Everyone knows you don't put Baby in a corner. The same can now be said for Jennifer Grey, who proved last night that frontrunners are frontrunners for a reason, when she was crowned champion of Dancing With the Stars.
But that was then. In Los Angeles. By this morning, the three finalists and their ever-doting pros joined Good Morning America in its afterparty-themed Times Square studio, where they had just the perfect amount of sleep-deprived giddiness for morning television. As tends to happen in such a state, some revelations were had.
Here are the five best:
1. Jennifer Grey knows what you were waiting for. And she doesn't care. You wanted the lift, your grandma wanted the lift, the judges wanted the lift, the show's producers really wanted the lift. But guess what? Jennifer Grey didn't want the lift. So no lift!
"The thing that was so fun about it was we were trying to find some way to do something related to Dirty Dancing," she said of her freestyle. "I knew everybody wanted us to do something with 'Time of My Life,' there was a lot of pressure for that, but I knew that was a dance for Patrick and me. And I wanted to leave it as such."
2. Jennifer Grey is not Baby, so please stop referring to her as such. Sure, she and Derek Hough went by the team name Baby Derek, but as far as she's concerned, the world can pretty much draw a line under that nickname. Which eagle-eyed viewers might've cottoned on to during last night's freestyle: "When the dress comes off, it's no more Baby. It's all Jennifer," she explained.
And in case you're wondering, Grey ranks Dancing With the Stars above Dirty Dancing on the toughness scale.
"This dance experience was so much more difficult. [On Dirty Dancing] I learned basically one dance over a one-and-a-half month shoot. This is a new dance every four days. It's a completely different level of dancing, much more complicated, much more challenging."
3. Haters gonna hate. And, we assume, phone in bomb threats. Unlike in years past, when GMA set up parquet shop in the open-air middle of Times Square for the morning-after show, the group this year was completely confined to the ultra secure studio. Coincidence? Eh, probably not. Oh, and speaking of Bristol Palin, there are no hard feelings from the third-place finisher.
"I feel great, I feel amazing," she said. "I'm ready to go back home to my family." And then possibly head back out into the wide world of dance. When asked if there were any hot-stepping projects in her future, she said she was open to the prospect. And her dream job? Working as a background dancer in Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" video. Sometimes the jokes just write themselves, are we right?
4. Jennifer's win secured Derek's place in Dancing With the Stars history. Hough is no doubt smiling extra wide today, as this threepeat has made him the show's most winning pro ever. Thanks to Grey, Nicole Scherzinger and Brooke Burke, Hough has three championships to his name—one more than his former pro sis Julianne Hough and his best pal Mark Ballas, who have just two apiece. So what's his secret? "He's insanely talented," Grey gushed. Oh, that'd be it, then.
5. They really are just one big happy family. Which means that Kyle Massey is the fun cousin everyone wishes they had. Forget those rumors of in-fighting and backstage discord (um, please?). Everyone really does get along.
"We've all become friends," Massey explained. "I love you guys!" And yes, he really is that smiley.
"No, never," partner Lacey Schwimmer said, when asked if he ever frowns. "Unless he's hungry." Yep, that's a real family all right.