Rebecca Budig Wins Skating with the Stars

ABC/ADAM LARKEY

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ABC's Skating With the Stars has crowned its first champion. (And probably its only champion, given the high odds of this show getting canceled.) The winner is… soap star Rebecca Budig.

Budig and her partner, Fred Palascak, skated a clean, yet spunky program that won her perfect tens from all three judges in both categories. "It feels great!" she gushed when co-host Tanith Belbin asked how she felt. "I know it's only a TV show, but it feels great!"

Funny, the winners of Dancing With the Stars never seem to feel the need to qualify their exhilaration with the admission that "it's only a TV show." But Budig has no doubt seen the reviews, if not the ratings numbers, of the TV competition she dominated. This All My Children actress is so cute (and a genuinely pretty good skater), you almost wish the show was more worthy of her. For all her hard work, she just got a trophy shaped like golden ice skates, and hardly any publicity.

Meanwhile, first runner up, reality star Bethenny Frankel was gracious in defeat. For all her trash talk throughout the competition, she seemed to accept Budig's win as a foregone conclusion. "She could be a real skater," she said in her concession speech. She was also able to hold her head up high, since her own program, with partner Ethan Burgess, was a personal best. In the artistic category, two of the judges gave her a score of 10.

Of course, it wouldn't be Skating With the Stars without some bizarre moments, and host Vernon Kay provided the evening's weirdest when he celebrated Frankel's high scores. "Bethenny got a te-en," Kay sang. "Bethenny got a te-en, Bethenny got a te-en. Who-ooo!"

Kay has already lined up his next hosting gig on ABC, on the upcoming game show, Million Dollar Mind Game. Let's hope its producers urge him to turn it down a notch.

So Skating With the Stars has come to an unceremonious end. Let's hope so, anyway.

What did you think of the Skating with the Stars finale?

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Bethenny Frankel