Couple: Chad Ochocinco & Cheryl Burke

Dance: Waltz

 
Chad seemed shaken up by his brush with elimination last week, and he was left feeling like he let Cheryl down somehow.  But his professional partner reminded him that he needs to keep his head in the game.

 
“At this point you get a clean slate. No one cares about what you did last week,” Cheryl said. “You need to start fresh and make sure you’re doing anything you can to make it into that final.”
 
“Rehearsal is always stressful,” said Chad, who has still got his eyes on the prize. “It’s one week left until the finals. With all the said, I came here to win. I don’t want to go home.

 
After their first routine, we think Chad’s got a good shot at making into the endzone on “DWTS.” In a word, Chad and Cheryl’s waltz was beautiful. He had the technique down, and he did an amazing job of conveying the proper emotion of the piece.
 

 
Judge Carrie Ann Inaba couldn’t help literally singing Chad’s praises. “Chad Ochocinco just nailed the waltz,” she chirped. That was probably the most coherent part of her critique, which ended in a Mary Murphy-esque shout.


 
“Chad I don’t know where to start really,” said judge Len Goodman, who noted that Chad has come a long way in comparison to his fellow dancing stars. “If they’ve climbed hills, you’ve climbed mountains. To come out in the semi-finals and produce a waltz like that—fantastic!”


 
“Man…respect!” judge Bruno Tonioli said before explaining why their comments about Chad’s performance up until tonight had been so sharsh. “We knew there were something there for us to see. Tonight you showed it to us.”

 
With such glowing critiques from the judges we expected Chad and Cheryl to get at least one 10 from them. No such luck as the pair got nines across the board, placing 27 points on the board.