Backstage at DWTS: Tonight's Controversial Elimination Has Everyone Up In Arms

Find out why the ousted dancer was a surprise to other contestants

Memo to the Dancing With the Stars gang: Each week someone must go home! And if you're still around after tonight's brutal elimination, some counted blessings may be in order.

But most—OK, more like all—of the remaining dancers are less than thrilled with tonight's outcome, mostly because of the (wholly unnecessary) controversy that accompanied the ouster:

Spoiler Alert! After drawing the lowest score on Monday's performance show, Michael Bolton and partner Cheslie Hightower were eliminated. True, it's normally proper form to send home the bottom of the rank, but after last night's 3-Gate, aka the harsh and overdramatic critique from judge Bruno Tonioli, the outcome was a extra-bitter pill to swallow for all of the DWTS crew.

"It was just unfortunate because it left a dark mark on a beautiful experience and it didn't need to happen," front-runner Jennifer Grey tells us of Michael's elimination. "Everyone here is trying so hard, no one here is a dancer, we're all coming in as nondancers being taught how to dance, so all people who are willing to put themselves in that vulnerable expression should be treated with respect."

Adds her partner Derek Hough: "Bruno's hilarious, even when he's being harsh it's still with a funny humor. But yesterday he might have just gone a little too far with it."

Footballer Kurt Warner and his ballroom gal Anna Trebunskaya echo the above sentiments, among others.

"It was a little bit of a letdown yesterday," Anna tells us. "The comments that maybe went a little too far. I mean, saying that it was the worst jive ever? That's not true!" Kurt says that all of the "stars" "want to have a great experience here, so you'd hate the fact that the last two days probably weren't a great finish to this whole thing for Michael."

And really, these remarks on tonight's elimination were just the tip of the iceberg. Rick Fox and Cheryl Burke call Michael and Chelsie the hardest workers on the show. And Margaret Cho is going to miss her "buddy" in the music man.

Unfortunately, Michael didn't stick around to fill us in on his thoughts about the debacle (although by now we've all heard about his newfound outlook on the "disrespectful" Bruno), but Chelsie did fill us in on how she and Michael are holding up:

"It's tough," she says. "It's hard that we had to leave the way we did. We both so badly wish we could have come back next week and done a better job, and we would have. It's just sad that we couldn't come back."

For the record, Michael had to run to perform another show for that little musical career of his—it wasn't a bad sportsmanship thing.