The new “celebs” for the upcoming season of Dancing With the Stars sounds a lot better than last seasons line up, but I’m not feeling some of the rumored (key word being rumored!) partnerships.  Here’s the line up, care of the Today Show:

Lance Bass (From NSYNC) - Lacey Schwimmer oye….
Toni Braxton (Singer) - Alec Mazo
Brooke Burke (Playmate) - Derek Hough
Rocco Dispirito (Chef) - Karina Smirnoff
Maurice Greene (Track & Field Olympian) - Cheryl Burke
Kim Kardashian (TBD) - Mark Ballas
Cloris Leachman (She’s 82!) - Corky Ballas (Mark’s father)
Cody Linley (Hannah Montana) - Julianne Hough
Susan Lucci (Soap Star) - Tony Dovolani
Misty May-Treanor (Volleyball Player) - Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Ted McGinley (Actor) - Inna Brayer
Jeffrey Ross (Comedian) - Edyta Sliwinska
Warren Sapp (Footballer) - Kym Johnson

I would’ve rather seen Maks with Kim Kardashian or even Toni Braxton (although she and her partner will probaby do really well).  Cody Linley is the guy who played Hannah Montana’s boyfriend for a season or two; he and Julianne will get the tween vote, for sure, but that’s waaaaay too much blonde.  I think Lacey will be so far out of her league next to those pro’s, and of course they have to pair two of the most obnoxious psuedo celeb, blech.   Has she finally quit crying over David Cook?

Oh yeah and the fangirls can be happy that Maks is back.  I still don’t get his appeal….

Sad news for ‘Dancing With the Stars’ fans. Maksim Chmerkovskiy is taking a season (or more) off to pursue other opportunities. He has promised to return the season after this one, but who knows.

I don’t regularly watch the show, but when I did, he was why I watched. Sad.

 Hmm, not too many exciting pictures from the Dancing With The Stars wrap party.  Enjoy these for now but check back, I’ll try and track down some more.

And the winner is….

Helio & Julianne!

I know a lot of people are surprised that they won over Mel & Maks, but it really could’ve gone either way! I bet the votes were super close. And if you guys read my previous DWTS posts, you probably know that I was a big fan of both couples. Man I feel bad for Mel, she probably did deserve it but that just goes to show that you HAVE to pull out ALL the stops at the very end!

But weren’t Mel & Maks SO cute together?

They should have their own show.

It’s funny how everyone was moanin’ and groanin’ about the cast before the season started but then they turned out to be SO good. Still, I sort of preferred last years show just because of Julianne & Appolo. Buuuut, still, let’s take a quick look back at a couple of my favorite performances from the season. They’re not in order though, because I can’t really pick just one:

Sabrina & Mark - Cha Cha
Of course! This may have been the best of the season, and on the first episode? Crazy.

Mel & Maks - Samba
This is the one they did to “Spice Up Your Life” which was a perfect fit, for more than one reason, obviously! For me atleast, this was their turning point because they didn’t really impress me for the first couple of weeks. It was fun and spicey!

Helio & Julianne - Mambo
This pretty much explains why I loved these two straight out of the gate!

Sabrina & Mark - Paso Doble
Paso is one of my favorite styles and this one showed off everything that’s great about it. Good choreography and lot’s of drama.

 Going in to this I thought Mel & Maks had it in the bag, but I was underwhelmed by both of their perofrmances!  The first, a Cha Cha, had tons of energy (contrary to what Carrie Ann said) and it was really fun to watch but it something was missing.  It just wasn’t cohesive or something, I can’t really put my finger on it.  And I didn’t understand their freestyle because the choreagraphy showed off Maksim more than it did her.  It was also really choppy.  In that case, Carrie Ann was right when she said Mel is better than that.  The whole thing just felt lazy!

And then came Marie.  Ugh.  She got ridiculously low scores for both of her dances, I think it was something like a 46, which was almost ten points behind the leader.   The judges were tough on everyone but there’s no excuse in getting scores THAT low during the FINALE.  That pretty muchproves that she did not deserve to be there and at the same time it was sort of embarassing.

Their Samba wasn’t awful, for her, but was it me or did she fall again during that? Their freestyle was a mess, although I don’t understand why the judges acted like the concept of her being a doll was so bizarre.  It reminded me of the piece Brian Friedman choreographed on SYTYCD 2.

Helio & Julianne won the night, hands down!  Both of their performances were solid.  The Jive was tons of fun, as was their freestyle, although the lift sequence could’ve been better.  I’m still mad that they only got 8’s for that Jive, although I see where the judges are coming from about technique.  But it sucks to get such a huge applause from the crowd and then a so-so score!

 I’m so torn now.  After tonight, Helio deserves it, but overall it should be Mel B.  I’ll be happy either way, just as long as Marie is OUT.

Ugh. I’m absolutely DISGUSTED that Marie is still in the competition! She should’ve been gone weeks and weeks ago, yet now she’s going to be in the finals?? It’s kind of a shame to see such a great season of the show ruined like this ; just think what a show it would’ve been if it were Mel B., Helio and Jennie in the finale, or actually Sabrina like it should’ve been.

Tuesday’s show was good, but I wasn’t blown away by anything like I was a few weeks before. I really liked Mel and Maksim’s Waltz to “Somebody To Love”.

Unless they screw things up royally (and if there’s a power outage in Utah) they’ll take home the title easily. Helio & Julianne should be a close second ; I really liked them in the first half of the competition but recently they’ve just been sort of meh to me. But their cha cha this week was fun…

And on the results show last night, after making us suffer through one performance by Avril Lavigne they decided us to torture us again later on in the show. Poor Sabrina and Mark had to dance to Complicated….one of the most dragging, melody less, beat less songs known to man.

 Be sure to check back next week when we cover the big finale!