DWTS - Good-bye to the Gutte!

Steve Guttenberg danced his last dance on Dancing with the Stars last night. This surprised me--I thought he'd stick around longer than Adam Carolla or Marissa Winokur or even that Cristian guy. He's this season's "lovable old geezer" (think Jerry Springer, George Hamilton...) after all! I mean half of the scores are from audience votes. So let's say the vote was evenly distributed among the ten couples: Steve got a 21 for his performance on Monday plus 10% of the vote would equal 31 points. While if Marissa got 10% added to her score of 19, she'd only have 29 points.

Obviously, a far greater percentage of the audience voted for Marissa keeping her in the competition than for the charming Steve Guttenberg (he lunches with the people who design the costumes he's so nice!) I would have thought his fanbase was bigger, but often what happens when the judges are overly harsh with a contestant is that the fans rally as sort of a backlash. That's what happened to keep Jerry Rice, a very mediocre dancer, in the competition through the finals a couple of seasons back.

Before Steve left, he was awarded the privilege of dancing the encore dance at the beginning of the broadcast. The night before, it was revealed that his professional partner Anna was sick for most of the rehearsal week and that her husband Jonathan (another dancer on the show) had to step in and teach Steve the Tango. So as a sort of spoof, it was Jonathan who twirled 'round the floor in the encore last night. Very funny!

Ah, Steve--we will miss you!