Popularity

by Marissa Meleske

Created on: October 09, 2011

The now popular Reality TV Show "Dancing With The Stars" made its television debut on ABC on June 1, 2005. Initially, the title says it all. People only became interested in it because "so-and-so" was going to be on and they just absolutely loved how they sang or acted or what have you. To put it simply, it didn't matter if they were bowlegged and had two left feet, their fans would vote for them.

After it's first season, however, "Dancing With The Stars" quickly proved to be a show that clearly had a lot of staying power, if for no other reason at first than because many of the fans wanted to see if their favorite star would ever be on. Therefore, the fan base continued to grow, and those that tuned in during the shows' first season, came back for season two, three, four and still tune in today during the shows thirteenth season. Because of that, the fans of the show have gained a certain amount of respect and admiration for the professional ballroom dancers on the show as well. After all, the stars that do improve wouldn't be able to do so without the direction and teaching of the professionals they are partnered up with.

Unfortunately, because this is Reality TV, things don't always go your way and never go smoothly. Despite the premise of the show being a respectable talent contest, there must always be drama and early ousting of stars that, if the show were truly solely based on talent alone, should have stayed and possibly even won. However, it is not a perfect world and some of the most talented couples are eliminated before they should be. That could be because they were assumed to be safe, but most people are inclined to believe that the stars' fan base is just not large enough in comparison to some of the others. Don't be mistaken, some people watch the show and, despite loving a certain celebrity that is on, will vote for who really is the most talented and whomever is improving the most over the 11 weeks of the show. More times than not, though, you will get hoards of fans speed voting for a celebrity just because they are a fan of them in the job they are famous for doing. Many people said that was the case with "Dirty Dancing" star Jennifer Grey. Too many people saw her dancing that final dance in the movie, every time she took the "Dancing With The Stars" dance floor, and that caused them to miss some errors and awkward moments in her dances on the show.

Stop for a second and think about these professional ballroom dancers on the show. Most come from backgrounds where they competed in ballroom dancing competitions that were run properly. No celebrities and you only won if you were indeed the best. All of these professionals have names for themselves in the choreography and ballroom dancing world and take their job very seriously. They don't work hard to be the best and to get their partners to be the best, just to have someone more "popular" and, quite frankly, less deserving, steal that mirror ball trophy away from them. Take the resident "Bad Boy Of Ballroom", Maksim Chmerkovskiy, for example. He has been in the finals four times, each time coming in second or third with partners such as Mel B. and Laila Ali, and some even say he was robbed in season eleven, when he came just shy of the finals, landing in fourth place with his partner Brandy. If you ask most people, they will tell you that the two deserved to be in the finals, if not be declared the winners. Be it dramatic affect or the fact that there were more popular people than others in the cast, the talent on the show all too often takes a backseat to the popularity of the stars.

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