When it was announced that Bill Nye would be a participant on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" it was almost as much of a head-scratcher as some of the experiments that Nye would perform on "Bill Nye The Science Guy." Yet after two weeks it has become clear that Nye may not be the most athletically gifted but he is definitely a fan favorite, according to People.
In the first week of competition Nye and his partner Tyne Steckliein finished with a score of 14 out of 30 after performing a cha-cha; their score put them in last place. It turns out that the audience didn't agree with the assessment of the judges as the YouTube video of their dance received close to 3 million views, according to USA Today.
"I don't think he's going anywhere," Brooke Burke-Charvet, a former champion and host of "Dancing with the Stars" told USA Today. "His dance went viral. It's so huge. He has mad fans. I am in awe of him. He probably thinks he's going home, but I don't think so."
Even when he is on the dance floor Nye can't divorce himself from his love of science, something parents are hoping kids connect to as they learn that "the smart kid" can also be "the cool kid," according to the Christian Science Monitor.
"Mr. Nye has always raised the level of teaching science to an art form," Lisa Suhay wrote in the Christian Science Monitor. "This week he took the dance floor dressed as Beethoven, dancing to Beethoven's Fifth symphony with a powdered wig that he cleverly employed to make a poofy cloud of powder during a moment of frustration in the dance. The theme for his dances so far have been rooted in science. He's learning the math of keeping time and engineering a new way to win this show by being a fan favorite, if not the best dancer."
The amount of social media attention Nye has received has surprised him but he thinks that his role as an underdog should help him going forward in the competition, according to Yahoo.
"The social media world has gone crazy for Tyne and me," Nye told Yahoo. "The judges turned us into the underdogs, rather than just inherent losers. Definitely being the underdog is clearly a much more visible position than being in the middle of the pack. So, from a gaming standpoint or a strategic standpoint, it's really good."
