DWTS Week 8

Better late than never, I guess.

So, apparently Meryl's fans are having ten shit fits these week. They're crying foul because they believe Amy Purdy was overscored, and because Amy Purdy sat on a stool for part of the AT Tango. This is what we've come to. Meryl Davis fans crying "unfair" over a girl with no feet.

I bet Meryl could do this. Her butt wouldn't slide off the stool, her alignment would remain long, strong, open and stable, there would be no weight shift/center-of-gravity collapse to knock the legs of the stool out from under her. This move? It's nothing.

Perhaps if Derek and Amy had just stood around for fourteen seconds pretending they were about to kiss, Meryl's fans would have been okay with it.

Here's Purdy's full Argentine Tango, so we can see just how much she's overscored:



Since Meryl's fans are losing it over Amy Purdy, why not also see Purdy's Celebrity Duel jive for ourselves. The woman needs extra stability/resistance (i.e. some point of contact with another dancer) because of the no-feet thing, but she doesn't need external resistance for her WHOLE FREAKING BODY AND EVERY JOINT.  More importantly, she doesn't need it for her core, her hips, her knees. She needs it to orient her prosthetic feet to the floor. Seeing as her actual body ends just below her knees.

Amy Purdy, Derek Hough, Peta Murgatroyd and James Maslow four-way jive:



Fake feet or real feet, which, of these two athletes, Meryl or Amy, is actually dancing on this show? Who has better technique, musicality, rhythm, performance, precision? Which athlete/celeb dance contestant dances better? The one who stood on the top of the ice dance platform in Sochi after seventeen years of training, or the one with no legs below the knee who has to dial herself into her snowboard?

Here's Meryl's "rumba".



We can all agree; no damn stool sitting in that rumba.

Let's look at the rumba content:

There's one part.

That's the other part.

While the leg kick/swing saved itself for Meryl's celebrity duel with Danica McKellar,

 this essential element of any authentic rumba had to be included in Meryl and Maks' rumba:

My second favorite part of the entire evening was this:

That's not a choreophed bump; it's Meryl coming out of a spin.

My absolute favorite part of the evening was this:

"So don't grab onto me."

Look at Charlie White.

It's almost as if Charlie's going through a little PTSD, or maybe de-programming. Grabbing? You don't do no grabbing in lifts!

Charlie, you and Meryl are still hedging about retirement. Until you're an eligible alumni, deal with it. You're a grabee.

Here's embeds from the rest of Meryl and Charlie's performances:

Charlie's contemporary with Candace Bure, Sharna Burgess and Mark Ballas:


Meryl, Danica McKellar, Val Chmerkovskiy, Maksim Chmerkovskiy samba:



Charlie and Sharna's quickstep:



It's not the best celeb/pro quickstep ever on DWTs, but it's one of the rare quicksteps where the upper bodies remain in contact for almost all of it.

For what it's worth, and it's OT, here's an article on Amy Purdy in the Theatre & Dance section of The Washington Post.  Amy Purdy and The Washington Post.