ABC Carrie Ann Inaba, Len Goodman, Derek Hough, Bruno Tonioli
The Monday, October 18, 2021 episode of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” ended with what was a shocking elimination to some viewers, and there was also some confusion about how it all played out on the part of fans of the show.
The way the scoring works on “Dancing With the Stars” is that the judges get to score the couples as they perform, and then those scores count for half of the overall score. The rest of the score is made up of the percentage of votes each couple gets from the audience, which sometimes leads to unexpected results for viewers.
At the end of the Grease-themed episode, host Tyra Banks announced the bottom two couples for the night were Mel C and Gleb Savchenko, who were in the middle of the leaderboard for judge scores with 36 out of 40 and Olivia Jade and Val Chmerkovskiy, who were tied with the 36 out of 40.
Then, the judges had to decide who to save. Both Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli said they would choose to save Mel C and Gleb, while Derek Hough and Len Goodman chose Olivia Jade and Val. Because Goodman is the “head judge,” his vote also counts as the tiebreaker, meaning that Olivia Jade and Val were staying in the competition.
Pros & Celebs Weighed In on the Issue
After the episode, some of the professional dancers and celebrities spoke with Us Weekly about the rule of Len Goodman’s tiebreaker and whether they thought it was a fair way to decide who went home.
“I’m in favor of this situation,” Olivia Jade told the outlet. “Basically his vote counts, like, it’s a tiebreaker. He has the ultimate say. So that’s how it works for those confused.”
Val Chmerkovskiy added, “Last week, I was really confused. This week, love it. I really understand it now.”
Cheryl Burke explained the situation as Len Goodman’s vote basically counting for two votes, which may be the simplest way to think of the “head judge” situation. If the other three judges agree, then Goodman’s vote would not overrule theirs, but when two of the judges agree and the other doesn’t, then Goodman gets the final say.
Witney Carson told the outlet she has not been sure about Goodman’s decisions.
“It’s such a close call,” she said. “I think anything he does right now is going to have a little bit of backlash.”
Artem Chigvintsev told Us Magazine that he thought there could be a better way of deciding the situation if there was a bottom two.
“Yes, I do think there is an option of, let’s say, there’s a bottom two,” he said. “If the judges can’t decide who to send home, then it should be going into the voting system. Who got the most votes?”
Some Fans Were Confused By the Rule
This is the second time for season 30 that the tiebreaker has come up, and the way Banks originally explained it was confusing for some viewers. On the next episode, she tried to explain it in a different way, but some viewers were still confused and upset by the situation.
“The judges were not ‘undecided’ until len voted for kenya. It was 2-1 for Matt. When Len voted for Kenya, making it 2-2, they should’ve just sent home the person who had the lowest amount. That would have been the FAIR way. len should not have gotten the final save,” one person tweeted.
Another wrote, “Confused about the judges save. If Matt got 2 votes and Kenya got 1, how did Len’s vote save Kenya?? (Not that i think Matt deserved to stay over her just very confused).”
“Dancing With the Stars” airs on Mondays at 8 p.m. Eastern time on ABC.
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