There is no denying that today was a bad day.
In the aftermath of last night's horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, it was hard to imagine having a good time watching Dancing with the Stars, but as Tom Bergeron said as he opened tonight's show, "the show must go on."
And it turned out that DWTS did provide a great distraction from the horrors of the real world tonight as it celebrated stars' guilty pleasures. There was break dancing (sorta), and superhero dancing, and a performance of an NSYNC song by Frankie Muniz, and even an 80s workout routine featuring Nick Lachey.
It was delightful, and it felt good to smile for a couple of hours, especially considering that no one went home tonight, and not a single performance was embarrassingly bad. So let's talk about the dances now, shall we?
Drew Scott and Emma Slater: 23/30
Ups to the music team for going all True Detective with the music for this dance, which was far better than anything else Drew has done so far. He even got the judges to stop making house metaphors in their critique!
Derek Fisher and Sharna Burgess: 21/30
Now this is a story all about how we automatically love any dance to the Fresh Prince theme song because it is the best theme song of all time and we will fight anyone to says otherwise. Derek's best dance so far.
Victoria Arlen and Val Chmerkovskiy: 22/30
Chumbawumba indeed! One of these days we'll stop marveling at how well Victoria can do despite the fact that she can't feel her legs, but today is not one of those days. We can't even begin to comprehend a quickstep with our minds, let alone attempt one, and this was pretty damn good (even those lockers were distracting).
Vanessa Lachey and Maks Chmerkovskiy (or Alan Bersten): 23/30
Why the heck does Carrie Ann insist on being rude about lifts? Lots of dances have lifts, and this was so good otherwise that even if she fell flat on her face during those lifts, it wouldn't have been worth losing a whole point.
(Maks was out for a "personal issue.")
Nikki Bella and Artem Chigvintsev: 21/30
Too aggressive? Nikki was too in control? Silly judges. John Cena thought it was good, and you can too!
Frankie Muniz and Witney Carson: 21/30
Fresh Prince and NSYNC in one night?! And NSYNC performed by Frankie Muniz?! It's like our childhood came to visit for an evening. The judges didn't love it but we loved it very hard and we're officially rooting for Frankie to win this whole thing.
Lindsey Stirling and Mark Ballas: 27/30
I mean...damn. Best pajama party of all time. Nothing much else to say really.
Sasha Pieterse and Gleb Savchenko: 19/30
That was super fun and showed off Sasha's acting, but we weirdly agreed with the judges in their critiques. We kept waiting for them to start dancing, and the actual dancing never came. However, the scores were COMPLETELY unfair to Sasha, who did all of the non-dancing perfectly. Rude.
Nick Lachey and Peta Murgatroyd: 21/30
A Love Actually/80s exercise themed dance?! Please see Nick's face in the above gif for an accurate representation of our faces through this entire glorious thing. We didn't know we needed it but now that we have it we know it's the only thing we ever needed. TO ME YOU ARE PERFECT 10/10.
Terrell Owens and Cheryl Burke: 21/30
There could have been more break dancing in that dance about break dancing, but that was fun!
Jordan Fisher and Lindsay Arnold: 25/30
No matter what Len says, this superhero Charleston was a delight and we'd hand Jordan the mirror ball right now if it weren't for Vanessa and Lindsey and Frankie and Sasha and...
Dancing with the Stars airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.