Dancing with the Stars Trying to Generate Sympathy for Lochte After Heckling
By Isobel Moody
ABC releases footage of the Dancing with the Stars incident after initially not showing it on TV; entire cast expressing their support for swimmer.
Dancing with the Stars premiered last night, and a lot of the nights happenings were what one expected. Laurie Hernandez was good. Rick Perry was bad. Vanilla Ice was Vanilla Ice. There was a breakout performance from a less likely source (James Hinchcliffe), and a lot of celebrities who did average dances, some showing potential to get better. Ryan Lochte (who was among the last group in terms of dancing), had a fluff piece where he talked about how sorry he is he behaved badly, and how he sees the show as a second chance.
One also expected that some people would remain very unhappy about him being on the show. What no one expected was that a whole group of them with anti-Lochte shirts would make it into the ballroom, and two guys would run onto the dance floor after he and Cheryl Burke had danced yelling “Liar!”
Not that you would have necessarily realized that was what happened if you just watched the show that night. The incident happened while judge Carrie Ann Inaba was giving her critique, and the camera stubbornly stayed on her not only as she indignantly yelled “Excuse me” multiple times, but even stayed there after she stopped talking and it got very awkward. It was clear ABC was not going to show the hecklers if they could help it. Host Tom Bergeron, perhaps receiving direction through his earpiece, sent the show to commercial. When the commercial break was over, there was only him interviewing the couple about how they were feeling. Security had taken care of everything. Tom thanked them.
Perhaps it would’ve been better if they’d just shown it. It was a very rude thing to do, to say the least. When it comes down to it, Lochte’s sins aren’t nearly great enough to justify disrupting and even genuinely freaking out a crowded room. But it would not satisfy ABC to merely say that.
"WATCH: “They had dressed appropriately and had tore those away to reveal their shirts.” – @Tom_Bergeron #DWTS https://t.co/xX6puwPQDF— Good Morning America (@GMA) September 13, 2016"
ABC had a clear message: Lochte & everyone were victims
Those watching Dancing with the Stars All Access on their computers got a better idea of what was going on, including that they used the commercial break to clear multiple protesters out. That was also where Dominic Bowden starting the spinning right away. Lochte didn’t deserve something like that, he insisted. He deserved his second chance, he was merely the first to declare. He also was quick to justify ABC’s creative broadcast editing job. Those hecklers wanted attention, he said, and it would have rewarded them to show them on TV. There’s some truth in that, of course, but would that be why ABC made the choice they did? Or did they just not want to deal with the uncomfortable realities of what Ryan Lochte on this show means?
As is typical, the show was followed by interviews with the cast on the ballroom floor. They were all firmly on Ryan’s side. All were ready to reiterate the message: this wasn’t the place for heckling, and Lochte was a great guy who just made a mistake anyway. Vanilla Ice even went overboard, calling him an “American hero.” No matter how wrong the night’s intrusion might have genuinely been, that one’s pretty hard to swallow.
By this morning, when Tom Bergeron went on Good Morning America to discuss the issue, they’d hit on an approach that worked better. This time they focused how the protest affected everyone in the ballroom, not just Lochte. “Unnerving,” he called it. He was also sure to say security hadn’t slacked. The group had only gotten in by hiding their anti-Lochte shirts under other clothes. After initially trying to keep the protesters out of the broadcast, ABC released the footage. This way we could see them yelling and scaring people. They also included footage of Derek yelling at the protesters still in the audience to get out. This gave them to chance to praise the very popular dancer and take the focus of Lochte. We already felt sorry for Cheryl, who obviously suffered a scare she didn’t deserve at all, and later in the day she released a statement:
Will this protest backfire?
The thing is, it might work. People will generally feel sorry for someone who gets heckled on live TV, unless they hate them a lot more than most people bothered over Ryan Lochte. The one who disrupts everyone’s good time by yelling is the one everyone frowns at. It is highly unlikely those hecklers changed the minds of anyone who was going to vote for Lochte anyway. Meanwhile, they might provoke sympathy votes from those who wouldn’t have.
Next week, no doubt, Ryan and Cheryl will both be talking in the fluff about how much the evening’s events shook them. Their coming back onto the floor to dance again will be treated as a triumph in the face of adversity. The judges might even say so. Erin Andrews will discuss it during her post-dance interview with them. If they don’t get voted off soon, we may all even get sick of hearing about it.
Next: Dancing with the Stars Week 1 Recap: Welcome Back, Sequins!