Now here's some juicy gossip!

Seems that Cheryl Burke was busted, in the act, fooling around with Drew Lachey. Drew's married, if you recall - his wife was pregnant during his season and if I remember the timing actually gave birth during the last weeks.

TVSquad is reporting that Hillary got an invite to Dancing With The Stars. Seems that she said on The Tyra Banks Show that she'd like to compete on the show "if paired with one of those really good partners" (kinda like how she's competing for the White House, apparently...) The show heard this and wasted no time in saying "Come visit the tour and you can dance with whoever you want." No word on her response yet.

Ok, ok, not going to recap the whole two hour show. I love how they eliminated Marie in the first 15 minutes, without even doing an extra dance. It was like the producers finally caught up with the backlash that she didn't deserve to be there and were afraid that nobody would stay tuned to see her win.

Helio probably deserved to win, mostly because of Julianne, last year's champ, who is 10x more appealing on television than Cheryl. I think it's funny that when the cast list for this season came out and I stereotyped all the "stars" I called Helio, "Young and exciting athlete, ala Apolo Anton Ohno." Apolo won it last season with Julianne.

I wanted Maks to win, for a couple of reasons. I like Helio over Mel because he's not a dancer and she is and I hate how the contestants are stacked with professionals who 'sort of' have a dance background. But regarding Maks:

• Repeat champions are bad for the show. It's not supposed to be about the pros, it's supposed to be about the stars. There's lots of dancers we've seen every season, and people want to see other dancers get a shot.
• The show needs another woman to win, thus showcasing the male pros. They're going to lose fanbase.
• Maks is one of those guys that's been around from the beginning. He's a raging ass, but the thing is, he's a good dancer and a good teacher. He earned his spot.
• I think Maks/Mel's dances were better, because they worked together better as a couple. All their choreography had some sort of chemistry to it. Julianne had that last year with Apolo. But this year each dance was more like a round of "What can I make Helio do next?" like a smiling little puppet. That was never more obvious than in their freestyle, which was nothing more than an exhibition in weird lifts and no dancing.

That's my quick summary. I wonder if the show's starting to jump the shark. This season the episodes were all too long, the filler bits never really worked, the sponsorship was over the top (Macy's Stars of Dance? really?) and the guest stars were cliche and boring, at best. "Do a classic and then do one off your new album!" every single time.

Dance Wars starts next, Bruno vs CarrieAnn. Does anybody actually like Carrie Ann?

In an Extra Interview, Maksim Chmerkovskiy goes to town on the 'finale' contestants. Says that Marie doesn't deserve to be in the finals, and that the winner is usually the one with the biggest fanbase. Marie, he says, "has Mel and Helio's fanbase combined, times five." He also throws in some shots at her personal life, saying "Everybody has problems, some of us just choose to keep it private."