‘Dancing With the Stars’: Sending everyone home

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Before another couple was eliminated from last night’s ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ the question ‘Who deserves to go home?’ was invoked. This is an interesting concept, since on reality TV the person who ‘deserves’ to go home only occasionally does. There are, after all, so many things that deserve to go home on DWTS:

-- Tom Bergeron. Samantha Harris’ foibles as a host have been chronicled already. And Bergeron does a fine job (he especially says ‘Live!’ really well) but lately both hosts have been shown up in an embarrassing way by guest host and former champ Drew Lachey. He’s convivial, he’s funny, he’s contemporary, he thinks on his feet, and thus far he’s been able to string together coherent sentences. Bergeron’s place on the show was never in question until he chastised the teleprompter operator for moving too slowly. Really, Tom? It’s not like this is the first results show where a segment is dedicated to the studio audience’s reaction to the performances. You could have ad-libbed on that.

-- ‘Behind the scenes’ looks at the stars. OK, we’re not expecting rocket science, but the patter of how the dancing is harder than it looks, how everyone’s giving their all, how they’re just doing it for the audiences is already getting kind of thin. Last season we got a little featurette on the costume and makeup artists on the show. That was kind of interesting. More of that stuff, please.

-- Jimmy Kimmel and Guillermo.

-- DWTS as a tribute to a deceased or sick loved one. Jane Seymour’s mother passed away early Tuesday morning, which is certainly a terrible loss for her. She understandably took Tuesday’s broadcast off, but the audience was informed that she would return to the show to perform a tribute to her mother, who loved the British version of DWTS. That’s actually very sweet. But also, Monday night Albert Reed revealed that he was dancing for his deceased grandfather, who also liked dancing, or something. The death of loved ones is certainly no laughing matter -- and Seymour is not guilty of this -- but occasionally stars will trot out deceased family members seemingly to garner points with the audience. ‘Wow, you want to win the disco ball trophy on the fifth season of ‘Dancing With the Stars’ ... for me?’ they must be saying up in heaven.

-- And on that note, Wayne Newton. Reed was fun to watch: He had looks, energy, personality, looks and some raw talent in there. Newton can hoof it tolerably well for a 65-year-old man, and probably better than the other older gentlemen who have appeared on the show, but when you look at the two guys side by side, one clearly was meant for high-definition TV more than the other. Plus, Newton’s partner, Cheryl Burke, has been looking somewhat annoyed the last few episodes, like she made some appointments assuming she’d have been kicked off by now and had to cancel them.

Once Newton is eliminated, whenever that will be, the show will probably start feeling a lot tighter; the competition is tighter this year, so it will be interesting to see how everyone stacks up once the initial handful of lesser dancers -- and non-dancers -- is sent home.

-- Claire Zulkey