Dancing with the Stars has gone the “America’s Best Dance Crew” way when it comes to eliminating the bottom two teams: via dance-off. The major difference though is that instead of seeing two excellent routines that make it very hard for the judges to decide who to cut we have to watch two abysmal numbers again.
This week it was Belinda Carlisle (with Jonathan Roberts) and Steve Wozniak (with Karina Smirnoff) who had the great misfortune of having to show of their dancing skills, or lack of it, again. Belinda Carlisle had to go-go home when she got an even lower score for her salsa. Woz fared better than Belinda, though not more than he did the first time around, and kept his old score.
I can see the sense behind the new elimination format since the bottom two dancers at least get a chance to redeem themselves. However, it doesn’t make much sense when they don’t. Maybe they should wait till half of the dancers are eliminated and the week’s bottom two contestants are capable of actually challenging each other with a great dance-off. I’m pretty sure that with people responding to the first (possibly last?) dance-off the show’s producers will be taking notice. If the next dance-off doesn’t improve they’ll have to think of something really fast to make that segment seem more entertaining than a waste of time. Until then we can only cross our fingers and hope for a better dance-off next week.