Cheated Cheetah

I see the media/cyber-world is already inappropriately and overly outraged over last night's elimination on Dancing With The Stars.  Here at W&C, I would also like to have a moment of silence...

R.I.P.  Team Sabrina

Don't worry, I am not devastated.  Surprised?  Yes.  A little sad?  Okay, just a wee bit.  But this is a reality show and oddly enough my life appears to closely resemble what it was just 24 hours ago when I believed that Sabrina Duncan and her partner Mark Ballas would dance another day. 

While I wasn't aware of Sabrina before DWTS, I figured she was safe for awhile.  Besides being the best dancer... as a Cheetah Girl (apparently in the same popularity tornado realm of High School Musical and Hannah Montana ... which I know absolutely nothing about other than it's HUGE!), I figured she had a solid fan base... and one that would be more apt to vote.   

But I think it came down to the usual recipe for reality show "shocker":  a slightly "off" week, over-confidence that they would be safe, and folks rallying to save the bottom dwellers (Jane needing votes after last week's bottom 2 showing and the lowest score this week... and Marie still feeding off goodwill over the fainting spell, that is still being shown on a continuous loop).  Likewise, Sabrina may have been hurt if folks thought she had an unfair advantage as a singer/dancer (granted not "ballroom")... but still she lacked that "fish out of water" quality that folks love about this show.

For me, it still qualifies as the biggest pre-finale upset in DWTS history.  Sure there have been many couples who should have lasted longer over lesser competition, but I don't think there has ever been a couple I thought should have made it to the finale but didn't...

We will certainly miss Mark Ballas and admit to bit of school-girlboy crush. Lately, I have been referring to Mark as Todd's "other boyfriend"... a list that is somewhat lengthy, but tends to change frequently (in fact, today's "birthday stud" Dermot Mulroney is one of Todd's Hall Of Fame "other boyfriends"... no worries, I have my list too!).  Todd is going to miss the next two weeks of DWTS... in his own words, "there's no one good left" so the timing worked out pretty well.

Before we say goodbye for now (let's hope Mark will be back for future DWTS seasons), I did stumble on some Mark Ballas Shirtless (here google, google) pix.   Granted they are a bit Tiger/Teen Beat... but what the heck, he's of legal age so I'm posting 'em!