The Ballad of Ricky-Bobby: Dancing With The Stars (Oh, Yes)

Dancing With The Stars...?!

RICKY: By and large, the O'Donnell's are not much of a TV family. I think those Thursday night NBC comedies rule, but I pretty much just watch sports. The old man is the same way (sports-wise, not 30 Rock wise). My brother delves into some 24, but that might be it. My sister is the biggest TV watcher in the family, but it's nothing crazy. I doubt my mother even knows what HD stands for. 

In part, it's because of this that I am very ashamed of what I am about to admit: my family loves Dancing With the Stars.

Maybe if my parents watched a ton of TV, I'd be more accepting. But when DWTS - with some, gulp, American Idol thrown in - is basically the only show they make appointment viewing.....it just really bothers me. Man, I hate that show.

And it's not even just Mom and Dad -- my aunts and uncles eat that stuff up, too. Grandmas and grandpa? Probably. At family parties, the old people drink wine and talk about Dancing With the Stars. It's awful. I really, really hope I stay young and awesome forever. I do not want that future. Needless to say, it's likely that none of them will be viewing that White Stripes documentary.

Usually, I (or you, fine commenters) don't stand for "it sucks" as a reasonable explanation for why someone doesn't like something. But do I really need to delve any deeper into DWTS? That show is just lame as hell, and I am not sorry.

I think Drew Magary, writing at NBC, hit the nail on the head.

(T)hat's what "Dancing with the Stars" is really all about: seeing attractive female stars strut around in dresses with very high slits, and then becoming even more infatuated with the anonymous female dance partners of the male celebrities. I'm telling you, this show is its own soft core pornography industry. If your grandpa says he watches this show because he enjoys the dancers' technical prowess, you call BS on that dirty old coot. You know and he knows he's there for the goodies. ANTICIPATION: SKIN!

That really is all DWTS is: softcore porn. America's most popular, most pathetic version of it. Just realize that. I want to make sure everyone knows that no man enjoys a technically sound samba.

Now before someone calls me out for not liking hot chicks: of course, hot chicks are awesome. That Julianne Hough lady? She seems like a nice person.

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But this has to be the all-time lamest way of getting your daily fill of attractive girls.

BOBBY: Dancing With The Stars is loaded to the brim with sexual energy. There's just so much to look at. Watching it in HD is bonus. I just peeped that Hough video you embedded, and it seemed like the greatest thing ever as it unfolded. I think I noticed Ohno for roughly four seconds of the 1:43. That's pretty close to too many seconds. I liked the part at the end where it looked like they were gonna make out. It's always fun pretending the dance partners have secret sexual interactions off camera. It makes too much sense not to happen.

Voting/reality shows are awful in an uncountable amount of ways -- a lot of it boils down to how painfully formulaic and contrived they are. And oh-so repetitive. I watched about 30% of the season premiere of DWTS because my buddy Ceebs' (of picking shitty brackets fame) mom was watching it. Every single segment worked like this...

- Celebrity: I'm a celebrity. I'm famous for this reason. Here's some extended info about myself with footage of me doing what makes me famous.
- Dance Partner: I'm the dance partner. Here's extremely brief info about myself. I'm also stunningly beautiful.
- Cut to awkward montage of them meeting.
- Cut to training montage that includes footage of the celebrity missing a step, falling down, or joking about how bad they are.
- Cut to the actual performance which, juxtaposed with the training footage, now seems downright brilliant.
- Judges weigh in, the dance partners go to some weird room.
- ...annnnnnnd SCENE.

As bad as I feel saying what I'm about to say, I'm gonna say it anyway: I'd rather defend Dancing With The Stars than prosecute it. It's got a lot to offer. Does it really suck? Yes. But out of  all the stuff that really sucks, it's probably the best. I mean, it's got a sports-related person every year. The athletes tend to do well, and it keeps the show in the news. It's inevitable, and you might as well not totally hate it. You don't even have to watch it, just accept its existence. Though watching full episodes seems downright impossible.

Aside from the actual dancing, it's pretty entertaining. The female dancers are absolutely gorgeous, and they've all got seemingly endearing personalities. I don't think the judges take anything off the table, either. The Asian looking chick is well-spoken and easy on the eyes, the old British sounding guy reminds me of a butler who would give bad advice, and even that guy on the end with the funny accent... in most situations, I hate him, but for some reason, I just find him funny in the context of the show. Plus they recently added Brooke Burke to start interviewing people for no reason. There are no more stops to pull out (short of broadcasting the show with full frontal nudity) -- this is the apex of prime time sex.

It's also quite insane how much more famous the celebrities get after being on the show. I remember reading something about how Emmitt Smith got noticed more for DWTS than his prolific football career. NFL's all-time leading rusher? Ha! Now you're this...

Bonus: I had a professor in college who was obsessed with this show. She would play extended clips of it in lecture on a regular basis, always with vague attempts to tie it into the material we were leaning. At no point did it ever tie-in to anything we learned. Eh, maybe it did once. But barely.

But yeah, if you're forced to watch that show -- preferably on DVR -- it's tolerable. If a significant other and/or family member was roping me into something, I'd rather it be this than Idol. If terrible, juggernaut reality TV shows are the NFC West, Dancing With The Stars is the Arizona Cardinals, I say. Despite it's many deficiencies, it's too much to look at to be a bad thing. I think in this metaphor, Larry Fitzgerald is Julianne Hough.

(* - We live in a society where we expose people for all types of things all the time, so why didn't Armstrong get called out for 'prepared material' when he spit that quote? He had the entire mission to come up with it! His quote better damn well have been amazing. Was the quote just that good where it was impervious to criticism? Maybe it was.... maybe it was.)


BobbyStompy is the assistant editor of Tremendous Upside Potential. He can be reached at stompaberdeen [at] aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @bobbystompy.