Skill, Schmill. America Truly Idolizes Spunk.

If ever anyone needed proof that this is a culture that goes bonkers for the underdog, please turn to "Dancing With the Stars" and contestant Marissa Jaret Winokur. This week she was saved by the audience's vote even though she spent much of her most recent performance spinning around on the floor in the shoot-the-duck position and looking dangerously close to tottering over. In the meantime, the singer Mario, who may have mangled his Latin dance but has never looked like he might go splat in the middle of a samba, has been sent home.

There are more important things to get riled up about, but this television show with its glossy faux reality is so simple, so silly, so wonderfully frothy that it is positively unnerving to watch it take such a terrible, wrongheaded turn.

No one with eyesight and a sense of rhythm could argue with a straight face that Winokur deserved to stay. She is a Tony Award-winning actress with musical theater chops, but make no mistake, in this celeb dance-off, she is the beneficiary of the sympathy vote. She has the "You go, chubby girl!" constituency -- that condescending rush of support from those who believe that anyone over a size 4 who can shake her hips to the beat of a cha-cha-cha is some sort of savant. Voters have been swept up in her gushing, raspy, please-wean-yourself-off-the-Red Bull enthusiasm. They fell for it, talent be damned.

In so many reality shows that involve public voting, the audience is reliably torn between its desire to reward talent and its need to celebrate the scrappy, can-do spirit. That's the dramatic tension that keeps these shows afloat. It's the only way to explain the continued presence of Cristián de la Fuente. In the week before Mario was shown the door, de la Fuente bungled a dance after injuring his left arm and received dismal scores from the judges. But the audience felt his pain and voted to keep him around. Send the man get-well cards. Save the votes for the best dancers. The next week he wowed the judges with his one-armed lifts, but he'd essentially gotten a do-over.

Now that he's proven himself to be a capable one-armed dancer, next week voters will probably shoo him away. Talent? Blech! This is all about overcoming obstacles -- whether it's a torn tendon or a few extra pounds.

The need to nurture has also gummed up the proceedings on "American Idol," where folks who watch the show with the volume turned on have been baffled by the endurance of Jason Castro. This week, when he managed to remember the words to Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," he sounded dreadful and took such a lashing from judge Simon Cowell that one could practically hear the sympathy voters flexing their thumbs in preparation for a text-messaging firestorm. But not to be outdone in organizing a get-out-the-vote pity party, Syesha Mercado -- better suited for Broadway than the Top 40 -- became a blubbering fool after singing Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and hearing judge Randy Jackson say he didn't love it, dawg.

Tears elicited more votes than the humiliation of a public thrashing. Castro, who was getting so befuddled one worried he'd forget his own name, was sent home Wednesday night. Finally.

"American Idol" has always struggled against being strictly a popularity contest. But lately, it has been losing that battle. Is this what "American Idol" is becoming post-Taylor Hicks? He was the Season 5 winner who sounded like a lounge singer from "The Love Boat" and seemed to get more votes each time the judges howled their dismay.

The culture has a love-hate relationship with talent and success. The whole raison d'etre of these reality shows is to exploit the narrative of unknowns grabbing hold of the American dream. Everyone from the winner to the voters is supposed to feel warm and reassured that talent can bubble to the surface and be rewarded. And yet, it's never that simple. The more talented contestants often get voted off too early, or they get bashed around with what often appears to be undeserved criticism and thrown to the bottom of the rankings. The bruising is intended as a stern warning: Do not get too uppity. Don't go thinking you're that talented.

It's a dynamic that plays out in all kinds of ways. People build up celebrities to mythic proportions and then gleefully consume stories about their weight gain and failed romances. Stars have cellulite! They're just like us! And when they hit rock bottom, everybody starts pulling for them again because everybody loves a comeback story.

People turn on the kid from the depressed neighborhood who makes a success of himself. For a split second all the folks at home are thrilled and proud. But before you know it, they're saying the kid doesn't remember where he came from; he's gotten too full of himself; he's turned elitist -- a word whose usage has gotten so far removed from its actual meaning that it's now applied to anyone who can order confidently from a Starbucks menu.

Echoes of that same dysfunction play out in the voting booth. Downscale is good. Success is bad. Bad beer trumps good wine. Better to wear an expensive suit that looks cheap than to wear a cheap suit that looks expensive.

This is who we are -- more comfortable celebrating the best effort than praising the best. Which means that when the final votes are tallied for "Dancing With the Stars," no one should be surprised if the winner is not the technically impressive Kristi Yamaguchi or the graceful Jason Taylor, but the Weeble who refused to fall down.