“The judges are too harsh,” “professional dancers should not be able to compete” and “It’s a popularity contest” are all opinions that have been circulating the internet regarding the new season of popular ABC reality television show, “Dancing with the Stars.” However, these opinions of “new generation” watchers, as long time watchers have deemed them, have strayed far from the goal of the show.
The show aired in 2005 and has gone through its drought and floods of popularity, none being more reviving than the current season. Season 34 has gathered record-breaking voting rates by viewers. Over 21 million votes were counted at the premiere and the amount has only grown to 35 million by the second episode.
A majority of this growth has come from the influence of social media platforms, especially TikTok. Creator’s skits, opinions and criticisms have gathered view counts in the millions and fostered a community that opinions on the platform have been seen in the outcome of the votes.
While I welcome the growth of the show that I grew up valuing, I also believe, however, that the growth and critique centered show that was dramatic only by diva celebrities was lost in the new wave of viewers.
The judging panel, even though recently has changed, has seemingly been made up of judges who look for different aspects of dance and competition. The “pizazz” judge, Bruno Tonioli, scores and gives advice on the presentation of performance and the visual and emotional impact. The “technical” judge, currently Derek Hough, focuses on how accurate the performance is to the genre of the dance and what rules that dance style should follow. And finally the “potential” judge, Carie Ann Inaba, who critiques based on what she doesn’t see in the dance and what she wants to see or thinks she can see in future performances.
A highly voiced opinion is that the judges are rude to the contestants, and many are highly critical of judge Inaba. Based on the opinions of last season, many suggest she is harsh and underscores couples. I think that Inaba’s way of judging has always been continuous, in fact, she has had to digress from her critiques to prevent backlash and boos in the crowd.
The whole panel, in fact, has turned into compliment fishing instead of what their job is to do, critique to build constructive criticism and improvement in the contestants. The essence of the new generation opinion has torn down any way from celebrities and pros being able to receive any ideas on how to improve and has made the scores too high from the beginning of the season.
The new season watchers have also never experienced the criticism of the late judge Len Goodman, who would be considered the previous “technical” judge. Goodman, while communicating what would come across as a harsh tone, always got his point across as to what he would want to see going forward in the competition, something that has seemed to get further and further away as the seasons without Goodman go on.
As of the other two main opinions, they seem to go hand and hand in contradicting each other. Viewers are claiming that the celebrities that have had dance experience are unfair to the playing field and that the voting has turned who goes home into a popularity contest.
There is a simple contradicting point to both of these claims; whether someone goes home is not reliant on a single factor. The system to determine returning contestants is a dual system of both judges scores and viewer voting.
Combining the two paths of decision making means that a really flawless technical contestant can have top scores but if they don’t win over the audience with their dances and personality, they still can be at risk for elimination. The same goes in the other direction where a less on-point celebrity can make it far in the competition even if the judges have them placed at the bottom of the leaderboard.
This is visualized in real time on the most recent episode airing on Tuesday Oct. 7 with Hiliaria Baldwin and Andy Richter. Baldwin, a trained and former competitive dancer, went home many felt as though they did not find her charismatic enough or the voters did not agree with her personality. Richter, on the other hand, a comedian with almost no previous dance experience was saved from elimination because of his resilience, growth and likable personality displayed over the past few weeks.
Withthis being kept in mind, the key “Dancing with the Stars” charm has been lost with the new wave of popularity. The audience and the premise of the show should return to the idea of showing what celebrity can grow the most in technique and partner chemistry as well as provide an entertaining section in their part of the show so that the audience and judges want to see them return to the next episode.
