Matt Walsh’s Dancing With The Stars saga ends in defeat

It’s been a weird week of controversies for Dancing With The Stars. After announcing actor and comedian Matt Walsh would appear as a contestant this season, a swift backlash over whether or not he is violating the WGA and/or SAG-AFTRA strikes followed. Walsh bowed out, SAG-AFTRA clarified, and Walshed bowed back in. Tonight, Walsh took a bow and left the stage because he was already booted off the show.

Viewers ignorant of that whole mess would never know any of it happened from watching the episode. Walsh’s first and only appearance on Dancing With The Stars, a grueling two-and-a-half-hour premiere featuring Jason Mraz, Vanderpump Rules’ Ariana Maddix, and The Brady Brunch’s Barry Williams, went fine until it didn’t. Wearing a snake wrangler’s costume, he danced the cha-cha with Koko Iwasaki to Bel Biv DeVoe’s “Poison” and received a slew of backhanded compliments from the judges. It was a lot of “you looked like you were having fun out there” and “I loved what you were doing with your face. What kind of face is that?” Walsh looked crushed, but, as he said, he was happy to appear on a show his mom could watch.

With a respectable score of 12, Walsh tied for last with reality star Harry Jowsey and model Tyson Beckford. However, the audience was audibly disappointed with the score and gave the judges a chorus of boos for daring to kick the Walsh-hive. To the layperson (e.g. this writer), Walsh looked pretty good out there.

Knowing that everyone at home was only tuning in to see how Walsh did after the week’s labor disputes, he danced second to last. Editors at ABC had a field day with Walsh’s popularity, holding off on his dismissal until cameras captured a couple of close-ups of the actor looking dejected. Despite the persistent positivity of the hosts and judges, Dancing With The Stars is a cruel show.