The Men of Dancing with the Stars, Season 9

Season 9 of Dancing With the Stars started on Monday night, September 21, 2009, with performances by the eight male celebrities.

Aaron Carter was a former child pop star, apparently quite a famous one, but I never heard of him. He did the cha-cha with Karina Smirnoff and was very good, dancing with plenty of energy and style. He will go far on the show, maybe even to the finals. Just as I was thinking that he had looked so comfortable on the dance floor that he must have had dance experience, hostess Samantha asked him about exactly that.

Chuck Liddel, Ultimate Fighting Champion, did the foxtrot with Anna Trebunskaya. He tried, but dance is not his thing. He was stiff and looked like a dancing robot. He had a lot of charm, though, and the audience liked him. The spectacle of someone sincerely trying to learn something far outside of his comfort zone might keep him alive until the middle of the season.

Martial artist and Host of "Iron Chef" Mark Dacascos danced with Lacey Schwimmer, the pro who in previous seasons liked to get punked out in a watered-down ballroom kind of way. They did a martial-arts flavored cha-cha. Mark was flexible and had good hip action, but the performance could have been stronger and more passionate. I think he'll go far in the season, but not to the finals.

Ashley Hamilton, an actor and comedian whose biggest claim to fame is probably being the son of George Hamilton, had the same partner his father did when his father was on the show -- Edyta Sliwinska, the pro who likes to show the most skin. Ashley may get a lot of sympathy for surviving a serious motorcycle accident that left him in a wheelchair for a year. Plus he has a great smile, and he comes across as a nice guy. But he's a terrible dancer. I don't think he will last long.

Donny Osmond -- at last, they brought out a celebrity that I've heard of. The all-around performer who is, of course, the brother of former DWTS contestant Marie, was well-matched with the elegant Kym Johnson. They did a foxtrot to "All That Jazz." Donny was terrific, but whatever happened to the idea of the celebrities being amateurs? That dance number looked like it was ready for Broadway. He will go far, probably to the finals. The judges gave him absurdly low scores, probably to make the contestants look more evenly matched than they really are.

Louie Vito is an Olympian snowboarder. Olympic athletes often do well on this show, but I think Louie's days are numbered. He's just a bad dancer. Even though he is cute, and he makes an adorable couple with his partner Chelsie Hightower, I don't think that will be enough to save him for long. The judges scored him almost as high as they did Donny Osmond, which just goes to show that the scores this week don't mean a thing.

NFL Hall-of-Famer Michael Irvin, who vowed to do better than Jerry Rice, was partnered was Anna Demidova, the dynamic dancer who earned her spot on the show by winning last year's pro competition. While he's clearly not the professional entertainer that some of the others are, he knows how to move. You would notice him if you saw him on the dance floor of a club. I think he will be around for a while, but won't get as far as Jerry Rice's second place.

They saved Tom DeLay for last. The disgraced former House Majority Leader, who was indicted on campaign finance law violations, got paired up with super-champion Cheryl Burke. Cheryl has an amazing talent for making her partners look good, but this time, she doesn't have a lot of material to work with. Still, Tom DeLay was not quite as appalling as expected. After being afraid in the training sessions to move his hips, he did let loose on the dance floor in a dance cha-cha set to "Wild Thing." The producers set him up for laughs with that music choice, and watching DeLay, while laugh-out-loud funny, was also vaguely embarrassing. Cheryl, as always, was genius in motion on the dance floor.

The Second Dances

The couples came out, four at a time, to do quick dances in a "relay" format. In the salsa set, the performances mostly just confirmed what we had seen before. The stiff dancers were still stiff, and Donny was still terrific, but Louie probably bought himself an additional week or two by doing some impressive acrobatics. In the Viennese Waltz relay, Tom DeLay looked better than he did before -- that is, he didn't look like totally ridiculous -- so maybe he bought himself a bit of time as well.

Predictions: Donny Osmond will lead the men, followed by Aaron Carter, Michael Irvin, and Mark Dacascos.