Since last week, three stars emerged on Dancing With the Stars as most likely to be cut:  Clyde, Billy Ray, and Leeza.   After a night when at least two of those couples were able to bring it up a notch, most notably Billy Ray Cyrus and his partner, the bottom for Dancing With the Stars still seemed pretty predictable.  Many people considered Clyde Drexler a shoe in to be asked to leave the ballroom, but alas, this was not the case.  As a matter of fact, anyone expected to be in the bottom for Dancing With the Stars' first elimination wasn't even there,  instead two couples whose scores were mediocre, yet seemingly safe, surprisingly found themselves on the chopping block.
The bottom two were Shandi Finnessey, a former Miss USA, and her partner Brian Fortuna, and Paulina Porizkova and Alec Mazo.  I was very surprised to see both couples in the bottom.  To be sure, their performances were nothing to get excited about, but they were no where near approaching bad.   I guess audiences just aren't going to settle for mediocrity this year!

If you remember,  neither couple received any level of high praise from the judging team, but their scores put them pretty much in the middle of the road.  In most cases with Dancing With the Stars historically, the home voting has almost always towed the line with the judges.  In some rare cases, such as last years finale, the home audience decided the winner against the odds.

So who would be the couple asked to turn in their dancing shoes?  Paulina and Alec are sent packing tonight.  Paulina gives a very graceful exit and forgoes a last dance for a hug fest with the remaining ten couples.  In the end, I suppose it is not so surprising to see her lack luster efforts result in a cut, but it was still amazingly peculiar that none of the lowest scoring couples from the two previous competition shows were even on the chopping block.  It should be very interesting to see how things advance as the contest goes on.

- Jon Lachonis, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(image Copyright © 2007 ABC)