Being wrong never felt so right.
Dancing With the Stars' Tuesday night finale was full of potential headlines. The big news of the evening, of course, is that Indy 500 champ Helio Castroneves, the little engine that could, did. He won, beating out Spice Girl Melanie Brown.
His victory signals all the other bullet points of this fifth-season finale. The two-hour program opened with the only news that could possibly overshadow the announcement that Helio had won. That was the announcement that Marie Osmond hadn't. Fans of the show – as opposed to fans of Ms. Osmond – must have breathed a sigh of relief at the news, since any other outcome would have so clearly been a travesty, even by reality-TV standards (to the extent that reality TV has standards).
As her all-but-dance-free "freestyle" performance Monday night made plain, Ms. Osmond had grown frustrated with the judges' nitpicking her lack of content and technique. Talking before her elimination had been announced, she described her experience as "a Cinderella story" and said she would even miss "the stepsisters over here," gesturing to the judges.
Carol Kaelson/ABC
Helio Castroneves and Julianne Hough
Judging from the comments on the ABC message board, not to mention the e-mails I received Tuesday, popular sentiment had obviously turned away from the ever-grinning, long-suffering Marie.
So it was down to two – big, bad Mel and cute, little Helio. If you were a cynic, or had been following the conspiracy theories swirling around this season (guilty on both scores), then you may have been figuring the scary Spice Girl to be the smart-money bet. She came into the competition as an experienced performer and dancer, and she was a woman in what many have suspected was intended to be the season a woman won Dancing With the Stars.
From the beginning of the season, there has been that insider line of logic that went something like this: Men have been winning every season. The producers have decided it's time for a woman to win. So they stocked the competitor pool with female ringers – women who have lots of professional experience as dancers and performers.
As proof, there was Sabrina, the Cheetah Girl (soon dubbed the Cheater Girl), and Jane Seymour, the gifted actress who has some dancing in her background. And, of course, that darned Spice Girl, Mel B.
The only problem was week-by-week, that theory kept taking hits. First Sabrina was abruptly eliminated midway through. The next week, it was bye-bye Jane. Still, Mel not only soldiered on, she excelled to become the highest-scoring dancer of the season.
Going into Tuesday night's finale, Mel was ahead of Helio by one point. After her mambo and Helio's quickstep scored perfect 30s, she retained her one-point lead. But viewer voting apparently swung his way enough to give him the disco-ball trophy.
So much for ringers. So much for the fix being in for a woman to win. Another irresistible conspiracy theory bites the dust. Helio won. Maybe Oswald really did act alone.
