Last night was the final for the Panamanian equivalent to “Dancing with the Stars,” called “Bailando por un Sueño.” Personally I don’t follow these types of shows because the dancers are (mostly) good and there’s no fun in it as much as there is beauty, but when our version of the thing was announced all I could think to myself was “how are they going to make it work?” The premise: 8 people, each with a “dream” they want to make a reality, would be paired up with 8 of Panama’s most famous celebrities and dance their way to their ultimate goals. Now, I’m not into the whole Panamanian celebrity scene and I’d have you believe and quite frankly the effect that the concept of “Panamanian celebrity” gives me can be compared to what it’s like to sneeze and fart at the same time; if it’s happened to you then you know it’s eerily pleasant but it gets you dizzy and uncomfortable. Any which way, I decided to follow the proceedings because I smelled a car crash coming together… when the list of “celebrities” that would dance was announced it was the most mismatched motley crüe of people anyone could’ve ever picked to participate in this thing… a couple of radio D.Js, a former Laker girl now turned I-dunno-what-the-hell, a former carnival queen, some dude they pulled out of a farm apparently, and a 300-pound announcer. The idea, at this point, was ridiculous… the stroke of genius would come with the other half of the couples… the people that would be the reason this whole thing came together in the first place.

If you have a sob story, then these people could take it and rip it to shreds. I don’t remember all of them because they’re heartbreaking and the way they portrayed them on TV in order to work the public’s levers is something I found utterly disgusting and crass, but here are some of the greatest hits:

• One guy is a teacher in Chiriquí, and it seems that the orphanage/school he teaches in is over 40 years old and falling apart. If they don’t garner up the funds in order to fix the orphanage over 50 children between the ages of 3 and 12 will be left without a home. There’s not enough money to even hire someone to begin the repairs because no one is willing to give them a break, and time’s running out.

• Another one is an aerobics instructor who has a wife that came down from Colombia many years ago. He loves this girl very much, and it’d make him the the happiest guy on Earth to be able to send his wife up to her country so she can see her mother who she hasn’t seen in 10 years. Out of all of them, without taking away this goal’s merit because it’s still heartbreaking, I feel this one’s the weakest… which kind of made this guy the laziest of the group. Seriously now, how much is a plane ticket to Colombia, really? We do live right next door to them.

• One girl has a little brother that’s 8 years old and has cataracts in his eyes. Both of them. The damage the disease is causing is severe, and if he doesn’t get the corrective procedure done (one that goes up to more than $10,000, I’m sure) in the next few months, he will go blind.

• There are others, but the one that’s the most heartbreaking for me has got to be the case about the girl who has these twin cousins. They’re cute little kids, happy as children can be and they’re both carbon copies of each other… I was watching the report on this particular “dream to fulfill” and it all seemed honky dory at first, until they unbuttoned one of the twins’ shirts to reveal this crazy-ass scar that ran down his chest dead in the middle. As it turns out, the poor boy has a malformation in his heart… he’s missing his right ventricle.

In the heart, a ventricle is a heart chamber which collects blood from an atrium (another heart chamber that is smaller than a ventricle) and pumps it out of the heart.

In a four-chambered heart, such as that in humans, there are two ventricles: the right ventricle pumps blood into the pulmonary circulation for the lungs, and the left ventricle pumps blood into the systemic circulation for the rest of the body. (See Double circulatory system for details.)

Ventricles have thicker walls than the atria, and thus can create the higher blood pressure. Comparing the left and right ventricle, the left ventricle have thicker walls because it needs to pump blood to the whole body. This leads to the common misconception that the heart lies on the left side of the body.

The little dude’s not even 2 years old and he’s already gone through about 3 surgery’s to aid his lungs so he can live but time’s running out for him; he needs this one last surgery that will put a contraption in there that will serve the same purpose the missing ventricle would do, but just like the kid I mentioned above he has but a couple of months to have the procedure done before it’s too late. If he doesn’t get the operation, he dies.

This is reality TV at its best.

Suddenly the concept of watching this like a car crash took a very serious turn. Now, imagine me… we’ve been together for enough time so you can get a sense of me; my humor’s a little screwed up. The first show was very odd for me (and my mom) since we were watching these idiots try to dance like professionals and in many instances almost cracked their skulls open because they’d go for the lifts and big spins, failing miserably, but seriously… it takes a really fucked up person to laugh at these people who are dancing (albeit badly) because they want to save lives. It was the first show, so before each dance they’d play a video detailing each participant’s dream and they were downright heartbreaking; people who are smarter than the average bear could see the network’s intentions of squeezing the human tragedy factor for all it’s worth and if I were the network I would’ve done the same because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years as a TV and pop culture junkie is that people love to watch others suffer, as long as it’s in prime time. Playing with people’s emotions and seeing them crash and burn as much as triumph and overcome is very entertaining to us, the viewing public, because it’s the same principle of how we can advise onto others on stuff that’s happened to them yet we can’t take our own advice when the same thing happens to us; things are easier to assimilate when it’s happening to someone else.

So, this thing started 2 months ago; they set up a phone voting system a la “American Idol” and all of the other reality TV shows out there where people could vote on their favorite couple. They also set up these judges who would evaluate the dancers as they torched the dance floor with everything from salsa, bachata, merengue, and reggae to tango, swing, rock (I don’t understand that one, either), pop and cha cha cha. The two couples at the end of the show that had the lowest points would be the ones in danger of being eliminated, so you’d have to call in order to save them… that was the mechanic of the competition.

There was a lot of drama; there was at least one person crying every week, there were reports of people needing medical attention after shows and there was even a case where one of the “celebrities” had to step out of the competition because he busted his hip from all of the spinning and lifting. He reappeared last night in crutches. As weeks passed by, though, couples would be eliminated one by one and it was heartbreaking to think about what would happen to the kid whose eyes are melting off or whatever the hell… does this elimination mean that he’ll go blind now? It would seem that way, but luckily these “famous people” used their status in order to pull strings and I believe that there’s not one dream that won’t be realized thanks to outside efforts. In the end it was all about the competition and raising awareness that there’s some messed up stuff happening in this world and if we don’t become aware of them in time then someone’s going to have to make an ass out of themselves on national TV in order to get your attention… and I tell it to you like this because that’s the message that was practically telegraphed to me from last night’s show, the grand finale.

It all narrowed down to the the couple that wanted to build the orphanage for the kids in Chiriquí and the couple who wanted to get the little kid his ventricle. These two, in many ways, proved that in the end it didn’t matter if you knew how to dance or not… that was just a show. It was like Survivor… endurance helps and goes a long way, sure, but in the end it narrows down to who can play the game better. Chiriquí boy had the Laker girl, an ex-miss Hawaiian Tropic “blonde” who I’ve busted a nut to several times. She has the pin-up girl body men love to watch, and she knew it; do you see the picture to your right? Things like that happened so often that it stopped being considered “accidents” in my household. She would come out in these crazy-delicious outfits that were practically begging a wardrobe malfunction. She knows how to make her body work for her and of course then there’s the Laker girl thing which I suppose requires you to know how to dance, at least. Ventricle girl, on the other hand, had everything going against her; she was paired up with the 300 pound announcer. This guy though, has the charisma of Bugs Bunny, George Clooney, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and Jesus combined. He’s been an announcer for as long as I can remember, and it’s that familiarity and warmth that only a fat guy can bring to the table that allowed this couple to sail their way into the final considering that they were always one step away from getting the boot. Watching these two dance was downright adorable, since the girl seemed to be having a blast while her partner desperately tried to keep up with hilarious results. These two didn’t make it to the end because of how they danced though… not at all. Out of all of the couples, these two not only brought in said charisma, but they brought in the highest quality of drama in the whole show. It almost seemed scripted, planned out how things with these two developed: it’s revealed a few weeks in that the sir suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes (if you saw him you wouldn’t be surprised, but still it was good to point it out) and the week afterwards his son steps in for him for that one week since doctors told him he would have a heart attack if he didn’t rest his heart. On top of that, he’d take every chance at the mic he got to soften the country’s heart up to the point where the couple spent the last few weeks of the competition dancing the slowest-paced tunes they could find because it was just too much for the guy… and the people ate it up. No pun intended.

Needless to say, this latter couple won the competition. As it turns out the little kid will, in fact, get his ventricle and be able to live a very happy, healthy life. It seems that the Laker girl got off her ass too and decided to help her partner start building the orphanage for the kids, along with the network, tthe one that orchestrated this mean-spirited play on the public’s emotions, who gave all of the couples some start-up money in order to begin making their dream a reality. No real losers here, actually. It was a very successful venture for the network that aired the show, I’m sure; everyone got to make their dream come true in exchange for making fools of themselves in live national television and the couple who danced the least managed to go home with a nifty trophy and a dream fulfilled. The couple who played the game the best is the one who won, and I don’t mean the dancing part… it was clear to me the second that they kicked out the couple who danced the best in the whole competition (the carnival queen one) within the first hour of the broadcast that the last thing anyone cared about here was how well they danced. It was all about who couple play with the public’s sympathy better. It’s like my dad always tell me: “Use your brain, Rob. Use your brain.”

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