Cheryl Burke found the Dancing With the Stars semifinals 'underwhelming': 'I gave no tens'

As a former pro with 25 seasons under her belt, Cheryl Burke knows Dancing With the Stars as well as anyone can. And she says something went wrong with the season 33 semifinals.

"I would say I gave no tens, not even close, because no one deserved it," Burke said on Wednesday's episode of her Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast, which aired the night after the semifinals. "And I'm not being negative or bitter; this is just how I see it. Having been a part of the show, especially the semifinals, there is something always so special about the semifinals, because people are fighting and giving everything that they have because it's one of their last dances."

"But they're leaving it all out on the dance floor, and I just didn't feel that tonight except for [Ilona Maher]. So it was a little underwhelming, to be quite honest," Burke said.

Burke's criticism extended to most aspects of the penultimate episode of the long-running reality competition program's recent season: from costuming, to music, to the video packages used to introduce each dance, to the dances themselves.

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She began by saying she "wanted more" of the full-cast opening number, choreographed by Sasha Farber and Ezra Sosa. "But hey, you can only do so much with so much time — or so little time, that is," she reasoned.

Burke praised Maher, an Olympic rugby player, for executing what she sees as "definitely her best dance." "This is how you do the semifinals," she enthused.

But when it came to the rest of the competitors and their pro partners — Bachelor star Joey Graziadei and Jenna Johnson, actress Chandler Kinney and Brandon Armstrong, Olympic gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik and Rylee Arnold, and NFL player Danny Amendola and Witney Carson — Burke had points of constructive criticism.

Burke complained that there's a "cockeyed, weird position" that Graziadei "does with his head.... You're not supposed to look at your partner for this exact reason. You have to look where you're going. Meaning, if your feet are pointing forward, your toes are pointing forward, and that's where you're going."

During Danny and Witney's Viennese waltz, Burke noted that "if you look at his footwork, he's not gliding. He's not making love to the floor with his feet" and "lacks smoothness because his knees need to be flexed more."

When it came to Nedoroscik, Burke had a more nuanced argument. She singled out a moment when partner Riley was told to "bring out the sexy in Steven... if you know there's no chance in hell that's ever gonna happen, don't say it," Burke said. "Not only is it intimidating for Steven, but then you're putting two more hot sexy women on top of Riley in his routine. And you can see from the beginning that he was not dominating this. And as far as I'm concerned, the music didn't go with the couple."

Finally, Burke wasn't happy with the video package that opened Kinney and Armstrong's performance: "This is what I mean by you're just throwing a bunch of nothingness into a package in a semifinal, which is kind of disappointing to be quite honest."

Still, Burke hoped that "no one gets eliminated."

"When I asked my Threads who they want in the finale, it wasn't like one couple got the most mention. It was everyone.... Look, I think everyone's in love with all of the couples," she said. She got her wish, too, as all five couples survived the semifinals and will move on to next week's finale.

Though Graziadei and Johnson got the only perfect score on last night's episode, the couple is tied with Kinney and Armstrong on the overall scoreboard. But as Burke pointed out, each of the contestants has fought hard for their place in the finale. The Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy is anyone's game this season.

Dancing With the Stars airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC and Disney+.