Dancing with the Stars fans are hoping that Kaitlyn Bristowe will not be in a group of performers judged by Carrie Ann Inaba during the upcoming relay dances. These will occur on Monday, November 2. The show revealed the rules for this new addition to DWTS on Instagram in an attempt to simplify the process, but it appeared too confusing for some fans who were hoping this would not set their favorite celebrities, such as Kaitlyn, back further in the competition.
This section will be secondary to the first dances the remaining couples will perform during the episode.
The Inquisitr recently reported there will be no themed routines this week. Celebrities including Kaitlyn Bristowe, Skai Jackson, Justina Machado, AJ McLean, Jeannie Mai, Nelly, Nev Schulman, Chrishell Stause, and Johnny Weir will be assigned ballroom techniques they have not performed before. The couples will be broken up into groups for the second half of the episode. This is where much of the confusion lay.
Judging the contestants will be Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough, and Bruno Tonioli. The rules for the performances are as follows per the show’s Instagram seen here.
All the remaining twosomes will be sorted into three groups based on the dance styles they’ve already done. Duos within each section will compete against each other for bonus points. Each judge will critique only one group and will rank those couples accordingly. Finally, bonus points for each dance will be awarded based on these rankings.
While this sounded straightforward, many of the show’s social media followers didn’t seem to understand the reasoning behind one judge being assigned their own celebrities. Users hoped that some performers — such as Kaitlyn, whom they believed had been harshly critiqued by Carrie Ann in the past — would not be assigned her for the new segment.
“Can we keep Carrie Ann away from Kaitlyn Bristowe and Artem tho? She’s not a fan, clearly,” wrote one fan.
“Let’s hope Artem and Kaitlyn don’t end up in Carrie Ann’s group…please,” a second viewer pleaded.
“So many good comments here that make me laugh but are true about the scoring and Carrie Ann. Plus this next week sounds confusing and again leaves lots of room for them to manipulate who continues forward in the competition,” noted a third user.
Prior to this type of competitive dancing and the coronavirus-related restrictions that have since limited the number of people on the stage at one time, DWTS aired a segment titled Dance-Off. For this, the remaining duos of a particular season performed one unlearned dance alongside each another for extra points from the panel of judges.