Dancing waltzes through writers strike
Lynn Elber

LOS ANGELES—Here’s a “Dancing with the Stars” pop quiz: Which of the following performance critiques was delivered by effusive judge Bruno Tonioli before the Hollywood writers strike, and which came after? Quote A: “That’s what I like to see! The boy from Brazil is going bananas!” Quote B: “That was a cliffhanger, riding the fine line between love and hate!”
If you picked the alliterative “bananas” line as writer-scripted, well, sorry, you’re not moving on to round two. That’s a post-strike quote, while the less snappy one predates it — and Tonioli devised both. It seems his comments, along with those of fellow judges Len Goodman and Carrie Ann Inaba and the wry quips of host Tom Bergeron, have been largely spontaneous all along.
ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” is one reality show that’s real, or as real as any sequin-studded Hollywood production can be. Who knew — until the Writers Guild of America’s job action pulled back the curtain and revealed the show had a single union scribe.
That’s allowed one of TV’s top shows to waltz through the walkout. “Oh, I wish!” Tonioli responded when asked if his lines were fed to him. “Even if you wanted to (prepare), it’s a live performance. Anything can happen.”
“You respond to what you see,” Tonioli told reporters. His creativity was unabated on Monday’s show. “That was a menacing tango. That’s a truly Scary Spice there,” he told Melanie Brown of Spice Girls fame. Goodman got into the wordsmith act: “Your hips — I was hypnotized,” he told Brown.
Sometimes a script doctor would help. But even they might be hard-pressed to craft the true drama that has shadowed this season: Jane Seymour lost her 92-year-old mother, then Seymour’s Malibu house was imperiled by a wildfire. Osmond fainted on camera; two weeks later, her father died at age 90. Tears and heartache abound but the show goes on. In recent weeks, it’s been near the top of the TV ratings, with more than 21 million viewers at its peak.
While “Dancing With the Stars” steps gracefully, the strike has left other shows limping or worse. Many dramas and comedies face a dwindling supply of new episodes. Late-night talk shows, minus their sprawling writing staffs, have retreated into reruns.