Well, personal stories night. As I said in an earlier post – never a favorite of mine. It’s still not a favorite of mine, although it was not as dreadful as I had anticipated it might be.

I think it obviously comes down to, this week, Chaz and Nancy; they’ve isolated (as best they could) the rest of the dancers from the threat of going home. Now, as always, there are no guarantees, but Chaz has a serious uphill climb to stick around. If he beats Nancy, can Nancy rally votes to get past Carson? Well, it is my personal opinion that neither can get past Carson – dude is just too freakin’ hilarious and I would wager he takes out far better dancers than Nancy and Chaz before all is said and done.

The real question in my mind is – just how few people were voting for David? It’s not always a question of Chaz and Nancy (and Carson) getting tons of votes, but a question of someone else getting zilch. It may sound like I’m parsing with that, but I don’t think I am. Say, hypothetically, JR and Ricki each get a million votes. And, in comparison, Chaz and Nancy are only getting 100k each. Obviously, that’s a huge disparity right? But what if David is only getting, like, 10k? See what I mean? Chaz and Nancy aren’t getting a ton of votes (hypothetically), but David is doing even worse. THAT is the question in my mind right now. Is he doing really bad?

Let’s look at the numbers.

The Judges Scores and Percentages

In order to stay, Chaz will need a whopping 12,660 votes per million votes cast more than Nancy.

Can he do it? No clue. Chaz is the one person (well, one of 3) who I have no clear feel for how he’s being received on a large scale and what kind of population is voting for him. Next in line to him is Nancy – another person that I’m just not sure about. Sure, we find her engaging, and her partner is cute (but seriously, if that was all it took Maks would have won by now) – but she, like Chaz, is a very polarizing figure on a national stage. So which one is more polarizing? I tend to think it’s Chaz, but that Nancy really isn’t connecting to people who ONLY watch the show and none of the surrounding media. If you go back and watch the first 3 episodes and don’t consider ANYTHING else – is she coming off as warm as we know she is? I’m not sure about that. Also, for as much as Len appreciates Tristan’s choreography and as much as I appreciate his cute face, it’s obvious he hasn’t yet adjusted to choreographing for TV. Step it up, sweetheart, you’re getting a tad dull. And the biggest danger in a show full of characters is being dull. You can be a crap-ish dancer with a huge personality and go a long way (Ty Murray, Kelly O) or you can be a great dancer but be dull or annoying (Audrina, Sabrina) and leave way early. The other option is being a great dancer and ALSO making an impact on people’s memories – that is the safe bet. But it’s really bad to be a mediocre dancer AND be dull. It’s not too late – you can turn it around!

ANYWAY, what happens if Chaz gets his 12,660 more votes per million than Nancy? Where does Carson play into this little drama? What does it take for Carson to leave and Chaz and Nancy to stay? BOTH of the following have to happen:

-  Chaz gets 21,100 more votes per million votes cast than Carson does, AND;
-  Nancy gets 8,450 more votes per million votes cast than Carson does.

If those two score those votes and everyone else is getting more votes than Carson? Carson goes home. But really, how likely do you think that is? Not likely at all, in my book. Much more likely that either Chaz or Nancy goes home.

Now, what happens if people (okay, me, Courtney and most of the people reading this site) have totally underestimated Chaz…and Nancy? What if we’ve totally OVER estimated the strength of others on this show? Who? Well, David was in the real bottom 2 last week. Let’s say the producer manipulations didn’t take and he’s still not getting the votes. Was he well insulated enough? For David to go home, ALL of the following have to happen:

-  Rob, Kristin and Hope all have to get ONE more vote per million vote cast than him, AND;
-  Chaz has to get 25,320 more votes per million votes cast than David, AND;
-  Nancy has to get 12,660 more votes per million votes cast than David, AND;
-  Carson has to get 4,220 more votes per millon votes cast than David.

What are the odds? That’s very hard to say. Certainly I think that Rob, Kristin and Hope all can get one lousy vote. But what about Chaz, Nancy and Carson? Even though David was in the bottom 2 last week, he also was only a point a head of Chaz and tied with Carson in judge’s scores. Not really hard to imagine Carson getting one more vote than him and Chaz getting 4,500 more votes. However, Chaz DID get close to 18k more than Elisabetta. Is David doing as poorly as Elisabetta was? I kinda doubt it – he’s much more well known. Plus, the margins are wider this week. Still, if Tom utters (or Tweets) the words “shocking elimination” – David will be my first thought.

A few people have been mentioning Kristin’s lack of impact. Is she in any danger this week? For her to go home, just replace David’s name with hers in the above list. We have no idea how Kristin is doing in the voting, but she’s not getting a whole lot of attention from anyone other than Mark, whereas David got a motivation to his voting base by being in a real bottom 2, plus he got the pimp spot last night with little Coco cheering him on.

When all is said and done, I think it’s between Chaz and Nancy, with David as the wild card. My instinct is that it’s REALLY between Chaz and David, mainly because they worked so freakin’ hard to get David the votes to stay. The question is – where they successful? I kind of think maybe they were, which drops it back to Chaz and Nancy with, IMO, Chaz not making the cut.

But dang – I am so conflicted. I don’t have any degree of certainty about what will end up happening. This is rather exciting.