#dwts29 Followup: Carole Baskin Goes Home

 #dwts29 Followup: Carole Baskin Goes Home

by: Raine T. Riley, October 4, 2020

            It was a short-lived era, that of our Tiger Queen on Dancing with the Stars. Carole Baskin, of Tiger King fame, was sent home on September 28, Dancing’s second night of eliminations. Although the elimination was not a surprise, as Baskin had earned either the lowest or second lowest scores every week for the past three weeks, the elimination garnered a lot of attention across the web. Many fans of the show celebrated her elimination, and the puns were seemingly endless. Entertainment Tonight tweeted out “It’s back to pride rock for Carole Baskin!” (seen above), and a popular USA Today article titled “‘Dancing With the Stars Disney Night: Carole Baskin scratched after mauling ‘Lion King’ samba” made its way around the Twitterverse. Even within the article, Bryan Alexander couldn’t help but call Carole’s “stint” on Dancing “far from purr-fect.”

The elimination of Carole Baskin was not the only point of conversation, however. Over two days (September 28 and 29), there were over 37k posts across more than 9 different types of platforms. 78% of the conversation came from Twitter and 19% from YouTube. The highest peaks of conversation came at 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. with an overall positive and neutral sentiment. Participants in the conversation were mostly females between the ages of 24 and 34, coming from nearly 100 different countries around the world.

            Skai Jackson and Nelly were two contestants that garnered a lot of attention. Skai and her partner Alan danced a jive to “Almost There from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. Many people were upset with the judge’s scores for #TeamReachfortheSkai, claiming that they have been “underscored” the last two weeks. Some fans of the show claimed that the judges are consistently harsher on black women contestants, pointing back to previous skilled dancers who got lower scores than their white competitors.

    Nelly’s shoes have continued to be a topic of conversation. On the first night of competition, he revealed to the judges and America that he has a shoe doctor friend who customized a pair of Jordan’s for him to dance in, in place of traditional ballroom dance shoes. The Jordan’s were customized to have a heel, and have changed week to week according to whatever costume Nelly wears. Some people commented that they hope this will become more popular, and someone will put heeled Jordan’s on the market to encourage more young men, specifically young black men, to take up ballroom dancing.

The season has been a fun watch, but there is still a lot of criticism across the web. Tyra Banks is getting a lot of heat as the new host, and many people have stated that this season is one of the worst. This past week, with the presidential debate being the night following Dancing with the Stars, some Twitter users even compared the two programs, unsure which was worse. It is apparent that this season is not getting as much attention as perhaps previous seasons, and certainly viewership has decreased. On the first night of competition, we examined a total of 58k posts from 176 countries in just one day (see my previous blog). This week, only three weeks in, the volume of posts went down by 36%. Hopefully the engagement will improve over the next few weeks! It does seem that there are a lot of strong dancers in the competition this season – Nev Schulman, Skai Jackson, Vernon Davis, AJ McLean, and Jeannie Mai, to name a few. These next couple of weeks should really separate the great from the mediocre, and the final weeks will, no doubt, be exciting as ever!

            Who are you loving this season? Who do you think will go home next?