In which I put Baby in a corner

I’m terrible at headlines, but I was just overflowing with ideas for a re-cap of the premiere of “Dancing With the Stars.” Like, Where the Hell Do They Find These People?, or, Dancing With the Stars: I’ve Never Watched this Show Before, or, Dancing With the Stars: the Stuff That Happened After “House.”

That last one is accurate, by the way. I intended to forgo my “DWTS” initiation for a “House”-“The Event”-“Hawaii Five-O” line-up, but the first few minutes of “The Event” were so incomprehensible – don’t make me keep up with your 20 minutes ago/three days ago/13 months ago timeline when a) I don’t know who any of you people are, and b) I’m trying to paint my toenails – so I said, screw it, let’s watch Bristol Palin cha-cha.

Unfortunately, I missed Palin’s dance, tuning in just in time to see the judges announce her scores while her partner groped her. While I question how going on national television is supposed to help her protect her privacy, hopefully this will be a good experience for her. Maybe she can meet a non-dirtball to date.

Palin danced to – I wish I were making this up – “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” I don’t think I was prepared for the fact that “DWTS” is apparently the most painfully obvious show in the history of television. Seriously, “Queen for a Day” was more subtle. They even did the whole “OMG, it’s so funny when old people say f***” schtik with Florence Henderson, and I thought Betty White decommissioned that one some time ago.

And then there was Jennifer Grey.

I’m well aware that I’m apparently the only person in America who thought the “Dirty Dancing” references were inappropriate and even crass, but hear me out: whoever chose “These Arms of Mine” (her partner? The producers? Who usually does this?) was being blatantly manipulative. Given that Patrick Swayze died almost exactly a year ago and Grey recently had a cancer scare of her own, I can totally understand her getting emotional.

But … Does it occur to anyone else that Swayze has an actual family, one whose connection to him just *might* be a little stronger than a co-star from 25 years ago who didn’t really get along with him? (Remember the iconic scene where Baby and Johnny are rehearsing, and she keeps cracking up because he’s tickling her, and his face says, “I swear to the ghost of Fred Astaire, if you do that one more time you’re getting put through the nearest wall”? Yeah, Swayze wasn’t acting.)

Question for more frequent viewers: are the judges always this arbitrary? So Palin and Grey (maybe other contestants, too, but I was watching House and Cuddy do nasty things, so I can’t be sure) can base their entire routines around concepts so self-referential that an average toddler could figure them out, but The Situation does one Tony Moreno-style thrust, and suddenly he’s not stretching himself enough as an artist? This is the guy from “Jersey Shore” on five days of rehearsal after spending the last several weeks probably watching Ron and Sammi break up over and over – what exactly were they expecting?

Maybe my expectations were skewed by the training-montage clip, in which Sitch pretty much couldn’t count to four, but I thought he was great. And I thought the judges were WAY too hard on him. It’s not like he threw his partner into the audience or anything. Yes, I have a strong “Jersey Shore” bias. And yes, I voted for the Situation.

Unless Sitch gets voted off (in which case this will be my first AND last episode of “DWTS”), I’m going to have to get used to this whole “results episode” thing. Why can’t they have the results at the end of the show like a normal game show – excuse me, reality show? Is it really that frakking complicated?