The ‘Dancing with the Stars’ semi-final ends at two in the morning with no one eliminated. Three competitors will compete for their place in the final directly next Saturday: Martina Colombari, Rosa Chemical and Paolo Belli. Let’s see the (few) passed and (many) failed entries in this inconclusive episode.
Maybe it doesn’t immediately catch the eye, but Filippo Magnini is married: rating 4
Filippo Magnini on ‘Dancing with the Stars’ is the equivalent of Ascanio Pacelli on ‘Big Brother’. With the only difference that the first one, at least, dances. The other is in the studio gathering dust. Both, however, are animated by the same sacred, inexhaustible fire: to reiterate endlessly that they have found true love, that they are married, have a family and (not) feel sorry for others. Two broken records. The swimmer, specifically, made his marriage to the former showgirl Giorgia Palmas his only personality trait for the entire edition. And so even in the Semifinal, he underlines that at the end of each choreography he rushes to kiss her passionately, that they are not capable of staying apart, that at first sight he immediately understood that they would be together forever. ‘I feel like Rocky, she’s my Adriana. Maybe I’ll find myself shouting ‘Giorgia! Giorgia!’ just like Stallone in the film to give me energy if I get to the final”. Nice, then we would endure another few weeks of heated social debate on ‘TeleMeloni’. Magnini dances well, but a ton of bricks falls on the scruff of the innocent spectators every time he opens his mouth. This time the jury compliments him, but he manages to have something to say anyway ‘because it’s not fair that they always make me get on the dance floor first, it’s more difficult that way’. Regarding his wife (how can we not talk about it again?!,ed) climbs into a very crooked declaration of love: “I can’t wait to grow old with her. I imagine us like this, one day, in front of the sea when I tell her ‘Have you seen that I’ve always been right? I told you right away that you would be the woman of my life”. Maybe it’s because we aren’t particularly romantic, but did this man get married to reconfirm to himself that he was never wrong? When in doubt, solidarity with Palmas. We didn’t know he also did high-end carpentry.
Paolo Belli even manages to gnaw on charity (and thinks he’s sexy): 3
Last Saturday something bad happened: Selvaggia Lucarelli told him he was ‘sexy’. And he believed it. So now we are helplessly witnessing Paolo Belli’s ‘gunslinger’ choreography with a roguish wannabe look. ‘My wife has always told me this, finally everyone else has noticed too,’ he jokes. But to what extent? This is the dilemma. Because Paolo Belli believes in it very much: it is in fact not possible to level the slightest criticism against him, not even a whispered one. This time Lucarelli allows himself to tell him that he appreciated ‘the path of other competitors in this edition’ more than his own. Harmed Majesty! Paolo Belli, not at all offended, starts a piece without rhyme or reason which ends even worse: “I’m here to dance and I hope that the public takes me to the final because I’m having fun. If the jury wants gossip from me, they’ve got the wrong person”. But who ever asked them for gossip? In fact, no one. Belli’s tirade about nothingness continues anyway, even when, on the sidelines of the performance, he has to invite viewers to send a charity text message to support Telethon, of which we are among the main Rai testimonial faces. “I’ll write one right away too, live. Since many are asking me what to put in the text of the message, I have a proposal, here it is: Long live Dancing with the Stars even if I go home tonight”. It is clear that this is a sesquipedale gnawing, even frankly out of place, but unfortunately it does not count as a self-fulfilling prophecy: ours will end up in the run-off and will play for the place in the final with Martina Colombari and Rosa Chemical directly next Saturday. In five hours of broadcast, incredible but true, there was no material time to eliminate someone from the race. Not even in the Semifinal. We can’t decide whether this is more ridiculous or the totally random passive-aggression of the always very nice and super sexy Paolo Belli. But in the end, why choose?
Fabio Fognini is an amazing Michael Jackson?! Yes! Rating 8
After that lackluster interview with ‘Belve’, Fabio Fognini had lost appeal. And it was a shame because, from the looks of it, he is the only light-hearted competitor of this edition, the wild card, the joker, the one from whom one could expect a bit of healthy lightness without complications, whining and specious controversies. The tennis player puts it all on the line in the Semi-final, therefore, and the performance presentation clip begins with the story of a violent panic attack that struck him years ago, during a Roland-Garros: his left arm was completely paralysed, he reveals. Then he got help and now manages his anxiety very well, good for him. But we remain worried: even if they gave Fognini a painful script, when will we be allowed to catch our breath? Don’t worry, here he is taking to the dance floor disguised as Michael Jackson, ready for what could be the fool of his life. Instead, he becomes the protagonist of a truly formidable choreography for a non-professional. Especially for a non-professional who everyone takes lightly from the start, as if he were a court jester who shouldn’t be worried about in view of the podium. Plot twist: Fabio Fognini is not only the most (and perhaps the only, ed) nice of the brood: thanks to the venerable Teacher Giada Lini, offended by Mariotto in the episode without a reason, he also became very convincing on the dancefloor. After seeing this surprising performance by his rival to the tune of ‘Smooth Criminal’, Magnini will sulk for at least a week. Not sorry.
The jury continues to have a Fantozzi-like veneration for Francesca Fialdini: vote 0
Important premise: the failure here does not go to the competitor, but to the jury who is doing everything to make her indigestible. Francesca Fialdini doesn’t have time to open her mouth before strings of light bulb hallelujahs immediately start from the palette table. Since the first episode. Let’s be clear: she dances very well, technically she is perhaps the absolute best of the current Carluccian brood. At the same time, one can no longer stand hearing a thousand violins start to play for the simple fact that it exists. Selvaggia Lucarelli (that’s her!, ed) goes so far as to say that in ten years of service to ‘Dancing with the Stars’ he has never seen such ferocious fury towards a character competing in the talent show: social media, in his opinion, are too angry against Fialdini who has the only fault of being phenomenal in everything. And, consequently, to ‘generate envy’, ‘just like what happens to Belen Rodriguez’, the juror comments. What did we just hear? Fables. The reality is that in addition to her undeniable talent in dancing, we have seen little of Francesca Fialdini so far, also thanks to the infamous bad injury that forced her to stop for a few episodes until her glorious return to the dance floor last Saturday, despite three fractured ribs and a seriously injured foot. It is fair to wonder how he managed to recover so quickly, perhaps he will have a portrait in the attic that takes on physical traumas, ailments and convalescences in his place. Anything could be, given that she dances briskly as if she doesn’t even have half a split tip. It’s not the praise that bothers, but the simple fact that only that is there. The jury of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ takes the piss out of anyone, in the last edition they even managed to find fault several times with the divine Bianca Guaccero (who deservedly won anyway). Instead here never a stain or a hitch, Fialdini is Beyoncé. Or maybe the Messiah. While everyone else is put in trouble for the most stupid trifles, the blonde competitor is the only one who is never questioned. She is more elegant than a flamingo, exceptional, ‘if all the presenters were like you, I would always watch TV’ Mariotto confides to her, in full mystical awe. The jurors’ game here is clear: every high five given to Fialdini is an implicit insult to Barbara d’Urso who, thank goodness, fights it and continues not to fall into these Mariuccia kindergarten traps. The one who is really damaged, however, is paradoxically Fialdini herself: given the obvious disparity in treatment compared to the other contestants not only in this but also in every past edition of the talent show, the public on social media roars, snorts, ends up finding her unpleasant even if she, on her own, does little or nothing to be so. Indeed, his personality did not really emerge, suffocated by the incessant and a priori compliments of the jury. Francesca Fialdini is Chuck Norris. It is said that during the night’s Tg1 she gave birth to three very tender baby dragons, always in such an elegant and enchanting way. The little ones will proceed to tear Rossella Erra to pieces live on TV at the start of next Saturday’s final, but with overwhelming grace. In the meantime, the new mother will give Massimiliano Rosolino back the ability to pronounce every syllable correctly and will multiply loaves and fishes in the hall of the stars by walking on the waters generated by the tears shed, out of envy, by all the other contenders for the title who, petty and ungraceful as they are, cannot tolerate her. Ah, these last lines are not quotation marks taken up by the jury word for word. But they could.
Meanwhile Barbara d’Urso and Andrea Delogu are the first to fly into the final: 8
This time Andrea Delogu, having had to prepare the choreography in two days due to a bad flu, did not shine as usual on the dance floor together with her teacher Nikita Perotti. We will not comment on the various rumors that they are a couple in life, as well as on the dancefloor: they have already been denied by both, but the public likes to ‘dream’. And even the authors of the show don’t mind letting them do it: look, the two dance to the tune of ‘Tango’, Tananai’s most gut-busting balland, complete with the giant ‘AMORE’ writing on the LED wall behind them. Then one misunderstands, in short. In any case, the public’s affection for Delogu (and #delotti) is so explosive that it landed directly in the final thanks to televoting, despite the bottom of the rankings in which the jury had sunk it due to constipated palettes. Same fate for Barbara d’Urso, she too flies to the last episode without having to go through the gauntlet of two-person challenges. The former coffee queen is full of painkillers because, in addition to her shoulder, she has now also bruised a hip. She dances splendidly, but her face is tense and every now and then she grimaces due to the pain. In the rehearsal room, he argues with Maestro Pasquale La Rocca (not exactly someone with an easy character, ed) until asking him: “Listen, have they ever spat in your face? No? Because look, there’s always a first time, eh!”. In practice, the impression is that d’Urso is venting on ‘his’ dancer everything he would like to say, from the heart, to the jury. It’s better that way. It’s also more fun. At the end of the performance, questioned by the jurors, she launches into a prophecy: ‘I am not retiring, nor have I ever thought of doing so despite the many false rumors that have come out about it recently. I want to get to the final. To rank last, but I want to get to the final”. Has Barbarella been guessing or does she already know how next Saturday will go? Only one certainty: she couldn’t care less about winning the talent show. She only wanted to make a good impression (and she did) to dedicate herself, perhaps then, to far more important tasks than simply lifting the cup live on Rai 1 in the middle of the night. The real game for Carmelita, in fact, will begin just outside of there. Will there be any surprises?
