Hate Watch: Dancing With the Stars Week 1: Viral Hits Night

Now, we could go back and cover the premiere but a premiere is a premiere and to be honest, I hate two night premieres. I hated them with SYTYCD and I hate them with this. Mostly because it’s a lot of filler for a format that’s already got that in spades.

On to the first actual week of the competition, after meeting everyone and eliminating Conner Leavitt and Sarah Jane Nader, who I didn’t know before and had not yet formed an attachment to, though it is a bummer that the same-sex pairing was only there for the premiere.

Now that we’re in the meat of things, let’s separate the critique into two categories, Hates and Greats.  It’s what it sounds like. I’ll list what I’m liking and what I’m still not jiving with. (That is, in fact, a dance joke.)

Let’s go!

Hates: 

• I do not enjoy Julianne Hough in this role. I also think the wardrobe they choose for her is odd. She feels like a placeholder, and I don’t think that’s on her as a person, but she definitely isn’t winning me over, we’ll put it that way.

  
  

• Vague Themes: I had to look up what viral hits night actually implied. Like, I get the concept of a viral hit, but was this a nod to something each star went viral for, a viral moment on the show, or….something else? Turns out it was something else - though actually kind of all of the above. According to my research, it’s just a nod to trending audio, dance moves, etc. Ok then. As much as I’m a doomscroller I only caught a few of the references. Maybe I am getting old.

  
  

• Host banter: I can appreciate that ballroom is over the top glitz and glamour.  In a world covered in sequins and fringe, it’s easy to get a little crazy with it. But the WRITING FOR THE HOSTS. I just wish they’d lay off the cheese even a little bit.

  
  

• Filler:  There’s lots of it. I appreciate getting behind the scenes a little bit, but sometimes I feel like it gets to be a little too much.

  
  

• Caricatures: He plays baseball, guys. She’s Italian! I mean, we know who these people are, or they wouldn’t be Stars, right? (Ostensibly, because see above, I am old, and don’t know who everyone is).  Still, I feel like we fall back on the big picture of these folks a lot instead of just letting them be people learning dance.

Greats:

• Realistic performances: I mean, the performances are real, but because of some of the hype around the show, I always felt like people were raving about how amaaaazing everyone was right out of the gates. Truth is, for the most part, they’re not. And that’s cool, because it makes you root for them week by week and it really makes it more exciting when they do level up.

  
  

• Levelling up: To expand on that last part - seeing people improve is actually a lot of fun. While I really enjoyed shows like So You Think You Can Dance because everyone was already dancers, it’s nice to see people push beyond their boundaries. Some of these folks really, really never did anything close to ballroom and it shows, but they’re (for the most part) improving. Sorry, Giada.

  
  

• Interesting Special Skills: It’s also kinda fun to see the “stars” inject their personality into it in a non caricatured way - we’ve got models who are great at posing, athletes who can pull off power moves, and even funny folks who can inject humor and levity into what they’re doing.

  
  

• Real Reactions: For all the showbiz of the thing, I do really appreciate seeing the real reactions celebrities have to their performances, even if it’s a little sad sometimes when you know someone knows they didn’t do their best (Sorry again, Giada). These people are in the spotlight for something they DON’T necessarily excel at, and it’s interesting to see them grapple with that. It makes the highs higher and the lows lower. 

Reframes:

• I think Bruno is now my favorite judge, weird meme energy aside. His knowledge is obvious and he seems to judge really fairly. 

  
  

• Flip side - I think Carrie Ann Inaba might be the easy judge, though I don’t think she’s too bad.

  
  

• Not sure how I feel about all the added content. I guess I’m not in deep enough to want an after party, behind the scenes, and full gamut of social media stuff that tie in. 

Well, there we go! On a scale of hatin’ to I’m lovin’ it, I’m neutral with a chance of enjoying it.  

Notable moments:

I think Ezra Frech and Daniella Karagach killed it with their routine to “Low” which is a sentence I didn’t expect to ever be typing. The thing is though, they figured out how to work with Ezra’s prosthetic in the context of the dance and make him shine for his athleticism and the end result was a really, really great performance.

While inclined not to love Jackson Olson because all the banana cheese, he’s growing on me because he’s so into it. I think he’s got a really good ballroom spirit, and he loves to be in the spotlight, and those are two things that lend themself to IRL ballroom goodness. 

We’ll see what happens for Yacht Rock Week. Yikes.