Dropping the Deuce on… Dancing with the Stars

Why am I going to rant about this terrible, terrible show? Because it’s been eating time out of my life. Luckily, I’ve been able to soften the blows by doing crosswords or Sudoku or doing stuff on my computer while the Doc has it running on the DVR. Why is the Doc watching it? Because she’s a follower of almost everything Kate Gosselin. I’m not a fan, but that’s not what the rant is about. It’s about the system DWTS uses. That’s right! The system!

This show is an abomination because it has the visage of a competition, but in reality, it’s just a popularity contest. They have judges that hand give out “best out of ten” scores which are worth about as much as the points that Clive Anderson and Drew Carey used to dish out on Whose Line Is It Anyway? (very funny show, by the way). That’s right, the scores mean nothing! What does it matter if the worst scoring people will always return when there’s always a possibility that even the best scoring duo can still get eliminated due a celebrity’s larger initial fan base?

I’m not dropping on American Idol, which is also a popularity contest, but they at least don’t do things to mask that fact. The judges don’t hand out scores, only critiques. The judges on American Idol also have one “save” on the show where they can nullify the elimination if they believe the best person what voted off due to a dip in votes from the audience, like they did a week ago. Plus, one of biggest gripes, is that the more popular celebrities are already coming in with voters just because they are more famous than some of the other contestants. The American Idol contestants are all coming in on even, unknown status and are, hopefully, gaining votes because of their talent and merit with the occasional “vote for the worst just so they suck again next week” votes.

But back to DWTS. The show, itself, is fine. Celebrities dance with professional dancers. Tom Bergeron and Brooke Burke do a mediocre, yet serviceable job of hosting the show. The judges are characters in themselves with the supportive Paula Abdul-type, the scowling Simon Cowell-type, and a clown who knows his stuff. Like all reality shows, there’s those melodramas they play out before each dance is performed. Kate Gosselin is bitching. Pamela Anderson is being slutty. Chad Johnson (I refuse to call him Ochocinco) is trying to woo his dance partner. Blah, blah, blah. The dancing has highs and lows, like any other competition of these types. Kate and Buzz Aldrin were painful to watch. The singer from Pussycat Dolls and the ice skater are, not surprisingly, good. One thing I learned from this show was that Erin Andrews has some wicked long legs. Seriously, I can probably walk underneath them without having to crouch.

And now back to my pain point—the system. They are completely missing the marks here when it comes to the whole elimination portion of the show. Every week’s completion should be scored and I say that the highest scoring celebrity win’s immunity from elimination. That would at least make the scoring portion of the show feel less like a waste of time. Why give out points if they aren’t going to be used for anything? I can see the reason they don’t give out immunities is so that more people will feel inclined to text or call in their votes and thus give them more revenue, but if the number one goal is to milk the text/call money, then why not give yourself more advertising time as well, by saving 10-15 minutes for more advertising space by removing those useless “let’s see your scores” moments. Maybe they can do a reversal on the scoring I mentioned and do something like, the bottom three in scores are the only ones at risk of being eliminated? That would make the results show a lot shorter and maybe fill in a 30 minute episode. That’ll give ABC another 30 minute time slot on Tuesday that they can use to put on another sitcom or a smaller budget game show. I watched one of the results shows and was bored to tears for the entire hour. They have all of the dancers standing in front of the camera and slowly shave away the safe dancers until the last two worst vote getters are left standing. They were able to fluff this into an entire hour by throwing filler like musical guest singers, like Reba McIntyre, or have a guest dance troupe or even make a celebrity do the exact same dance they did the night before because it was “just that good”. Fluff, fluff, dumb fluff.

The Doc would probably like me to end with a complaint about the incredibly revealing outfits some of the female dancers are wearing during their routines. That’s right. Pamela Anderson is not the only one out there that seems like they had a couple turns on the stripper pole. One behind the scenes practice they showed had one of the professional dancers wearing elastic short-shorts and had a battery for her microphone clipped to the back. That battery looked like it was a gram away from being heavy enough to show us her trunk, if you know what I mean. During the performances, the outfits have more cloth, but only the sense that the difference is like between a bikini model and a bikini model wearing a cape. In the end, when they start moving around, it doesn’t make much difference. Sometimes, the only thing that seems to be keeping those dresses on their bodies is modesty or threats from TV censors since I’m pretty sure that anyone willing to be on that show lacks some degree of modesty.

Oh yeah, and one last thing, to whomever is sending those death threats to Erin Andrews, “Really?”