DWTS Season 14, Week 4 – Dancing by the Numbers

Well, well, well….as predicted, the real judges came back to life and gave a few of our couples a little dash of reality. Sherri and William being most notable. Of course, next week is Latin week so I expect William will regain something of his status, since it plays to his strenghts. Sherri too, for that matter.  If both are still around next week…and there is no guarantee.  Didn’t seem to me that William was getting as much love from the audience this week either.  We’ll see.  The benefit of this REAL scoring is that Gavin isn’t at the bottom of the score board and we know he’s been in the real bottom two the last two weeks…so now we will REALLY see who the other weak links are. 🙂  I also get the sense that Gavin is gaining in popularity – I LOLed at his “Absolutely not” in answer to Brooke’s question about if he did enough to stay out of the bottom two. I can’t be the only one who is finding him totally endearing.

Let’s look at the couples and their percentages of the total:

The Judges Scores and Percentages

Place Celebrity Score Percentage
1. Donald  27 11.59
2. Maria  26 11.16
2. Roshon 26 11.16
4. Katherine 24 10.30
5. Gavin 23 9.87
6. Melissa 22 9.44
6. William 22 9.44
6. Jaleel 22 9.44
9. Sherri 21 9.01
10. Gladys 20 8.58

Despite what some fans were claiming on twitter, we actually have a real live spread this week between the high and low scores.  Now, our bottom position is Gladys…and I just don’t have a feel for how she’s doing with the voters. She is sooo amazing and sweet…but her dance was a bit of a train wreck. So what does Gladys need in order to stick around? She needs ONE of the following things:

–          Gladys needs 4,300 more votes per million votes cast than Sherri, OR;

–          Gladys needs 8,600 more votes per million votes cast than EITHER William, Jaleel or Melissa, OR;

–          Gladys needs 12,880 more votes per million votes cast than Gavin, OR;

–          Gladys needs 17,170 more votes per million votes cast than Katherine, OR;

–          Gladys needs 25,760 more votes per million votes cast than either Maria or Roshon, OR;

–          Gladys needs 30,050 more votes per million votes cast than Donald.

Anyway, I am kinda thinking that Gladys is getting the votes to get past Sherri…but is Sherri, in turn, getting the votes to get past the next three dancers who all got 22 points; William, Jaleel and Melissa? Sherri needs ONE of the following things to happen in order to be safe tomorrow night:

–          Sherri needs Gladys to NOT get 4,300 more votes per million votes cast than her, OR;

–          Sherri needs 4,300 more votes than EITHER William, Jaleel or Melissa, OR;

–          Sherri needs 8,590 more votes per million votes cast than Gavin, OR:

–          Sherri needs 12,880 more votes per million votes cast than Katherine

And so on up from there. Personally, I tend to think that Gladys is getting those votes…but perhaps one of those with 22 points is not.  It’s entirely possible that Jaleel or Melissa is getting beat by Gladys and Sherri.  Look above – Gladys only needs 8,600 and Sherri only needs 4,300 for Jaleel, Melissa (or William) to go home. Not a lot. And tomorrow night we’ll find out what these folks are made of.

Now we come to Gavin – the man many assume is going home tomorrow due to two consecutive appearances in the bottom two. Do I agree?? I don’t think I do. There is one rather huge difference between this week and the previous weeks; Gavin isn’t at the bottom of the leader board. In fact, he’s not even terribly close to the bottom of the leaderboard. He’s got a nice 3 point cushion that he’s NEVER had before. In all the previous weeks he’s been either the low scorer or tied as low scorer. Last week, it was a five way tie for last place. That meant that those with Gavin in the bottom only needed ONE vote more than him. ONE. At the end of the second performance show, Martina was three points below Gavin and Melissa was one point below Gavin – and it was Gavin and Martina in the bottom two. Which meant that Melissa was getting at least 1,900 more votes per million votes cast than Gavin. A tiny number.  So is Melissa getting the votes required NOW to stay over Gavin?? Well, here’s what William, Melissa and Jaleel need to happen for them all to stay. They need ONE of the following:

–          They need for Sherri OR Gladys to NOT get the required votes to pass them, OR;

–          Each of them needs ONE more vote per million votes cast than the others, OR;

–          They need to get 4,300 more votes per million votes cast than Gavin, OR;

–          They need to get 8,600 more votes per million votes cast than Katherine.

And so on.

Now, you can see, looking at everything above, that tonight we will really see what kinda juice these people have. It’s entirely possible that Gavin could still find himself in the bottom two – if everyone else is doing really well with the voters and he’s doing less well.

I have to say…I’m really not sure what’s going to happen. I don’t think there is a clear underdog this week. Yeah, Gladys is way down at the bottom with only 20 points – but she’s *Gladys Knight*. She falls squarely in the wheelhouse of the average viewer of this show. So, are people voting for her? Beats me. We’ll find out tonight. 🙂

Let’s spell it out for Gavin, for those who are still not sure. For Gavin to go home tonight, ALL of the following would have to happen:

–          Gladys gets 12,880 more votes per million votes cast than Gavin, AND;

–          Sherri gets 8,590 more votes per million votes cast than Gavin, AND;

–          William, Jaleel and Melissa ALL get 4,300 more votes per million votes cast than Gavin, AND;

–          Gavin doesn’t have the juice to get past Katherine (that is, 4,300 more votes per million votes cast).

Personally, I kinda see Jaleel and Melissa in jeopardy here, but let’s look at it a bit closer. Gladys needs 8,600 more votes and Sherri needs 4,300 more votes per million votes cast than either William, Jaleel or Melissa.  Because of the five way tie at the bottom last week, which resulted in Gavin and Jack as the bottom two, we actually have no idea how well these five people are really doing with the voters. They didn’t need but one vote to stick around, or in the case of William and Jaleel, they had protection from the judges.  So, there is no way to gage, mathematically, what their odds are. This is more of a straight up guess than it normally is. This week will give us some clues into who’s getting the votes…maybe. If Sherri and Gladys are the bottom two, then we still don’t really have a clue about Melissa, William and Jaleel – but if it’s someone other than those two, that will be telling.

Of course, being essentially clueless in terms of who’s getting votes, I have to wonder about Katherine as well.  She’s not getting the pimpage that William was getting, she’s so pretty and sweet that she might not be getting the attention from the voters. Combine a somewhat quiet personality, with being a good dancer, a bad running order and not tremendous scores and what do you get? Possible trouble. Is she protected enough?? Part of the risk of being the “best dancer” who is getting raves (usually) there is a danger that people will assume that you’re safe and vote for someone else they like who they perceive as being at risk. Like Gladys.  What would have to happen for Katherine to be a “shocking elimination”? ALL of the following things would have to happen:

–          Gladys gets 17,170 more votes per million votes cast than Katherine does, AND;

–          Sherri gets 12,880 more votes per million votes cast than Katherine does, AND;

–          William, Jaleel and Melissa all get 8,600 more votes per million votes cast than Katherine, AND;

–          Gavin gets 4,300 more votes per million votes cast than Katherine does.

–          Katherine doesn’t have the votes in quantities needed to get past Maria, Roshon or Donald.

So…is it possible? Or course it’s possible, but I don’t find it particularly probably. I don’t think that Gavin is getting that many more votes than Katherine is, for one thing.  I also don’t think that Jaleel is getting those kinda votes. Gladys and Sherri?? No idea.  The thing is, we’ve seen a good dancer with good scores go home before – but I’m not inclined to believe it will happen tonight.

So, who is going home?  Well, I think it’s safe to say that it won’t be Donald, Maria or Roshon. Either my gut is over estimating Sherri and Gladys by a good bit and one of them will hit the road, or my gut is correct to think it’s between Jaleel and Melissa. It’s also possible my gut just doesn’t like Jaleel.  🙂  Or…it’s half and half.  At the end of the day, I just feel like Gladys is getting the 8,600 votes and Sherri is getting the very tiny 4,300 votes for one of the trio of William, Jaleel and Melissa to go home. I think William (unfortunately) is still good for a bit as the hormonal sex starved crowd probably hasn’t completely gotten over it yet – although I think they are on their way, judging by the muted crowd response last night and the fact that even Carrie Ann appears to see that the bloom is off the rose.  SO, I think Jaleel is going to go, with either Gladys or Melissa in the bottom two with him. If it’s not Jaleel, it may be Gladys simply because Melissa might get a sympathy vote for getting hurt last night.  It could still be Gavin, but I don’t believe so – but I’ve been wrong before, of course. 🙂

I WANT Melissa to be safe and I want Jaleel to go home – so there is a good chance that my guts are more biased this week.  🙂

ETA: I want to note that all of the above was written prior to this Tweet from Tom Bergeron:

So, you tell me. You’ve seen the numbers. What is shocking enough to make Bergeron say “WTF?” Keep in mind that Tom RARELY does this – I don’t think he even did it one time last season. I’m tempted to change my call to William or Katherine…but I think I’m going to leave it as is with Jaleel. I still think the top three (Maria, Roshon and Donald) are safe – but what about those two previous leader board toppers??