, to watch a new dance, and to see whether anyone falls down — the one way, incidentally, in which this series was a complete disappointment. Given how much we're all here for the spectacle, rehashing old dances was a surprisingly ill-considered way to start the finale.

But rehashing was the command, so John and Charlotte returned to the quickstep, performed to the surprisingly apt "Let's Face The Music And Dance." As opposed to, say, "Camptown Races" or "Little Bunny Foo-Foo," whose appropriateness would have matched the music choices in recent shows. John and Charlotte performed just as they did several weeks ago: elegantly and well, with few visible seams. With a little help from Patrick Swayze, who swooped in for a blink-and-you-missed-him cameo, John even managed to tame the more squirm-inducing parts of his persona and deliver exactly the charm his fans like to see from him.

Kelly and Alec followed by revisiting the samba that popped a strap on Kelly's costume two weeks ago, forcing her to muddle through while clutching her breasts as inconspicuously as possible. She did look better the second time around, and she certainly executed the final maneuver, in which she was flung face-down between her partner's legs, with substantially less visible terror. Still, she and Alec fell a couple of points behind in the judges' scores heading into the second half of the competition: a "freestyle" routine in which they could do whatever they chose.

John and Charlotte opened the freestyle portion with a routine perfectly plotted to capitalize on none of their strengths while emphasizing all of their weaknesses. An uncomfortable, phony-looking wiggle set to the oh-so-current "I'm So Excited" neglected John's smooth charm in favor of his awkwardly exaggerated mugging. The whole thing was silly and weak, but when the judges cheered and dropped three straight scores of nine out of ten for that odd spectacle, it was clear that uncritical affirmation was the order of the day.

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