After missing a week due to the vice presidential debate, Dancing with the Stars treated viewers with a two-night special last week. Both nights featured the usual panel of judges, who were accompanied by a guest judge each night as well. Monday’s theme was Soul Train Night, and featured Rosie Perez as a guest judge. Rosie did an excellent job and gave fair scores to all of the contestants. She also provided meaningful feedback in hopes of helping everyone improve.
Tuesday night’s theme, on the other hand, was Hair Metal Night. Gene Simmons came in as a guest judge, which seemed like the perfect fit at first. However, throughout the night, Gene actually became pretty annoying and honestly disrespectful at points. After his disastrous night of judging, it’s fair to say that Gene is the worst guest judge in Dancing with the Stars history.
Gene Simmons made several inappropriate comments while judging on Dancing with the Stars
It’s clear from his critiques that Gene wasn’t meant to be a ballroom dancing judge but we’ll get to that in a second. The most difficult part of watching Gene was listening to the numerous inappropriate comments he made.
The first dance of the night was a paso doble from Danny Amendola and Witney Carson. Instead of judging the dance, Gene went on a weird tangent about the pair’s looks. Specifically, Gene said, “It’s hard to look at both of you and figure out which one is hot hot hot hot.” Gene then went on to talk about how beautiful Witney was, which made her visibly uncomfortable. This was uncalled for from Gene, as he should’ve judged their dancing rather than their physical appearances.
As the night went on, Gene’s comments got even more strange. After Dwight Howard and Daniella Karagach’s performance, Gene exclaimed, “You are a powerful and attractive man and that was a slam dunk.” Later on after Jenn Tran and Sasha Farber’s Viennese Waltz, Gene added, “…Jenn and I have to say, besides you being beautiful, you delivered.” It felt like Gene objectified contestant after contestant, both male and female. There was no need to comment on anyone’s looks and Gene stepped out of line for doing so.
Gene gave random scores to several Dancing with the Stars couples
Throughout the night, Gene also demonstrated his poor judging skills by giving random scores. While there were some couples who Gene scored accurately, others were way off. One of these couples was Danny and Witney. While the other judges all gave their routines a seven, Gene threw up a nine. Danny and Witney’s dance wasn’t bad by any means but there were too many mistakes for it to be considered a nine or even an eight.
Another couple that Gene over-scored were Brooks Nader and Gleb Savchenko. Brooks and Gleb had been one of the lower-scoring couples during the first few weeks. However, their Hair Metal Night dance was a significant improvement. They received eights from every judge besides Gene, which seemed fitting. Gene surprised everyone by pulling out a ten, although he officially locked in a nine. This would have been the first ten of the season, so everyone was shocked. Even a nine seemed too high, as Brooks still has some room to improve.
On the other hand, there were different couples that Gene decided to under-score. One of these couples was Jenn and Sasha. While they received an eight from all of the other judges, Gene gave them a seven. This didn’t make any sense, as it was easily their best performance yet. Gene’s worst scoring mishap took place after Phaedra Parks and Val Chmerkovskiy took the stage. Phaedra received a seven from everyone besides Gene, who shocked her by throwing up a five. This was completely off, as Phaedra definitely danced well enough to earn solid sevens.
Overall, Gene completely threw off the leaderboard and didn’t really judge anything
While no one expects the guest judges to be as precise as the regular judges, Gene fell way below par. Gene’s crazy scoring really threw off the overall leaderboard from the week, which was combined with the scores from Soul Train Night. For instance, giving Jenn a seven caused her to tie for third place, whereas an eight would’ve secured the spot for her. By the same token, giving Phaedra a five caused her to place lower than she should’ve overall.
Another frustrating aspect of Gene’s judging was that he didn’t really judge at all. Gene didn’t say much apart from his many inappropriate comments, none of which had to do with dancing. During Soul Train Night, Rosie paid attention to the dancer’s every move and offered helpful feedback. Gene didn’t do this at all, which was pretty frustrating to watch.
While there have been some pretty bad guest judges on DWTS over the years, Gene takes the cake. His inappropriate remarks combined with his strange scores and lack of feedback put him at the top of the bad guest judge list. If DWTS ever does Hair Metal Night again, hopefully they can find someone other than Gene to guest judge.
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