Dancing with the Stars Season 18, Week 5 – Dancing by the Numbers!

Well, this week is fairly simple. Drew has a tough row to hoe this week, with the biggest margins since week 2. And really, I don’t have too many complaints with the scores overall, as they rather reflect my feelings after my initial viewing of the show.  What I AM waiting for, is the hammer to fall on Maks and Meryl for the “messing about” that Maks puts in about 75% of his dances. It’s even more glaringly obvious after Val and Meryl’s Argentine Tango. Anyone else who had a ringer of that caliber (particularly Derek) would have gotten hosed by now for all the crap. But really, Derek has often gotten hosed for crap in dances that other couples get away with in the very same show. I’m looking at you, Tony, Val AND Maks.  Usually, this occurs when Derek has a really good partner.  Now, the shoe is on the other foot and we get nothing but praise for the golden couple. Oddly, Charlie is just as big a ringer and he is getting the ringer treatment. Seriously, 3 points deducted for dropping that cane? If ever there was a time that the judges should have gotten together and said “hey, killer routine, very difficult – a dropped cane is only worth one point.” But no, they couldn’t manage that.  Are they REALLY trying to manipulate the audience into thinking that Meryl should win?? Because you know, some of the audience resemble sheep – they want to vote for the perceived winner. This is a dangerous game, though, because the audience also likes an underdog – especially if one is as good a dancer with harder choreo than the golden girl.  It will be interesting to see how things continue to progress on this front.

I heard a couple people say that Meryl was underscored this week and that Charlie was overscored (??), as were James and Danica. No, I don’t really think so. I really liked James’ dance as well as Danica’s. Can’t get mad if the other ringers take the top of the leaderboard over the main ringers. James, at least, is a pretty low level ringer, compared to Charlie, Meryl and Danica. Think Lance Bass, only less so.  There might have been a tiny bit of overscoring going on (Candace, NeNe) but I’m not really even so sure about that. Until I looked at the numbers.

As I was alluding to in my opening paragraph, it’s rather obvious that the judges are done with Drew. Was he underscored? Probably not. But if you overscore Candace and NeNe a bit (and don’t get me wrong, I liked both dances) you create a pretty good buffer between Drew and the rest of the cast. See below:

Week 5 Table 1

Seven points between Drew and Candace?? That seems a bit…harsh. I don’t know that she was that much better than Drew. But it’s also easier to do when there are four judges. Anyway, Drew has a ways to go to be safe this week. As you can see from the table below…

Week 5 Table 2

Drew needs close to 22k more votes per million votes cast than Candace in order to be safe. Can he do it? If it wasn’t Candace, I would say yes. This is really tough, as I think these two are rather popular. And look at what Candace needs: she only needs a little more than 3,100 votes per million votes cast to get past either Meryl or NeNe – and  think she beats NeNe in this area easily.

If Candace is getting enough votes to pass NeNe in the rankings, then Drew has to actually beat NeNe (or Meryl) in order to stay.  I tend to think that Candace isn’t beating Meryl, which leaves Drew to duke it out with NeNe alone.  That is, Meryl is above the fray, NeNe, Candace and Drew in the bottom three. Candace beats NeNe which leaves NeNe and Drew in the bottom two.

That means the question is if Drew is getting enough votes to get past NeNe. To actually stay over NeNe, Drew has to get nearly 25k more votes per million votes cast.  Can he do this? Well, it’s really hard to say. I’m thinking that perhaps NeNe’s tiff with Tony last week, combined with her already smaller DWTS voting fanbase (compared to Drew, at least) means she could be out the door.  I doubt NeNe is getting the 6,211 votes per million votes cast to beat either Charlie or Amy so that means that she’s stuck in the bottom two with Drew.

What about the chances of a shocking elimination?? Well, I don’t *think* so, but you never know. For it to be “shocking” I think it would have to be Meryl, Charlie or James – maybe Amy or Danica.  For it to be James going home, a whole lot of things have to happen. Every other person in the cast has to be getting a lot more votes than him. Sure, it’s possible but is it likely that NeNe (for example) is getting 12.5k more votes than him per million votes cast? I don’t think so.  Charlie and Amy have the same score – what about them as the shocking elimination? Again, I don’t see NeNe getting the 31oo more votes per million votes cast than either of them to send them home. And while Drew may get more than what he needs to beat Meryl, surely NeNe won’t.

For those reasons, I’m guessing that it’s NeNe and Drew at the bottom and I’m guessing that NeNe goes home.  If I’m wrong, I think it’s Drew’s time to go. We’ll see tomorrow!

Charlie and the penquins