Strangely out of step
Spicer earns low scores and mockery, but there’s no sign he’ll be voted off DWTS
So, a month into ABC’s Dancing with the Stars season 28, how is the show’s most controversial contestant doing?
We speak, of course, of U.S. President Donald Trump’s former press secretary Sean Spicer, who sparked outrage from fans and the network’s own employees when his casting was announced. In the debut last month, Spicer’s professional dance partner Lindsay Arnold acknowledged “the internet kind of broke” when the news was revealed — without elaborating that people were upset because a falsehood-prone White House official had landed a lucrative chance to redeem himself on a surprisingly powerful TV platform.
Despite the backlash, Spicer is doing just fine. Although he has consistently received some of the worst scores from the judges (he got the lowest score of any contestant on Monday’s episode) and lots of mockery on social media for his gaudy outfits, there’s no sign of him being eliminated anytime soon. Each week, the technical scores and viewer votes are combined, and the bottom two couples are placed in jeopardy — then the judges choose which pair is “saved.”
The conservative fan base is known to rally around this show (see: Bristol Palin in season 11) and Spicer is clearly getting a lot of audience votes, with the help of some high-profile endorsements.
And while the judges get the final say in who goes home — a new twist this season, likely to prevent a beloved-yet-mediocre dancer from winning — they seem to be warming up to Spicer.
The first week, Arnold described his dance skills as “pre-preschool level,” and the judges looked deeply concerned by his attempt to salsa to the Spice Girls hit Spice Up Your Life. Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli, the kinder judges, called it “strangely entertaining.” Len Goodman, the harshest, simply said, “I admire your courage coming on this show” — a sign he found the dance so terrible that he couldn’t muster the energy for a critique.
In week 2, after a tango, the judges were slightly more encouraging. “I have to admit, it looked like a tango,” Tonioli said, sounding surprised, and Inaba added Spicer was “super much improved.” Goodman deemed it “better than last week.” In week 3, things didn’t go as well: Goodman cracked that Spicer’s cha-cha to Saturday Night Fever was “more like Monday night lukewarm,” and Tonioli said it was so bad (“a disaster blockbuster”) that it was almost good. Inaba chose the “A for effort” angle.
Week 4 brought relatively mild reviews with his paso doble — even though Spicer got the second-lowest scores again, and although the judges thought it wasn’t great, they gave actual technical criticism.
On Monday night, week 5, Spicer received the most positive feedback yet, for a quickstep to You’ve Got a Friend in Me while dressed as Woody the cowboy from Toy Story.
The judges were pleased with the performance, especially Goodman, who complimented his frame as “pretty good.”
“Don’t get overexcited, because there’s still a ways to go,” Goodman cautioned. “However, it was a proper dance. Well done.”