Every season of Dancing with the Stars comes with the same promise, a group of celebrities from different fields stepping outside of their comfort zones and onto a ballroom dance floor. Being coached week after week and improving their dancing skills. Season 34 definitely had its share of memorable dances, viral moments and iconic characters. But it also showed some cracks in the show, so here are just a few of the DWTS moments that made an impact on me this season.
Viewers Votes Matter
I feel like this season of DWTS made it clear just how much viewer votes matter. The way that voting was originally designed was to allow viewers to vote for their favorite (or favorites) from that week and give them a chance to continue on the show.
Viewers did demonstrate this with Andy Richter and Emma Slater. After getting pretty low scores throughout the weeks, the couple didn’t go home until week nine. The proclaimed ‘people’s princess’ Andy Richter wedged into many fans hearts through his personality and amazing TikToks made with his partner Emma. People liked that Andy was putting a lot of effort into the dances and learning the techniques, as well as his positive attitude with Emma. Week after week, when it came to elimination Andy and Emma always thought they’d hear their name called but they would continue on for another week. This just shows how much power fans and viewers have over the outcome of the show and who can continue on it.
The Court of Public Opinion can Take you Out
As media has become more prominent over the last few decades, people’s thoughts have been shared more openly and widely. The court of public opinion has given anyone the ability to form strong opinions based on limited information that is shared online. When ‘perception becomes reality’ the public act as judge, jury and executioner for these public figures.
From the premiere, we saw a ‘controversial’ casting in Hilaria Baldwin. People disliked her connection to her husband, Alec Baldwin, after he’s had his own share of public dislike. Something else people disliked about Hilaria was her authenticity. Hilaria’s public perception is very hispanic and latin based, but it became more public that she actually was not from a hispanic heritage. This caused a lot of distrust amongst the public as more information came out that she was born in Boston to American parents and her birth name was Hillary. She claimed a more hispanic heritage because her family had moved to Spain when she was a child, where she became fluent in Spanish and developed an accent that many perceived as fake. However, her ethnic background wasn’t the only thing fans had an issue with. Hilaria’s previous dance experience was another point in her public hate. It came out that she not only had dance experience (which a lot of recent fans have disagreed with having celebs with dance experience) but that she specifically had ballroom dance experience. In fact, she had competed in the Blackpool Dance Festival in 2004, which is considered the “Olympics” of ballroom dancing. Furthermore, Hilaria had even beat a current DWTS pro during the 2004 festival. Because of all of this, fans banned together to collectively “vote off” Hilaria, by voting for everyone except her.
Another moment the court of public opinion altered the season was with Whitney Leavitt. Many thought that Whitney was a top contender to go all the way in the competition and have a chance to win the Len Goodman Mirrorball, however she was voted out of the competition in the semi-finals; just missing out on her chance to make the finale.
During the season, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 3 was released, which Whitney stars on. While Whitney wasn’t present much in the beginning of season 3, she came back on the show and was very vocal when she heard that being on the SLOMW would give her the chance to be on Dancing with the Stars. Fans of the show didn’t like that Whitney only came back to the SLOMW just so she could be on DWTS and the week after the new season came out fans ended up voting her off the same way they did with Hilaria. Whitney and Mark actually talked about this on the Call Her Daddy podcast, saying that there was a “gamification” happening where people are voting for everyone, not just their favorite, except the person or people they don’t like.
I think this season, fans realized they could weaponize the voting system not only to keep their favorites but also to get rid of their least favorites.
Is Carrie Ann an Inconsistent Judge?
Some might remember Carrie Ann calling out Chandler last season for an ‘illegal foot lift’ during one of their final dances. What we thought was a one off comment, turned out to possibly not be as this season Carrie Ann gave more critical comments to the female celebs. Carrie Ann has been boo’d multiple times by the fans in the ballroom, not only this season might I add. When questioned about giving harsher critiques to female contestants she said that it was partly true and that she does it to help them reach their full potential, according to E News.
Excluding the first week of dancing because Carrie Ann wasn’t present and it was only Derek & Bruno, here’s the breakdown I have of varying judges scores from this season. There were 108 times that at least all three judges scored dances this season. Of those 108 dances, there were 22 times where Carrie Ann scored a dance differently, 10 times where Derek scored a dance differently, and 7 times where Bruno scored a dance differently. There are 8 times where judging differed with guest judges as well. 4 of those times Carrie Ann and the guest judge that week had differing scores from Derek and Bruno, 3 of those times Derek and the guest judge that week had differing scores from Carrie Ann and Bruno, and there was one time Bruno and the guest judge had differing scores from Carrie Ann and Derek.
So to break it all down statistically, from the 108 dances (from week 2 to 11) scored by judges, from all the times judging differed between the main three judges — Carrie Ann, Derek and Bruno (47 times), Carrie Ann was responsible for 55% (26/47) of the differing scores, Derek was responsible for 28% (13/47) of the differing scores, and Bruno was responsible for 17% (8/47) of the differing scores.
Guest Judges… Good or Bad?
From week 5 to week 9, we saw our five guest judges of this season. We saw the return of some DWTS favorites like Kym Johnson for Dedication night, Cheryl Burke for Halloween, and Tom Bergeron for the 20th Birthday episode. Some themed nights were guest judged by some prominent figures like Wicked Night having Wicked director Jon M. Chu join the panel and Flavor Flav joined the panel for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame night.
The guest judge people had the most trouble with was Flavor Flav, who had the most inconsistent scoring. During week 8, when Flavor Flav guest judged, it was the only week with a guest judge that all the judges scores never matched up. Out of the 8 couple dances that night, 3 of them Flavor Flav scored differently than the rest of the panel, 1 dance that Carrie Ann scored differently than the rest of the panel, 1 dance that Bruno and Flavor Flav scored differently, and 2 dances that Carrie Ann and Flavor Flav scored differently. Also there was a special case in Dylan and Daniella’s dance where Carrie Ann and Flavor Flav scored differently than Bruno and Derek, but Carrie Ann scored an 8 while Flavor scored a 10.
Interestingly enough, the guest judge that had a least variability in scoring compared to the rest of the judges was Tom Bergeron in week 9. There were only two scores that week that differed amongst judges from Carrie Ann and Derek. That’s followed by week 6 where Jon M. Chu only differed on his score one time from the rest of the judges, and Derek differed from the rest of the panel 3 times.
I think that guest judges can be a double edged sword. Because those without dance experience can either be really good guest judges (like Tom Bergeron and Jon M. Chu) or really bad (like Flavor Flav) in terms of consistency of scoring. But it is also nice to see some old faces in the ballroom again in former pros being guest judges.
Overall, those were the four main recurring things I saw this season on DWTS. Each year that DWTS is on, the show changes a little bit more, so it just leaves fans guessing — what will be next?