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Dancing With the Stars: Our Friend Bill Nye is Not As Light-footed As We’d Hoped

He blinded me with science. Also maybe his dance moves. But mostly science.

The seventeenth season of Dancing With The Stars premiered last night, and we watched (almost) all two hours of it so we could tell you about all the great stuff Bill Nye did. Then we found a video of his routine. You should probably just watch the video instead.

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What you don’t get from this little clip, of course, is all the little stuff he did over the course of the program. For example: prior to his routine he wore a completely different bowtie covered in planets (I mean, come on, of course he has more than one space-themed bowtie) to go along with a dark blue-and-black suit, and spent most of his time enthusiastically bobbing his head in the background of every single frame in which he appeared. Seriously, he’s at least a head taller than everyone else in the cast. He also gave a lot of painfully awkward thumbs ups to the camera and tripped over himself at least twice before he even got onto the dance floor. Bless you, Bill. Bless you.

In case you can’t stand the reality competition format long enough to make it to the actual judging (which begins at 3:17 or so), Bill got 14 out of 30 — which happened to be the lowest score of the night. One of the judges even told him, “This formula is not going to get you the Nobel prize,” which I’m sure he’d been rehearsing all night. The crowd was definitely not pleased with these results and almost booed the judges out of the room, which is the correct response to such a grievous error in judgement.

Nye’s chances of moving on aren’t completely squished, however — Bill Engvall didn’t do much better, and the obligatory sports person (Keyshawn Johnson, I’m told) performed poorly as well. They all had new “pro” dance partners who’d never been on the show before. Coincidence? I think not. Well, actually, I don’t know. I’ve never watched this show so I have no idea if that’s relevant.

At the very least Bill swept public opinion, which might keep him on the show for longer than he would last otherwise. If he continues to spend at least one minute per episode trying to teach everybody a science thing, I’ll be happy. He’s already on track to do just that with his “Is this a beaker or a flask?” question during practice. Maybe next he can quiz Tyne about how much force he’s generating when he twirls her around, or something.

(video via Youtube)

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