It's been a long, winding season of "Dancing with the Stars," but at last we've arrived at the finals. This week's semi-final series of episodes ended with Joanna Krupa getting sent home in something of a semi-upset. Krupa certainly moved better than Donny Osmond or Kelly Osbourne, but she's far less famous than either of those two and was thus shown the door. She seemed completely unsurprised by the decision and did her exit dance without much fuss.
In fact, her dismissal was something of a metaphor for the back half of this season, as now that the drama-makers have been tossed off and the underdogs have all put their shoes away, we're down to actually naming a winner. And has anybody doubted — even for a nanosecond — that Mya was going to win this season? The public do love Osmond, but the goodwill of the over 60 set won't be enough to give him the crown. It's sort of a cheat, really, as Mya is about as close to a professional dancer as you can get without actually putting it on your tax return. (It's always been sort of unfair to have figure skaters on this show, too.) If the show was a sham, Osbourne would totally be named the winner next week, as she has provided a great story. Remember how borderline hostile she was in the opening episodes? And now she's totally great! In the brief history of "Dancing with the Stars," nobody has ever improved so much so fast.
This week's performance episode was great, as it was four couples doing impressive dancing (the choreography on this show is sometimes spotty, but everything was on point). The nearly drama-free results episode was one of the more insane hours of television in recent memory: Alicia Keys dropped in to perform "Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart" (the best song Price never recorded), Leona Lewis belted out "Happy" (from her excellent just-released new album Echo) and then Robin and Barry Gibb tapped into their falsettos for a run through "You Should be Dancing." Can you guess which on was the most surreal?
There won't be much tension during next week's finale, as Mya should already have printed up business cards announcing her as the season's victor. Just to make it interesting, the producers of "Dancing with the Stars" should give Mya some sort of stomach virus, just like Carol Hannah on "Project Runway." But unless there's projectile vomiting involved, the former "Lady Marmalade" contributor will dance away with the trophy.