"Dancing with the Stars": Rock Week rocks some contestants
(CBS News) Who needs Steven Tyler when you've got, um, Gene Simmons?
Yes, Monday night's Rock Week on "Dancing with the Stars" began with the hanging tongue and stunning epaulettes of Kiss. How appropriate that the show would begin with a huge amount of make-up and costumery.
Pictures: "Dancing with the Stars" Season 14
Sherri Shepherd had promised the previous week to eschew the tears and the fears. Here, she would rock out to the tango. She was worried, though, that her sexy partner Val Chmerkovskiy believed she was fat. Or was he reminding her that Meat Loaf had successfully melded size with rock?
To "Cum on Feel the Noize" - one the great tracks created by the British band Slade (and copied poorly by some faceless American band) - Shepherd tried and tried to show her inner loathing. Instead, she struggled with her outer extensions. The dance felt curiously flat.
"I like you when you're mean and moody," judge Bruno Tonioli said, adding, "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?" However, Carrie Ann Inaba felt there was a lack of bedroom sparkle.
However, in the dance she released her Celtic Vixen to great effect, swishing her skirt and gritting her teeth with considerable menace. She even offered Ballas a few left and right hooks to finish him off. At this rate, she'd get in the Welsh rugby team.
Tonioli called it a "whirlwind of fury," but he found it less than clean. Inaba appreciated her intensity, but not her footing. This all sounded like ugly girls being mean to the cute girl at school.
Have Jaleel White and partner Kym Johnson cutely made up after last week's alleged spat? I wonder. She told him he has Jagger lips and he took it on the chin. I wonder, too, if the Stones have ever contributed to a tango before. To the tune of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," White tried to pout his way through, while Johnson attempted to attract eyes toward her precision and away from White's slight rubber-leggedness.
"I like the humor you put into it," said Goodman. He felt, though, that it lacked attack. Tonioli felt that his undercarriage was under-powered. Perhaps he was referring to Goodman.
Melissa Gilbert claims she has always been the good girl. In this paso doble, she was supposed to be the killer. "Get pissed. Get annoyed," encouraged partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy. Gilbert declared that killing him at the end of her dance would be appropriate.
Gilbert's feet seemed bonded together and struggled to compete with her license to kill. She wasn't helped by the fact that Chmerkovskiy fell over - perhaps out of fear.
"You messed up the ending," said Tonioli. "At times I feel you are running for it."
Inaba thought it was Gilbert's best performance by far. However, she felt that in hold, Gilbert was too subservient.
Green Bay Packers' wide receiver Donald Driver admitted he actually watches this show. He knows that football players often find a kindred spirit in the paso doble - perhaps the New Orleans Saints' coaches offer them a bonus for a little extra aggression. Driver began with a guitar, offering his version of a right-handed Hendrix.
To the tune of "Purple Haze" - which so often describes the current Minnesota Vikings - Driver torqued his torso in order to spin partner Peta Murgatroyd into concussioned dizziness. Thoroughly topless, his biceps tensed into bowling balls, while his tongue looked like it had been given special extension tuition from Gene Simmons. It wasn't great, but it was exciting.
"Muscular, masculine, magnificent," said Tonioli. "What the heck did I just see?" screamed Inaba. She deemed it "spectacular." "I never thought I'd get excited seeing a man with his shirt off," began Goodman, to quiet gasps.
Gladys Knight had promised to channel her inner Tina Turner. She also promised not to have class. It would be hard to have class if you're being asked to dance the tango to "Bohemian Rhapsody." Especially as the producers offered the parody of the three judges and presenter Tom Bergeron mimicking the original Queen video - badly.
The music was spectacularly unhelpful, until the tempo increased and partner Tristan McManus began to play Knight like a guitar.
"By far your most ambitious routine," said Inaba. "It's a hard song to dance to." In brief, she didn't like it very much.
Goodman wasn't happy with her feet, her posture and her legs. Which didn't leave very much to praise.
William Levy wasn't really sure who Twisted Sister was. Yet their "We're Not Gonna Take It" was to be his anthem for the night - an anthem to which he would have to jive.
Levy made liberal use of his chest last week. This week, the featured body item was his buttocks. The dancing, however, bottomed out a little. It was if the whole thing was being made up as he and partner Cheryl Burke went along.
"You went wrong. You lost timing during the second part. It is what it is," eulogized Goodman.
"Your performance always rocks the house," said Tonioli, before accusing Levy of being complacent. Levy tried to explain that Cubans don't jive all that often.
Because "Dancing with the Stars" tries to stick to its dancing roots, someone had to waltz. Roshon Fegan lost that lottery. His limbs are a little too loose for what might be described as self-control, as his the size of his head (metaphorically speaking).
Thankfully, he didn't have to dance to anything that resembled a rock song. To this bilgey, pappy pop (something about this being the time of our lives), Fegan and partner Chelsie Hightower managed to inject speed into the waltz. It was all suitably Disney, rather than, say, the Doors.
"It was like watching the climax of a Disney movie," observed Inaba, wisely.
"Beautiful, flowing movement," gushed Tonioli. "Good job, dog," added Goodman, wanting to pander to Fegan's hippy-hoppy vernacular.
Alice Cooper and Maria Menounos. This is not a coupling that flows naturally from normal minds. But would Menounos be able to flow at all? Having broken her ribs, her feet were now hurting. The fine doctor at Cedar Sinai told her she was getting stress reactions in her feet and had one outright stress fracture.
It seems that every time Menouos breaks something, she dances really quite well. Her tango had levels of precision sometimes seen in surgery.
Inaba admired the chemistry Menounos has with partner Derek Hough. So much so that she began to eat her earring. Goodman thought she lost a little control, though her posture was delightful.
"Sex appeal by the truckload," declared Tonioli.
Finally, there was Gavin DeGraw, whose sex appeal is a little on the laid back side. But he's a rocker. This would be his core. But this was the tango. DeGraw wore several trilbies of different colors during rehearsal. Surely he wouldn't don one for the tango. Surely no one in Argentina would tango in a trilby.
Sadly, this trilby looked like it had been flattened in Charlie's Chocolate Factory. DeGraw manages to make aggression look like fright. Confidence just doesn't seem to be in his expressional vocabulary. His feet twitch more nervously than his eyelids.
Goodman claimed he liked it, but not that much. He had problems with DeGraw's sticky-out bottom. Tonioli thought it was like watching a turtle.
And so ended another week concocted to attract, um, younger viewers.
TOP THREE: Katherine Jenkins, Maria Menounos, Donald Driver
BOTTOM THREE: Gavin DeGraw, Gladys Knight, Sherri Shepherd
