On Monday night's episode of Dancing with the Stars, actress Kate Flannery was sent home after she and her partner Pasha Pashkov found themselves in the bottom two against Fifth Harmony's Ally Brooke and her partner Sasha Farber.
55-year-old Kate, who is best known for her role as Meredith Palmer on the hit NBC sitcom The Office, had been steadily improving on the dancing show before her time was cut short. This season has had other surprising eliminations including when Sailor Brinkley-Cook was sent packing unexpectedly, which seems to be a result of the new voting system this season that involves the viewers voting during the episode and then the viewers' votes werez combined with the judges' scores. This means even if you got the lowest scores, if you get enough votes you get to stay, and sadly this new voting system didn't work in Kate's favor.
After earning a score of 24/30 for her jive, as well as two extra points in a bonus round, Flannery still found herself in the bottom two and at risk for elimination. Kate was up for elimination against Ally Brooke, who had earned a perfect score of 30/30 yet still managed to find herself at risk for going home because of the new voting system. The decision to send Kate home over Ally came down to the judges, and judge Carrie Ann Inaba admitted that she was "a little confused and a little irritated" that it was Kate and Ally standing in front of her considering there were dancers were much lower scores, such as Sean Spicer and his partner Jenna Johnson who earned the lowest score of the night with 20/30. Judge Bruno Tonioli echoed Carrie Ann, saying that he was "in the same position as Carrie Ann. You know, I have to do my job. You shouldn’t be here." Both ultimately chose to send home Kate over Ally, as Ally had far better scores and had performed better overall up to this point. She went to Instagram to talk about her experience on the dance show - check out the post below:
Pasha posted to his Instagram calling Kate "The most humble, down to earth, pure and genuine human being you can find," and he said that she is "an amazing friend, actor, singer and now, on top of all that, also a dancer!!!" Reposting his photo to her feed, Kate wrote a heartfelt response addressing her partner Pasha. The actress wrote, "I cannot thank you enough for your time and your talent. I loved every minute of working with you and learning from you." She went on to say that getting to dance with Pasha has been "one of the highlights of my life" and Kate referred to him as a "world-class artist and a world-class human being," so there's definitely no love lost between the dancing partners.
The new voting system for this season of Dancing with the Stars was meant to even out the playing field a little bit and make it less of a popularity contest but it seems to have done just the opposite. At this point, there's almost no reason to have Carrie Ann, Len, and Bruno have a say since they don't get to control who's in the bottom two, and then they get stuck sending home contestants like Kate Flannery despite their on-air protests. Kate was cut from the show before she should've been, but there are still contestants such actor James Van der Beek or The Bachelorette's Hannah Brown that have a shot at winning the coveted Mirror Ball trophy.
Dancing with the Stars airs Mondays at 8 pm EST on ABC.
Source: Kate Flannery