PureDWTS Season 21, Week 5 – Switch Week Predictions!!

So once again, TPTB kinda went “Plot twist!” last night and moved the switch-up to week 5, even though we had been hearing that week 6 was the actual switch week.  So given that – and the fact that they inadvertently tweeted this out last night – it’s entirely possibly that the switch voting was all for naught, and they’re going to do whatever the hell they want and cherry pick their own pairings.  It’s happened before, with Meryl in season 18 and Sadie in season 19 – neither one went to the pro they had the highest vote count for.

ETA: Starting to get some intel on the pairings – and I’m afraid the news isn’t great. Below are what I’ve had confirmed so far – and I’m sure you can tell that not all of them match up with the data I’ve seen. Also worth mentioning? That Alek’s partner may have been tinkered with – as in he had a different partner as of last night than the one he had this morning. I would still take this with a grain of salt – switch-up is one of the scheistiest things this show has ever done, and who knows if they are still tinkering…

ETA2: Apparently the pairings are getting officially announced on GMA tomorrow morning.  No, I don’t know what time; no, I don’t know if any of them will actually be there (but I doubt it). Yes, we will be live blogging. -Court-

ETA3: Not a peep on GMA – wonder if plans changed, as my source was fairly certain they were going to announce them on GMA today.  But hey, if it’s anything like the cast announcement was – they probably moved the announcement over to Animal Planet or HSN or something 😛 Mark tweeted this around 2 o’clock EST this morning (so around 11 California time) – looks like he was hopping on a red-eye, and considering the only female celeb that rehearses outside of L.A. is Paula…I guess that lends credence to what we’ve already heard. Also trying to make sense of this tweet by Emma – if she got Andy (as some are guessing from some tweets of his she favorited), I would think it would still be dark out if she was catching the early morning flight to wherever he was – but in the picture she posted, it looks light out, and she looks like she’s in her own Jeep…which she would be more likely to drive if she was headed to McCadden, not the airport. Thoughts?

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ETA4: And not 2 minutes after I post this, People posts the official list:
Actual pairings:
Paula & Mark
Alexa & Derek
Bindi & Val
Tamar & Louis
Alek & Emma (!!!)
Carlos & Lindsay
Hayes & Allison
Andy & Sharna
Nick & Witney

Court’s postmortem thoughts on the results? TPTB totally cherry picked – the only one of these that I think was legitimately the highest vote-getter was Alexa & Derek, and depending on whether you count the oodles of bot votes Alek & Emma. THIRLLED about Alek & Emma :-D, but pissed that Hayes somehow ended up with Allison – calling total bullsh*t on that one, since almost everyone tweeting Alek/Emma was also tweeting Hayes/Lindsay. We made sure of that. I guess I’m glad she didn’t get Nick, but she should have gotten Carlos.

Some of you may have seen me giving a bit of a “switch voting update” in the comments section the other day, so a lot of this will likely be a repeat for you – but for those who didn’t, here are just a few observations I made:

*Some very industrious individual with 100+ spam bot accounts all tweeting the same thing managed to generate over 16K votes for #DWTSAlekSharna, #DWTSAlexaDerek, #DWTSBindiMark, #DWTSAndyWitney, and a few others.  Will be interesting to see if these actually get counted as votes, or if they get recognized as spam – if you look at the voting pattern for Alek/Sharna in particular, it has 3 high spikes of about 5K votes in an hour, and then drops back down to almost nothing in between the spikes.  To anyone with half a brain – this is classic bot voting activity.  The question is: will TPTB care?

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*In contrast to the Alek/Emma voting pattern stayed pretty steady throughout – there were spikes, sure, but it never dropped down to nothing, and the voting was distributed out over a greater time period.  There were also more unique users tweeting it out – so I would say it is more indicative of public opinion than the Alek/Sharna graph.  I personally also think it would be more buzzworthy for the show to push the Alek/Emma showmance.  The question is – will they?

*The Bindi/Mark and Alexa/Derek pairings were getting pushed pretty hard across the board, so I could see those happening regardless. Also pushed hard? Hayes/Lindsay, which I also see happening regardless. Therefore, the male pro/female celeb pairings are fairly easy to predict, by POE.

*A lot of the other pairings are going to hinge upon who gets Alek – Sharna or Emma.

So here’s my predictions, based on what I saw:

Court’s predictions: 

Bindi & Mark
Alexa & Derek
Paula & Val
Tamar & Louis
Alek & Emma OR Alek & Sharna
Hayes & Lindsay
Carlos & Sharna OR Carlos & Allison
Andy & Witney OR Andy & Emma
Nick & Allison  OR Nick & Witney

So what are your thoughts & predictions? I’ll update this post with any potential intel that might crop up during the course of the day…