My wife and I are avid fans of dancing with the stars. It's the only reality TV show we watch. The reason being that we like dancing and like watching other people dance - it's also fun to see some famous people we like give it a go at dancing themselves. It's the whole over-coming anxiety and learning to do something under pressure thing. It's silly sometimes and the judges aren't consistent a lot of the time. But overall it's a good show and we generally have fun watching it. Cut to this season.

From the get-go its obvious that its a lot more competitive this season. They picked out more people who are on the same skill level. This is opposed to last season where it was painfully obvious who was going to make it to the finals (Apollo Ohno, Joey Fatone, and Laila Ali). We pretty much just sat back and watched everyone else fail until those three could duke it out. 

This season the only person who had those technical skills on the dance floor was Sabrina Ryan. I mean, everyone else is good, and it's a lot of fun watching them, but it was obvious, like the seasons before, that she was going to make it all the way, and most likely win. The only person close to her caliber was Mel B. But then in the results show we find...she's voted off!!! 

Ron Kitagawa blogs about it, and found a site where over 500 users commented on the decision. He states that "it isn’t clear what worked against Bryan". I couldn't agree more!! I mean, this is supposed to be a dance contest, not a popularity contest. Perhaps the votes from watchers count for too much. It seems wrong that someone obviously better than anyone on the floor could be voted off. I mean Marie Osmond is still there for goodness sakes. What culd be the reason for something like this? There seem to me only two logical explanations:

1) She was too good

Sabrina consistenly scored at the very top of the pack, if not at the top. Watchers must have voted for other contestants assuming that she would still be on top. So her lack of voters and slightly low (and undeserved) scores last week were enough to do her in.

2) The numbers were fixed

Some executive somewhere said, "It doesn't matter what the real results were, it'd sure shake things up to have the BEST dancer ended up getting voted OFF the show!". Since it's all ready been a high-drama season, it'd only add to the buzz to have a high-profile contender kickoff the show. Coincidence?? You decide, :).

So all in all it was really sad to see her go. No one on the show is safe. Hopefully at least this will give the other dancers the kick in the pants to  up their game a little and do some quality dancing. Only time will tell. 

Photo courtesy of MercExtra