You are back in my dumb, gay hands. But I promise, once more, not too much Taylor Swift gibberish today. Perhaps I can help assuage your nuclear war fears today? Perhaps not! But you know what would help? A little Dancing With the Stars. —Zach Schiffman
LOWBROW BRILLIANT
Robert Irwin’s Halloween-Night Tango Is the Moment
That’s right, DWTS isn’t just for musical-theater Swiftie freaks anymore.
In keeping with my Dinner Party tradition of revealing embarrassing details about my childhood, it should come as no surprise that I was a child Dancing With the Stars superfan. The show premiered when I was 8 and because my mom was (and still is) a General Hospital devotee, the whole family watched to cheer on Kelly Monaco until she won the first-ever mirrorball trophy. As a kid, I was obsessed. There are too many home videos of me dancing with a broom and making my mom announce the style of dance in a British accent à la Alan Dedicoat. In 2007, I skipped Halloween in elementary school to watch Monique Coleman of High School Musical fame be wrongfully eliminated during the season-three semifinals after performing a lively cha-cha to the Ghostbusters theme song. I remember being despondent when she joined the same season-three graveyard as Tucker Carlson and Jerry Springer. Twenty years later, DWTS is the hottest show on TV, Joe Adalian writes.
My fandom tamed as I grew up, and even my mom stopped watching — and she watches nearly everything on ABC. Every now and then I’d hear about a shocking contestant like Sean Spicer or Anna Delvey and consider lacing up again, but I never did. Then, as Joe discovered, something in the Zeitgeist shifted.
“At a time when double-digit declines are the norm for linear shows, ABC’s variety-competition staple kicked off its 34th season in September by scoring its biggest premiere numbers since 2020 — and then proceeded to grow its viewership for five consecutive weeks, something no fall show has done since the modern Nielsen-measurement era began in 1991. Even more stunning is what’s powering the DWTS ratings boom: massive gains among Gen Z and younger millennial viewers, two demographic groups that had supposedly abandoned linear TV.”
Becoming a fan again, some things have changed. Head judge Len Goodman (RIP) is gone and former dancer Derek Hough has taken his seat. In the past, everyone danced a specific style each week; now each episode is themed around song choice. Elaborate sets and backup dancers help bad contestants — and thankfully, people like Andy Richter remain charmingly terrible. But basically the show is the same. Well-known songs are still covered by house performers who sound worse than a typical wedding band. It’s still the best way to make definitively straight men like Dylan Efron look gay. And it’s still the best way to make suburban women horny by having someone inappropriately rip their shirt off — this season, it’s 21-year-old nepo crocodile hunter Robert Irwin. Well, maybe not just suburban women.
LIFE IN PICTURES
The Last Dance
We spent a day with Misty Copeland before she formally retired from professional ballet.
In real dance news, Misty Copeland made her final bow after 30 years with American Ballet Theatre in a special performance during the company’s fall gala last week, dancing in three pieces that she and artistic director Susan Jaffe selected to represent her career. Just as Hilaria Baldwin learned on DWTS, being a 40-something dancer is not easy. And the special program marked the end of a historic run for Copeland who, in 2015, became the first Black woman to be promoted to principal dancer at the company. Features writer Madeline Leung Coleman and photographer Henry Leutwyler followed Copeland in the lead-up to the big day, and the photos are exceptional.
BAD PRESS
Girlbossing Too Close to the Sun
The White House flack who flopped her own book tour.
Misty Copeland made history as the first-ever Black principal dancer at ABT. Karine Jean-Pierre also made history as the first Black (and queer) White House press secretary. Unlike Copeland, Jean-Pierre’s legacy is nose-diving. I promised I would never talk about Taylor Swift again here, but it is clear that Jean-Pierre’s book tour for her new memoir is an extremely concrete embodiment of the song “CANCELLED!” As Sarah Jones explains, the former spinmeister really did girlboss too close to the sun in writing Independent.
The memoir is short, which is a mercy. Reading it made me wonder if I’d consumed a life-altering quantity of Benadryl and hallucinated a trip back in time. She writes as if the year is still 2014 and a woman’s professional accomplishments outweigh moral considerations. The girlboss lives after all.”
I look forward to Karine following in her predecessor Sean Spicer’s choreographed footsteps as she inevitably foxtrots on season 35 of Dancing With the Stars.
Click Your Way Out
Obviously, the most important news story in America is also a British one.
Here’s how you can help families losing SNAP benefits amid the shutdown.
I will be back tomorrow, but don’t expect me to have some big thing for Halloween.
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Is your mother also suffering general hospital withdrawals as a result of the ABC negotiations? Perhaps she can start a support group with mine