While we get het up over our yearly dose of Strictly Come Dancing, our cousins across the Atlantic quietly get on with shoehorning multiple series of Dancing with the Stars into their calendar year. 2008's second serving is about to reach its conclusion, and it's been a relatively interesting run.
The current US season might not have reached the hysterical fever pitch of our own Sergeant saga, but what could? While the British viewing masses were preoccupied with a clumping 64-year-old who knew very well what he'd let himself in for, the US audience kept voting for an 82-year-old who seemed thoroughly bewildered about the entire concept of a ballroom dancing competition.
Oscar-winning octogenarian Cloris Leachman was paired with the show's 47-year-old dance tutor Corky Ballas, whose incredible reserves of patience were sorely tested as Leachman behaved like a screeching toddler in need of a dose of Ritalin. Her understandably restricted movement combined with a lack of attention during practice meant that every dance was a textbook demonstration in how to drag a pensioner across a room. Occasionally there was the added bonus of overtly sexual gyrations as a distraction technique (the jive was a particular highlight, with both groping and dry-humping included). You wouldn't get that on Brucie's watch.
Cloris and Corky stuck it out until being eliminated by the public vote in week seven, because sympathy votes only get you through for so long. In the final, space tourist and singer Lance Bass will be dancing off against model Brooke Burke and NFL star Warren Sapp. Hannah Montana star Cody Linley was controversially slung out in the semi-final having only just been reunited with his pro partner Julianne Hough, who had been rushed to hospital after the week five results show, diagnosed with endometriosis and, subsequently, had her appendix removed. Not to be outdone, pro dancer Lacey Schwimmer announced that she too has endometriosis, but wouldn't be taking any time off because it didn't need surgery, leaving everyone wondering why she felt the need to inform the world of this if it wasn't going to affect the show.
This wasn't the only medical drama. Beach volleyball Olympian Misty May-Treanor ruptured her achilles tendon in rehearsals and had to withdraw from the competition. Comedian Jeffrey Ross stepped out in a fetching pirate-style eye-patch in week one after his partner Edyta Sliwinska poked him in the eye and scratched his cornea. Daytime TV actor Susan Lucci cracked two bones in her foot while rehearsing the hustle, but danced on anyway.
Debutant and endometriosis sufferer Schwimmer is partnering her childhood crush Bass, and provided the quote of the series in the very first episode – "I used to think I would marry him. I don't any more." She's also provided some frankly bewildering choreography that has not endeared her to purist head judge Len Goodman, including dancing a rumba in bare feet around a park bench. Brooke Burke and her partner Derek Hough have been teachers' pets the whole way through, right up until the semi-final when they completely lost the plot and were lucky to stay in. And the hulking Warren Sapp, dancing with Kym Johnson, has little technical ability but an amazing charisma which has stood him in good stead with the voters.
In terms of consistent dance performance, Brooke and Derek have the edge; in terms of entertainment, Warren and Kym are best; and in terms of the victors who would most enrage Len Goodman, it has to be Lance and Lacey. All in all, just as in Strictly, it's a competitive final, and it's anyone's sparkly glitterball trophy.
