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Dish Of Salt: Questioning The 'Dancing' Judges (September 20, 2006)

by Laura Saltman

Alright people, it's week 2 of "Dancing with the Stars" and I feel we need to discuss the scoring tactics of the three judges, Carrie Ann Inaba, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli.

It's so frustrating to watch because a lot of the times their scores don't make any sense. First off, why did Carrie only give Willa Ford a seven for her mambo when she was phenomenal? The dance was hot, she looked hot. Then she gives the exact same score to Sara Evans who was nowhere as good and she gave eights to both Shana Moakler and Vivica A. Fox, neither of which were that great at the mambo. It looked pretty slow in the audience and then when I went back and watched again at home there were several stumbles in Vivica's routine.

Second, Mario Lopez looked great last night but he didn't exactly follow the rules of Quickstep so he got ripped to shreds. Then Carrie proceeds to give him a 7 and Bruno gives him an eight. The only judges who's score reflected his comments was Len's who gave him an appropriate six. We spoke to all the dancers and their partners about whether or not they felt the scores were unfair.

Vivica A. Fox seemed to the most outspoken of the celebrity dancers, "When you do the traditional ballroom you must follow the traditional ballroom dance. You have to remove yourself as a celebrity and do the dance and if you don't do the dance then it will be a true reflection of that and I think unfortunately that's what happened with them tonight that they didn't commit to the dance."

Her dance partner, Nick Kosovich, thought it was definitely an issue, "What they said didn't justify with they scores they gave. We've got rules and they clearly state that you have to be together for 80% of the routine. 10 seconds in the beginning and 10 seconds at the end. You are not allowed to be apart. No breaks in between. Fantastic show but hey if we go out there with the intention of just doing a fantastic show we would probably be breaking all over the place and flipping out and getting people out of the audience, ya know."

Joey Lawrence added in a little tap dancing to his routine but apparently still stayed within the rules. His dance partner, Edyta Sliwinska, thought the judges were right for their comments, "Dancing separate from your partner 80% of the time is not right. Its simply against the rules you have to do a quick step in the Quickstep." However, she did think the scores were justified because Mario is a great, entertaining dancer.

I heard from a source backstage that Cheryl Burke, Emmitt Smith's dance partner, before the show had the biggest problem with it. Though with us she tried to be very diplomatic, "There are rules and regulations for ballroom dance and for quick step you do have to be in hold and they didn't show so much of that but I think it was very entertaining and I think they did a great job." I guess it gets pretty competitive back there!

As for Mario he defended himself saying, "We knew we were taking a little bit of a gamble because we wanted to have a lot of fun in the performance because the song was a lot of fun and we thought the number one priority was to entertain and tried to entertain everybody.
We knew we were going to get a little flack about it but...we didn't expect a tongue lashing like that."

The audience was busy last night with celebrities. I heard Ted Danson, who was there to promote his new ABC show, tell the show's executive producer he and his wife were huge fans and thanked him for bringing "class back to television". He was in absolute awe watching the dancers. It was so cute to see his face light up.

Lisa Rinna told me after the show she misses being the one out there on the floor. She literally wants to jump out of her seat when the women are dancing. Vivica A. Fox seems to have a large group of celebrity gal pals, Lisa Raye and Tisha Campbell Martin were her cheering section last night. Holly Robinson Peete was with Emmitt Smith's family for the second week in a row. Monique Coleman had her pals from "High School Musical" in the house After the performance Ashley Tisdale was gushing to her about how great she did.

I'm thinking Sara Evans or Shana Moakler will be out tonight. Next week, the dancers will take on either the Jive or the Tango.