ABC tried to pump two-hours worth of suspense, drama and fun out of Cloris Leachman’s 82-year-old cleavage and Miley Cyrus’s multi-platinum teen vocals last night, but in the end, it was no surprise who the winner was.
Brooke Burke waltzed away with the title in last night’s final dance.
In the very first week of the season, Len Goodman, one of the show’s three judges, all but called the competition for Burke — TV hostess/actress/model (and mom whose top Google-summoned images flaunt seriously sheer panties).
Actually, if there was one moment when Burke claimed the latest glitter ball of B-star glory, it was on Monday night’s competition show, when she and pretty-boy partner Derek Hough did it up to “You’re the One That I Want,” from “Grease.” The show’s fans say that as the freestyle competition goes, so goes the trophy. When Burke stripped off her Sandra Dee duds for a pink-sequin “Sandy” number that let her perfectly turned dancer’s hips and legs go wild — well, poor Lance Bass, for one, was toast.
Not that there wasn’t appropriate end-of-season swooning for Super Bowl champion Warren Sapp, who (sorry, Washington Football Team star Jason Taylor, a runner-up in Season 6) staked claim to being Goodman’s new favorite “entertainer.” Sapp also won monstrous applause from the studio audience for how he jiggled his 300 pounds around the floor with partner Kym Johnson, whom he threw all over the place with lifts in the finals.
Boy-bander Bass (who revived his sailor-dud/tight-white-pants jitterbug with partner Lacey Schwimmer) loomed as a dark horse, but he had no chance of playing enough catch-up to beat Burke, who won 80 percent of the week-to-week competitions.
Leachman, the Oscar-winning actress, was eliminated a few weeks back, though she did appear to win the prize for most finale-night screen time — and most mention of her cleavage. (Sapp ran a close second for those super-size man-boobs.)
The most awkward moment of the night came when comedian Jeffrey Ross (who was kicked off at the start of the competition) roasted the three finalists and couldn’t do better than making gay jokes about Bass and fat jokes about Sapp.
“DWTS,” which was the top-rated show last week with nearly 20 million viewers, has become a drama-queen show, with all its injuries and ambulance runs, punctuated by a big Marie Osmond faint-away in Season 6. The just-completed Season 7, though, was tops for the sheer number of medically mandated disasters. (The topper: After professional partner Julianne Hough had to be taken to the emergency room after a show because endometriosis put her in need of an appendectomy, Schwimmer felt compelled to announce that she, too, has endometriosis. But — whew! — Schwimmer was not so sick as to need medical intervention, let alone tone down her self-promoting partnership with Bass.)
There was all kinds of faux drama last night, as the couples stood around waiting while Cyrus sang. Meanwhile, Burke drew almost weepy tears from judge Carrie Ann Inaba, who had sung Burke’s praises often.
Leachman and Sapp provided fun, but ultimately, it was Burke’s grace — and crown — that shone brightest.
<p>Facebook Live Is Loading....</p>