It’s Official! Len Goodman Announces On Finale He Will Be Back In The Spring To Judge DWTS!
It’s Official. Len Goodman will be back to judge on Dancing With The Stars in the spring for Season 22.
It’s Official. Len Goodman will be back to judge on Dancing With The Stars in the spring for Season 22.
"Dance is the hidden language of the soul" ~ Martha Graham. That's what DWTS makes me think of every Monday night. To read more about me and my other interests, see Lisa Kay Photography. You can also follow me at Voguerista Twitter & Voguerista Soundcloud.
Excited! Hopefully he’s not as cranky this season though, since I think that affects his judging. I think a little reigning in though will be nice, it’s interesting, he is much nicer and seems much less strict in strictly lol, but of course I think at strictly they do a better job at sticking to the assigned dance.
He has been missed. He has a new knee and will come with a great attitude and please bring Gleb with you! Was disappointed that Len and Bruno did not give Team Glita a 10 on their incredible Paso, much more generous on DWTS.
Yea! Len is my favorite judge, despite the cranky pants stuff. I’ve missed him.
Seriously this past season has been a three ring circus without Len. I am so glad he is coming back. With Carrie Ann being inconsistent, Julianne being…..well…..Julianne, and Bruno trying, unsuccessfully, to be the voice of reason, has just proven how badly we need Len in the Ballroom here in the U.S. Seriously, this season has seen more 10s then any other season before. In Strictly, tens and perfect scores are HARD EARNED!!! Some pros have been on the show for YEARS and have not gotten a perfect score. I swear here in the Ballroom they are given out like candy. I am so glad to see Len coming back, now if only Craig Revel Horwood would make the trip with Len and whip these pros into shape. The 1s,2s, and 3s would be flying out quickly.
If I NEVER hear another comparison between DWTS and SCD it would be too soon. I so don’t care about SCD. And it’s a ridiculous comparison – two different shows, different pros, different audiences.
While I agree that Len was sorely missed in the ballroom and there were judging problems this past season, I think your memory is a bit foggy on the issue of Len. He comes with his own set of judging problems. Like that time he marked Derek and Shawn down for having a cow in the background of their dance on a theme night. It happened more than once that Derek and his partner would get marked down for things the other couples were doing, all in the guise of making the show a horse race. He is not the perfect judge and he takes dictation from the producers just as much as the other three on the script of a given show.
The only way the pros are going to be whipped into shape is if they get rid of all the theme nights and go back to a more strictly ballroom format – I don’t see that happening, so you can forget that idea entirely. This past season on more than one occasion, the pros were told that the rules would be loosened to accommodate the theme – Derek’s blogs told us that much. And that’s FAIR. You can’t expect the pros to play within a theme that would naturally take them away from some of the “rules” then downgrade them for breaking said rules.
It’s also difficult to be a hardliner on rules when one couple is dancing, for example, a quickstep and another is dancing contemporary – the couple dancing quickstep (like Derek and Bindi) could dance it perfectly except for the space between their bodies. Len would be an ass and instead of giving them a 9, he’d be tempted to give them an 8 because that’s what he does to Derek’s partners (for the same reason Julianne is harder on him – he loves him). On the other hand, the couple dancing contemporary could still get a perfect score because there are far fewer rules and none of the judges are really qualified to judge it. You start off with a situation that is basically unfair. For that reason, I think the judges started scoring the couples against each other late in the season – which is what I would want them to do. That means that if lack of body content is the only problem in a dance that is going up against a contemporary that gets 10s, it’s going to be overlooked. And I don’t have a problem with that. What I DO have a problem with is selectively enforcing rules for some couples, but not for others – and that is a Len issue. And a CAI issue, re lifts. I think they got in a bit of trouble in the finale because Alek actually out danced Nick on at least one occasion, but got scored a full three points lower. They were, I think, scoring the body of work and ranking the contestants – but they tied Bindi with Nick which was a total cop out. Nick wasn’t on par with Bindi, but they were afraid marking him down would invalidate Bindi’s win to the audience. This way they can point to the tie and say she got more votes fair and square.
The only way that I see for the judging to be *better* – or to allow them to be stricter – is to remove the built-in unfairness of every single week on the show. That means no themes, no contemporary or Jazz stacked against ballroom dances, and only two dance styles per week like the old days. And that is never going to happen, so the judging has to be looser – or worse, basically unfair.
Ditto to everything PH said – thank you Heidi. I also agree stop comparing the two shows – there is no comparison.
PH BRAVA!!! The idea that Len returning is going to fix everything drives me insane!
Len was the one who declared, on the very first show of last season, that it could be Val’s season. By contrast, I was struck by the affection with which the judges slathered Bindi on Tuesday night, which means that they were doing an effective job of restraining their feelings during the season.
I also have a very difficult time with Len’s rudeness — I will never forget when he told Bruno that he can’t speak without standing up because his vocal cords were up his ass. If I’m remembering correctly and he’ll be staying in the US for the whole season, maybe he’ll be less cranky without having to travel.
I agree with everything you said about Len, PH. I like Len, but when he follows TPTB’s agenda, he’s just as bad as the other three judges (IMO). And because he is the most technical out of the four (in ballroom), I think people usually take his comments more seriously – which I find problematic when he’s hosing a particular couple (like Shawn/Derek, Nastia/Derek) in order to carry out the show’s agenda.
And I do hope that now Len is coming back next season the show stops with these huge OTT productions every week. I got the feeling that the last time he was here (season 20), he wasn’t enjoying the show because there was way too much production and very little ballroom content.
And yes to getting rid of themes. A few per season is fine with me (like Disney or Classical) but I don’t think having a theme every single week is necessary. Also, I feel like it forces the couples to dance to music that does not compliment one another – which then increases the risk of them getting lower scores because of that, which I find unfair.
Well said PH. Having Len back in the Spring is NOT going to solve anything on DWTS, it’ll just make things worse. However, I imagine that’s what TPTB want. Whatever they can do to generate tension and manufacture drama is good as far as they’re concerned.
While I’d love to see DWTS roll back to the more traditional ballroom-based entertainment it once was, that’s not going to happen. Ratings are strong, which says the average viewer is happy with what the producers are serving up. So it’s just good business sense for them to continue in that direction. I’m getting pretty close to losing interest, but if they’re gaining two new viewers for every old fogy like me who leaves (or breaking even with a one-to-one swap), it’s all good for them.
One of the more disturbing things I read after this season was stuff from total idiots like that chick from Glamour who is the massive shipper. Her problem this season seemed to be the lack of the showmance. If she represents a good fraction of the audience, then we’re in trouble. Good news for the Chmerkovskiy style of competition though – that was a huge chunk of Maks’ win and Val’s tried it more than once. Both got burned pretty bad, so it will be interesting to see if Val goes back to that.
It’s a testament to Bindi’s win though, that they needed no shenanigans like that.