While most Dancing With the Stars guest judges go easy on the contestants, KISS vocalist and bass player Gene Simmons dished out some shockingly low scores on Hair Metal Night.
Simmons, 75, started out pretty generous during the Tuesday, October 8, episode, giving the first performers of the night, Danny Amendola and partner Witney Carson, a nine while the other judges gave the duo sevens. He tried to give Brooks Nader and Gleb Savchenko the first 10 of the season, but he had already locked in a nine, so the score didn’t count.
As the evening went on, however, Simmons surprised some of the performers with his low scores. After Jenn Tran earned eights from the other three judges, Simmons said “Don’t hate me” before giving her a seven.
The rock musician then went on to give Phaedra Parks a five while the other judges all gave her sevens. The crowd booed as Parks, 50, and her partner, Val Chmerkovskiy, made incredulous faces. Chandler Kinney covered her mouth in shock before mouthing, “What’s going on?” Even cohost Julianne Hough couldn’t hide her disbelief.
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“It’s a wild night tonight,” Hough, 36, said with a shrug. “Alright, well, we can’t say it enough times, you have to vote to save your favorites from tonight’s double elimination.”
Simmons’ scores were all the more confusing given the fact that he didn’t give Tran, 26, or Parks any negative feedback. He told Parks and Chmerkovskiy, 38, that he was “a big fan of the bad boy and the bad girl” dynamic of their routine, and said to Tran, “Besides being beautiful, you deliver.”
It was hard to tell at times what exactly was going on in Simmons’ head. He gave Stephen Nedoroscik an eight, but seemed bewildered by the 25-year-old Olympian’s breakdancing moves.
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“What was that thing you were doing on the floor all of a sudden? What was that?” he asked Nedoroscik after his Foxtrot with partner Rylee Arnold.
Cohost Alfonso Ribeiro interjected to explain, “He’s a gymnast,” and judge Bruno Tonioli added that the pommel horse specialist is “very flexible.”
Simmons then threw his hands up and decreed, “No comment.” While he was unimpressed by Nedoroscik’s breakdancing, he seemed to like him overall.
“If they gave out awards, I’d give you a gold award. But I wanna tell you something really important. You’ve got so much personality in that body of yours. Glasses? Don’t worry, Superman wears glasses,” he told Nedoroscik, who has been compared to Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, due to his spectacles.
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While Simmons certainly kept Hair Metal night interesting, the elimination results were unsurprising. Reginald VelJohnson and his partner, Emma Slater, and Eric Roberts and his partner, Britt Stewart, were sent home at the end of the double elimination episode after consistently being at the bottom of the leaderboard.
Dancing With the Stars airs simultaneously on ABC and Disney+ Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET. You can watch episodes on Disney+ the next day.
