RECAP: A Performance-Packed Results Night

No week of DANCING WITH THE STARS is complete without at least one gross hyperbole, so thank goodness this week's results show opened with a tacky montage of the stars warning that "last night they celebrated the best year of their lives, but for one start tonight will be the worst night."

Not to belittle the hardships of being eliminated from a dance competition you can only participate in if you're already famous or anything, but that seems like a sort of ridiculous thing to say at the start of a program featuring two blind performers. And let's not be so self-important, DTWS. One of your competitors is a recovering alcoholic and a handful of the others had pretty rough upbringings, as we all saw on Monday night's episode. I think it's safe to say they've had worse nights.

In fact, Lisa didn't seem that cut up at all when it was announced that she was going home. That could be the lingering exhaustion from her bout with the flu talking, but let's be honest - she was never in it to win it. Losing Gleb is a real tragedy now that he has adopted the Taylor Lautner approach to distracting from a crappy performance (aka take your shirt off as quickly as you can and blind the audience with your abs), but I don't expect that anyone's going to lose sleep over Lisa's departure.

For highlights from this week's elimination, check out the breakdown below:

The Encore

This week it was the judges' turn to pick who got the big Encore and they picked well. Aly Raisman's captivating contemporary piece definitely deserved the nod, even if it was a little lacking in energy the second time around. Who can blame her, really. If I knew I was safe, I wouldn't be wasting any breath on a repeat performance.

The Exposé

I'm not sure who thought these little judge featurette sketches were a good idea, but they were so wrong. That said, pretty much anything involving Bruno is hilarious, so the "behind-the-scenes" look at his "writing team" was still a good laugh. You do have to wonder where the guy comes up with these things.

The main problem here is that this almost certainly heralds the coming of some painful and poorly written foray into Brooke Burke-Charvet's backstage secrets. Fingers crossed they stop after Carrie Ann's?

The Performances

Weekly dose of melodrama aside, the show was packed with killer performances. The ladies of the DWTS dance troupe shimmied and shook their way through a red-hot routine to Beyoncé's "Run the World" that Tom Bergeron aptly summed up by saying, "I love this gig." Later on in the show, Val and Karina also performed a duet as tweeted by popular demand. Unfortunately, it was cut short by a commercial break to leave time for a lame little montage of Lisa and Gleb, but what they showed off It was absolutely delightful. It's funny, you almost start to forget what ballroom dancing is supposed to look like when you're watching the starts stumble through it.

Andrea Bocceli wowed with a simple but powerful performance of his new duet "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas," though I could definitely have done without Jennifer Lopez muddying his vocals and brandishing her bedazzled microphone.

Brad Paisley was... eh. But who really cares about that. Can we talk about the 17-year-old legally blind girl who totally showed everybody up?

Brilynn Rakes, the first AT&T spotlight performer, suffers from nystagmus (also known as "dancing eye," oddly enough). She is only now learning how to cross the street without any help, but has been dancing her whole life and is damn good at ballet, as evidenced by her duet with Derek Hough. Talk about a tear-jerker. It was beautifully staged, beautifully performed and totally angelic. If you missed it on last night's show, be sure to check it out.

The Chopping Block

The best part about the chopping block this week was that Tom Bergeron had to "cue the dramatic music" because god forbid it stopped playing for the thirty seconds between Andy receiving his reprieve and the elimination being announced. That and the visible struggle the camera crew underwent when trying to close up on Victor (who was this week's narrow escape) and Lisa. Like, come on guys. You haven't done this enough times? This is season 16!

Be sure to check in next week for what promises to be an interesting performance round when the stars take on Len Goodman's "side-by-side challenge" and dance alongside a pro couple. No getting by on gimmicks and charm this time around!

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