‘Dancing with the Stars 23’ postmortem: Why Ryan Lochte, Cheryl Burke were eliminated

The trend of predictable “Dancing with the Stars” eliminations continued on Monday night, as we saw Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte and Cheryl Burke bid adieu to the competition after a run that lasted in some ways longer than we even anticipated that it would. His dancing was never great, and following this summer in Rio, we weren’t sure what his popularity was going to be.

Before we get into explaining what we believe happened over the course of the season leading up to Ryan’s exit, let’s at least start this by pouring on some praise for him. We do legitimately think he brought the enthusiasm to his final solo performance, and was ready to perform in character. That sort of creative fire is what we found missing from much of what he tried to do in the ballroom all season.

Reason #1 – The scores weren’t good enough. Out of the remaining Stars Ryan simply averaged the lowest total scores. You don’t have to think scientifically at all to justify the elimination based on that. On paper he seemed like the perfect contestant to do well, but he could never master the rhythm and performance at the same time.

Reason #2 – He just wasn’t that popular. We do think that he had his fair share of fans, but we don’t think we’re stretching here in saying that had the incident in Rio not happened, he’d probably still be in the competition. We already made it clear that we didn’t like what he did down there, but kudos to the guy for coming out and facing it head-on here, given that he could’ve easily gone into hiding, especially after that week one incident.

Reason #3 – He was on a really good season. We just had three Stars get perfect scores in the same week, and there have been four to receive them so far this season. We’re not even at the semifinals yet. Maybe in a different season, Ryan could’ve mustered another week or two.

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