Dancing Gets Leg Up on Competition

Tue., Mar. 20, 2007 2:52 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

The leg didn't fly off.

Monday's fourth-season opener of Dancing with the Stars, featuring Heather Mills' uneventful ballroom debut, averaged 21.8 million curious types, ABC said.

The show topped a two-hour Deal or No Deal (14.2 million) on NBC, ran up its biggest-yet premiere numbers and perked up a network that's been flagging in recent weeks.

Knowing it had something unique in Mills, the one-legged estranged wife of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, ABC all but showed the former model swapping out her prosthetic limb.

Oh, wait, ABC did show the former model swapping out her prosthetic limb.

Well, then it could be said that Dancing host Tom Bergeron all but made a two-left-feet reference.

Oh, wait, Bergeron did make a two-left-feet reference. ("In our first three seasons, we've seen a number of people with two left feet, but never anyone with an artificial leg...")

Identified as a "charity campaigner," presumably because "the one-legged estranged wife of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney" would eat up too much airtime, Mills danced with partner Jonathan Roberts without incident.

It was Roberts who best spoke to the night's prurient interest, musing of Mills in a taped segment: "Okay, wow, I have this celebrity who has one leg. What am I going to do with this?"

In the end, Mills and Roberts did the fox-trot.

The judges, who promised not to judge Mills on a curve because of her being short a leg and all, nonetheless heaped praise on the British tabloid fixture.

"You've got more guts than Rambo," the effusive Bruno Tonioli effused.

At Al Biernat's Steakhouse in Dallas, where the TV was tuned to Dancing, even diner and third-season Dancing champ Emmitt Smith raved about Mills' gumption, according to Tina Dirmann of E! Online's Planet Gossip.

Keeping Mills honest, Tonioli and fellow Dancing judge Carrie Ann Inaba both found fault with, of all things, the charity campaigner's two good arms. In the end, Mills scored a middling, if demonic six-six-six on the judges' cards.

Dancing promoted Mills early and often, but held off on presenting her routine until near the very end of the two-hour broadcast.

Those wondering if Mills' prosthetic leg would fly off, as its owner herself had joked, had to first sit through routines by Leeza Gibbons, Billy Ray Cyrus and Paulina Porizkova, who all moved pretty well for statues, Clyde Drexler, who moved pretty well for a very tall statue, and last-minute add John Ratzenberger, who moved pretty well for a guy who sat on a barstool for 11 years.

'N Sync grad Joey Fatone, wearing a Tony Manero-meets-Rocky Balboa getup, notched the best numbers of the night, nabbing across-the-board eights for his disco effort with partner Kym Johnson.

Boxer Laila Ali, Beverly Hills 90210 alum Ian Ziering and Olympian Apolo Anton Ohno also distinguished themselves with above-average scores, as well as perceptible movement.

All 11 dancing teams are to be back on the stage next Monday. Ostensibly, the extra performance night will give viewers more data with which to evaluate the stars. Realistically, it'll allow ABC to hold off on its first results show, set for Mar. 27, until Tuesday's American Idol pares down to just one hour.

Next up for Mills: the Latin dance.

Stay tuned for flying-object advisories.

Elsewhere, here are some ratings highlights from the TV week ended Sunday:

Judging by the numbers, America enjoys watching Sanjaya sing on Tuesday's Idol (first place, 29.8 million) more than watching him sweat on Wednesday's result show (second place, 26.2 million). Either that, or Diana Ross' fuzzy-boa thing accidentally ate about three million viewers.
Fox's 'Til Death (eighth place, 14.1 million) moved to Wednesdays after Idol, thereby giving the comedy its first prolonged exposure to human eyeballs.
ABC's Grey's Anatomy (third place, 22.7 million) was back with a new episode, and back on top as TV's most-watched scripted series.
ABC's new drama October Road (ninth place, 13.9 million) outdid NBC's new drama Raines (23rd place, 10.5 million), although the latter Jeff Goldblum series managed to do not-so-bad as a repeat on Friday night (44th place, 7.2 million).
Fox's Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (12th place, 12.6 million) has been renewed through May. Per season-to-date Nielsen averages, some 19 million are to blame.
At this rate, CBS' The New Adventures of Old Christine (41st place, 7.6 million for its first episode; 36th place, 8.3 million for its second episode) isn't going to be getting its time slot back from network sibling Rules of Engagement (18th place, 11.5 million).
If nothing else, ABC's Lost (13th place, 12.5 million) is showing a knack for beating repeats of CBS' CSI: NY (25th place, 10.2 million).
Yes, ABC's Ugly Betty (19th place, 10.8 million) cracked the Top 20, but more than that, the series, per its network, bravely "rall[ied] against the impact from the changeover to daylight savings time."
Daylight savings time, the looming vernal equinox or perhaps Andy Richter's plain old bad luck doomed the series premiere of NBC's Andy Barker, P.I. (63rd place, 6 million).
A special-extra rerun of NBC's The Office (56th place, 6.5 million) performed like a regular-old rerun.
Given a thankless Friday time slot by Fox, David E. Kelley's The Wedding Bells (66th place, 5.8 million) turned in a punchless performance.
In a trend not seen perhaps since ABC got considerable ratings out of a much-rerun 1976 women-in-chains episode of Charlie's Angels, the CW's Pussycat Dolls reality show did better as a Wednesday rerun (101st place, 3.4 million) than a Tuesday first-run (112th place, 2.5 million). Give an assist to the series' Wednesday's lead-in, America's Next Top Model (78th place, 5.2 million).
In cable, FX got a fancy premiere out of The Riches (3.8 million), while Nick got a monster showing from a Friday screening of the 2004 live-action flick Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (4.5 million).
A month after its non-Dallas-sized season finale (579,000 viewers), the end apparently has come for HBO's Extras, with creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant telling the BBC they're going to wrap up the comedy with one final, farewell episode.

Overall, Fox dominated the network race thanks to, per usual, Idol, and, as unusual, 'Til Death. The network was the highest-rated among 18-to-49-year-olds, and the most-watched by everybody, averaging 11.4 million viewers.

CBS (10.7 million) scored a pair of second-place finishes. NBC (8.3 million) ran third in viewers, and fourth in the demo. Beset with barely watched hours from What About Brian (84th place, 4.7 million) and Celebrity A-List Bloopers (90th place, 4.6 million), ABC (7.9 million) placed a distant fourth in total viewers, but managed to land third among young adults.

The CW (3.1 million) was left to ponder how many more times it can rerun the Pussycat Dolls.

Here's a look at the 10 most-watched prime-time shows for the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research: