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Tuesday, May 22, 2007
All Hail Apolo
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
And the coveted (?) mirrored disco ball trophy goes to … Apolo Anton Ohno.
Along with his partner, Julianne Hough, the Olympic short track speed skating champ added to his trophy room Tuesday night when he was declared the winner of the fourth season of “Dancing with the Stars.” They beat out former NSyncer Joey Fatone and his partner Kym Johnson.
The Serf was very pleased with this result, and not just because Fatone insisted on repeating his bee-zarre Star Wars-themed tango in his last competitive dance number in the show’s first hour. Anything that brings the word “Chewbacca” to mind automatically gets dancing demerits in my book.
Meanhile, Week One in this space I’d predicted the prestigious title (well, more prestigious than the “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” Season 2 crown) would go to either Ohno or female world middleweight boxing champ Laila Ali. This totally wipes out my “Dukakis by a landslide” call back in 1988.
The announcement came at the end of a two-hour show that at times felt as unnaturally streeeetched as Billy Ray Cyrus’s hamstrings during a gawky mambo. But a couple of lighter moments more than made up for it: An old Master P clip from Season 2 (let’s just say, he made Billy Ray look like Baryshnikov). Another hilarious “Dance at Home” segment featuring ABC late night host (except in Atlanta, sigh) Jimmy Kimmel, his partner/parking lot security guard Guillermo. Even a Clay Aiken sighting (albeit on tape, and in a fake moustache, as part of Kimmel’s segment!) Meanwhile, over “on another network,” as they say, “American Idol” was going on, presumably Aiken-less.
As for the losers, well, there were no losers according to Laila Ali. Sort of. Snicker. The last woman celeb standing was the first to be eliminated Tuesday, a mere one hour and 10 minutes into the show. Personally, I think the world boxing champ was robbed to finish third. It’s arguably harder for the female celebs to win (the dances naturally focus on the ladies), and her final mambo Tuesday was brilliant. Mostly, though, she knew how to leave on the proper sappy, sassy note. After being relegated to third place, she said all the right things about loving her fellow contestants, the fans, even the folks who did her hair on the show. Then came the knockout punch. Turning towards Fatone and Ohno, she reassured them they were both winners, no matter the final result.
It’s all about the fans,” Ali said. “It doesn’t mean anything, no matter who wins. Especially because I didn’t!”
You gotta love her honesty. And even if you don’t agree with the final result, you gotta love this show that’s not only put the sexy and elegant back into ballroom dancing. With Ohno following in the cleat-steps of Season 3 winner Emmitt Smith, I think we can pretty much lay to rest the idea that dancing is for geeks and sissies.
That can only mean one thing: Get working on your waltzing, Shaq…
We DO Know Jack … Maybe Too Well
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So, will Jack jump?
Don’t count on it.
“24” wrapped up its sixth and arguably most frustrating season Monday night with a typically frenetic two-hour episode that ended with a long shot of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) poised on the edge of a cliff in the dead of night. Below him, the sea churned furiously — mirroring his roiling guts and emotions, one presumes. He’d just saved the day and America — AGAIN — and apparently lost the woman he loved — AGAIN. On top of all that, Audrey’s (Kim Raver) father, Mr. Tough-Talking Defense Secretary (William Devane), had just delivered him a stinging lecture, which essentially boiled down to this: You’ll never change. You’re just a big ole action hero who hurts the people he loves most just so he can keep the world from blowing itself to bits. So, no, you can’t take my daughter to the prom.
Or something like that. Basically, viewers were left with the notion of Jack at a precipice — should he accept who he really is and return to CTU to fight more baddies? Or should he just jump into the unknown, maybe wash up on a beach somewhere near Barbados, where he can open a sub shop and pretend he doesn’t know nothing about fightin’ terrorists?
We know what’s going to happen. And maybe that’s the problem. Even as you felt for Jack Monday night as pretty much everything could and did go wrong for him personally — he essentially let his evil father blow up on an oil platform (though, Serf says, count on HIM rising from the dead even faster than gas prices), while he barely managed to save his teen nephew from the same fate (there’s a boy who’s gonna have some issues) — you kinda knew he’d come through it OK, along with the fate of the democracy. Things didn’t always end so predictably. Why, just last season, all appeared hunky-dory for Jack, Audrey and the good old USA, when he was suddenly jumped, blindfolded and literally sent floating off on a slow boat to China. As savvy viewers, we knew he’d somehow find his way back the followiing January, just in time to join “American Idol” in resurrecting Fox’s flailing ratings.But we didn’t know HOW it would happen.
Now, we just know it’s going to happen. Fox shot itself in the foot last week when it went ahead and announced “24” had been renewed for two more years. Since Sutherland’s the show’s executive producer, only someone as dumb as one of those sitting duck-for-terrorists CTU security guards would think he wouldn’t be back to battle the baddies throughout Day 7, too. Methinks it would’ve been better if the network had just let the suspense build through the summer and fall about when — or even if — “24” might come back next year.
If ratings and buzz were down for “24” this season (and they were), it’s almost because the show’s done its job too well. In pulling out all the stops to make Jack Bauer into a tortured superhero and show us how evil lurks in the heart of so many other men (well, men who have access to nukes and the Oval Office, anyway), they almost had nowhere else to go this year. Perhaps that’s why the two-hour finale, while still as thrilling as ever, tried to shuffle things around in ways we hadn’t seen before. Rockjawed CTU head Bill Buchanan got tossed from his job — AGAIN — but this time, he didn’t just sit around whining, “What do you want me to do Jack?” Who knew Bill was an ex-ace helicopter pilot who could navigate on and off an exploding oil platform in the middle of the inky black night — and lasso Jack in a daring mid-air rescue besides? Meanwhile, all those bad things we’d been thinking about Mike Doyle (Ricky Schroeder), the seemingly blackhearted head of CTU’s strike force team? All wrong, supposedly. As he lay there near the end of the episode, a heroic defender of the U.S., potentially blinded by an evil terrorist and obviously pining for acting CTU head Nadia, you almost felt you were watching Jack Bauer’s replacement audition.
And then there were the women. This was the most “personal” season of “24,” and while that might have started off as an interesting consideration of Bauer family dysfunction, by the end, it had devolved into a glorified Lifetime “women in peril” movie. Tell me I’m wrong. With less than an hour to go in Season 6, Nadia was suddenly running CTU and looking like she was going to cry everytime she had to make a tough decision; Karen Hayes was the deposed National Security Advisor who sat passively in her jail cell, waiting for a male White House chief of staff to figure out a way to spring her; Audrey lay immobile in a seemingly drugged-out stupor in her daddy’s house; and Chloe, who previously seemed like the type who ate puppies for breakfast, fainted because it turned out she was pregnant. And didn’t know it. Oh, how like a silly girl!
Not to go all Gloria Steinem here in Serf-land, but what happened to all the tough strong women on “24?” In fact, what happened to our tough, unpredictable “24” in general? I still love watching to see which ludicrous way they’ll find next to get Jack in and out of unbelievable danger, but frankly, the show needs a new bag of tricks. Or maybe it just needs fewer tricks, and better characters again. Fox knows it needs to do something to make viewers hungry again. In a conference call with TV reporters last week, Fox entertainment president Peter Liguori admitted they needed to “reboot” the show for next year. He said he knew what the producers had in mind, and while he couldn’t share any details, “they really have a greater high wire act for next season.” He promised it would be “the most audacious swing at the plate ever with ‘24.’”
So what will it be? The resurrection of the dead President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert)? A woman president of the United States (bring back Jean Smart!), who’s immune to Jack’s charms AND makes him sign out the helicopters before he steals them? Jack in that sub shop in Barbados?
Who knows? But you know what? Even though this year was a bit of a disappointment, I’m already eagerly awaitiing next season. Maybe even more so than ever. Maybe that was the show’s clever plan all along. As Jack might say, “Damn it Chloe! How did this happen?”
