Kristin Cavallari: ‘Dancing With the Stars’ boot kicks up fan ire
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Kristin Cavallari got the boot on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Tuesday night, but fans of the dance competition think that Chaz Bono was the one who deserved to go home.
On Monday, Cavallari nabbed a 24/30 score for her ‘Crazy In Love’ samba with pro Mark Ballas while Bono earned a meager 18 points for his rumba set to his father Sonny Bono’s ‘Laugh at Me.’ But Tuesday’s results sparked the ire of the audience and boos from the crowd when Cavallari and her partner were voted out of the competition because of low audience votes. Perhaps a tweet from Cher, Bono’s mom, promising that she’d be in the audience if her son made it to week four might have tipped the scales?
Judge Carrie Ann Inaba said Bono ‘looked really distracted ... not quite focused in the dance.’ Len Goodman said it was his best performance though he still had much work to do and Bruno Tonioli said he looked ‘a little bit lost’ during the performance. Nonetheless, viewers kept the competition’s first transgender contestant on for another week. Watch the dances below and judge for yourself.
‘I wish I could thank each & every one of you personally for your votes. YOU are the reason @LaceySchwimmer & I ARE DANCING AGAIN next week!!’ Bono tweeted after the results.
But fans are still accusing the show of turning the competition into a popularity contest that has a flawed voting system that discounts judges’ scores on actual skill versus juggernaut-like fan bases. Cavallari did get more praise from the judges than Bono across the board, and a much higher score to boot.
‘The judges should have the final say in who goes home. Keeping the poor dancers is ridiculous. My husband says he no longer wants to watch, as it’s not really a contest,’ wrote Show Tracker commenter Shirley Hicks.
‘I had a bad feeling about this season as soon as I realized that the audience was voting out the new pros... it’s all about your fanbase,’ added commenter Zachary Foreman. ‘Models and reality stars don’t have big fan bases, nor do first year DWTS pros. I think they should put the bottom two dancers up to audience vote. That way, they couldn’t mess up too much.’
Cavallari later mused that votes from viewers didn’t really match up to the skill of the contestants
‘It is what it is. That’s the thing with ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ you never know,’ she joked to Us Weekly. ‘It’s clearly not a dance competition!’
‘But I’d rather go out on top and have people be shocked than have people be like, ‘Thank god she’s leaving, it’s about time.’ It was the best experience I’ve ever had. I could not be happier that I did the show.’
Who do you think should have gone home? Will you keep watching this season even if it’s flawed?
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-- Nardine Saad
Twitter.com/NardineSaad
Left photo: Mark Ballas and Kristin Cavallari perform a samba.
Right photo: Chaz Bono and Lacey Schwimmer rumba. Credit: Adam Taylor / ABC
