Feather Backpack

Skating with Celebrities. Despite its stupid name (“celebrities”? Could they be less specific, please?), I tuned in because—based on the commercials—I was expecting a different kind of reality show. I’ve never tried to figure skate myself but I’ve watched enough of it to know that it can’t be easy. So I figured the first few episodes would focus on the training of the “celebrities” (that’s the last time I’ll use scare quotes around ‘celebrities,’ but please do me a favor and visualize them yourself from now on for my sake. Thanks) and show just how hard it is to learn how to do even the simplest move. Great idea for a show, right?

Nope.

After 30 seconds of set-up (wherein each celebrity was shown practicing with his/her professional partner and had a chance to exclaim “Wow, this is harder than I thought it would be!”) the show launched right into the performances. Is reality TV already so structured and standardized that shows can’t deviate from the norm at all? (I guess all performance-based competition shows must follow the American Idol formula, all nonperformance-based competition shows must follow the Survivor formula, and everything else must follow the formula set up by the granddaddy of all reality shows, The Real World. Then, if a show fails it’s because the show was a bad idea—not because it was forced into the wrong formula, I guess.)

Here’s my complaint. Figure skating is a hard sport, and while doing it well takes years of practice, doing it marginally well is hardly a piece of cake. So it’s impressive that Bruce Jenner (a 55-year-old man with a history of knee surgeries) can hold his partner up by the waist or spin in sequence without falling. But it doesn’t make for very exciting television.

I can’t know for sure (since they didn’t show too much of it) but there must be so much more drama inherent in the training, don’t you think? I could be wrong (I’m no TV executive, after all), but that’s what I wanted to see. After all, a polished but low-difficulty performance is going to be boring.

That said, I still have my favorites. Jillian Barberie (a sports celebrity of some sort) and her partner, John Zimmerman, were pretty good. Jillian’s approach to learning to skate was, “If I’m not falling, I don’t think I’m trying hard enough,” which seemed almost Taoist in its apparent nonsensical illogic (and which clearly pissed John off a bit, since he was worried she was going to brain herself on the ice), but it worked. Their performance was the most dynamic.

Debbie Gibson and Kurt Browning are my favorites, though. Jillian’s attitude might give her more chutzpah than Debbie, but the chemistry between Debbie and Kurt is unmistakable. (And I’ve always appreciated Kurt anyway—he’s such a gentleman.)

Unfortunately, Kristy Swanson is not cut out for figure skating (or even faking it), Todd Bridges seemed more interested in dancing than skating (clearly he’s on the wrong reality show), and Dave “I’m Bullwinkle!” Coulier—being from the Canuck hockey school of skating—actually ground the toe picks off his skates. So that may indicate to you how skilled he is at moves that require a little stability.

Off the ice I’m very happy to see my mom’s favorite, Scott Hamilton, as an announcer, but he sounded really hoarse in the premiere episode. (Hopefully this will clear up for subsequent episodes.) But most exciting of all is John Nicks as one of the judges.

See, John is the coach of Sasha Cohen, my all-time favorite figure skater. It’s pretty cool to hear him talk about what the skaters are doing wrong (i.e., he’s the Simon Cowell of the show), because now I can imagine what kind of shit Sasha must go through during her practices.

Speaking of Sasha, she was the guest judge on this week’s Project: Runway because the designers were creating a dress for her to wear at an exhibition. As Julie and I walked into her apartment Wednesday night I saw Julie’s roommate watching the show in the family room. “Are they designing a skating costume?” I asked. The answer was yes. Could it be for Sasha Cohen? I asked myself. You bet it could!

As you may guess I parked my ass right in front of the TV when I learned that little tidbit of information. I missed the first half but Sasha had this great moment where she demurely described Santino’s dress as looking like it had a massive feather backpack attached to it (or something like that). My god she’s too cute for words. And seriously, that Santino guy needs to start designing dresses for people, not his own weird idea of what a dress should be.

He also needs to take a fucking shower.