Don’t follow dance shows closely, so I only found out about Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews getting axed a few days ago. This was as much as I was able to dig up.
Andrews was pretty much completely useless (I’ve made my sentiments more than clear in this thread), but losing Bergeron is a big, big blow. I do not exaggerate when I say that he was not only the best thing about this show, he may very well have been what kept it together this long. He was the extraordinarily rare reality TV host who was fully aware of how utterly BS the whole miserable exercise was yet still earned his keep, week after week, year after year, and never once let success get to his head. Most of these guys run the gamut from “Good Yukari, shut the frag up!” (Matt Iseman & Akbar Gbajabiamila, Bear Grylls, those Holey Moley turds) to “Who are you again?” (Steve Harvey, Nick Cannon, any host of The Voice ever), and even the ones that start out fine often end up grating on my last nerve. (There was a time when I liked Howie Mandell, dangit. 
) Bergeron was a class act from beginning to end, adding a touch of humor without becoming cloying or insufferable, leavening harsh judges’ scores without turning into a snivelling apologist, emphasizing the beauty and elegance of the art form without descending into slobbering boosterism. His voice and presence made a contrived, plastic, disgustingly rigged show better than it had any right to be. At the very least he deserved to go out on his own terms. Damn.
Tyra Banks? Wait, was that the white female completely generic insipid droning rah-rah vacuum from AGT or the non-white female completely generic insipid droning rah-rah vacuum from AGT? I’m sorry, all these wastes of makeup kind of run together after a while. I didn’t see anything egregiously bad from her in the first episode, but I have no faith that she’ll ever be anything but a bland cipher.
Oh, look, they dug up another NBA geezer. This is going to be a great season. 
