The Dimple Season of DWTS (19) Kicks Off with a Rousing Number from Carlton

Alfonso and Witney wowed us the first week of Season 19.

DISCLAIMER: For the last several seasons, my blog posts about DWTS have been filled with gorgeous promotional pictures from the ABC website. To my mind, they both illustrated the lovely dances we were seeing, and mostly, promoted DWTS every week. For whatever reason, last season, ABC's posting of pictures was sporadic, and I ended up having to get a lot of them from On the Red Carpet.com (a sister ABC site). This year, all of that seems gone. For whatever reason, DWTS pictures do not seem available from Week 1 (unless you have something like this, which someone obviously took from their TV). Not my first choice. I would love to have proper pictures through the proper channels to illustrate the stories and the dances, but it doesn't seem to be happening this season. So I may have stories with only text. Sorry about that, readers. I'll do the best I can.

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Season 19 has kicked off. Well, in some cases, limped off, but in any case, it's begun. We have our usual collection of motley folk, some athletes, some stars that you've totally forgotten about, some teen things. Yawn.

We also still have Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews (yay!). We have our three regular judges (Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli, Len Goodman) with the addition of Derek's sister, Julianne Hough, to help with the judging. We also, before I get into the meat of the dancing (I'm looking at you, Antonio Sabato, Jr.), some housekeeping details. We have a new showrunner and director this year. We shall see how that plays out, when the man we had for six years isn't there to guide the ship. So far, we've seen some pretty bad camerawork and artistic choices.

For example. They have four judges now, yet have a configuration where when the votes are given, you can only see THREE of them. Lame, people. Get some professionals to do this, please. Countless really bad camera shots... where you'd only see half of Tom Bergeron as he was talking, where the star isn't even in frame, just amateur stuff. Hope they fix that, and FAST.

Also, inexplicably, for one of the contestants, we didn't get to hear Bruno's vote explanation. Sure, running short on time? Just lop off one of the judges' comments. WHAT? You have four judges now. I want to see all of them, and hear what EACH of them has to say about each contestant. Really... is that so hard?

Oh, but let's start at the beginning, shall we? The show kicked off with a taped bit showing you everyone who's on the show. OK, I'm thinking, they are doing away with the personal introduction of everyone. But no, they have that TOO! Fun.

They also have their two days back! Mondays are the main deal (2 hours), and Tuesdays are eliminations (1 hour). We'll see how it goes. (I'm not covering the second night this week, other than to say that someone, either camera person or director or choreographer doesn't seem to like Karina Smirnoff very much because in the big dance sequence, she was totally out of view of the camera. She's one of the STARS, people. Put her front and center, please! Karina and Cheryl are who we want to see, not all these new blonde dancers. Sheesh.)

So, to our motley collection of dancers/stars. Let's talk about the ones who need to go right away: Lolo & Keo (love Keo, so it's too bad) and Betsey & Tony. Also sad, because I do love to watch Tony dance, but Betsey is crazy. And can't dance. Neither can Lolo. Enough about that. (Indeed, Lolo & Keo were the first couple eliminated.)

Hedging closely into this group is Michael somebody (a racecar driver) who compared himself to Bill Engvall. Dude, you don't deserve to wear Bill Engvall's dancing shoes, and you are not going to last anywhere near as long as he did.

Comic relief is present with Tommy Chong, who could flame out fast, or surprise us and pull an Engvall. Jury is still out on that one. But as long as he lasts, Tommy Chong is darn fun to watch with Peta. And his buddy Cheech showed up to give moral support.

Two others who I'm not sure about (they could go either way) are Tavis & Sharna and Randy & Karina. Love these women, and they can both make things happen, but these two guys are still big question marks.

So that leaves this list.

DWTS WEEK ONE (Miche choices based on dances)
1. Alfonso and Witney
2. Janel and Val
3. Bethany and Derek
4. Lea and Artem
5. Jonathan and Allison
6. Antonio and Cheryl
7. Sadie and Mark

In all honesty, those seven are our competitors. One of these seven shall win this season. We shall see how a season of injury, stress, constant new dances, etc. wears on them all. Based on the first week, Alfonso and Witney are really going to be hard to catch. This man was polished. Blew everyone else away. Great way to end the first show of the new season.

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