DWTS Season 23, The Semi-Finals – Dancing by the Numbers!

I find myself asking the exact same question that I’ve asked for the last couple weeks – does extreme pimpage (raving judges, over scoring, positive/mush/sentimental editing) work on an audience? I think it’s very clear that the answer is yes. Why? Trump. Enough said. And if they didn’t know that it worked, they wouldn’t do it so much.

But you have to wonder where the tipping point is: when do they go so far that the general viewer sees the man behind the curtain?? I mean, this past week the thing with Laurie was just…disgusting. Leave the poor child and her family to deal with their grief without making a public spectacle of it – that’s just distasteful. The raving over Jana – come on. The first part of the season I forgot she was even on the show. Boring. When does the general audience wake up and say, “dang, they’re really pushing so and so HARD.”

I also think this past week we saw competing agendas. John always says they aren’t clever enough to manipulate everything, or they don’t do it to benefit a particular contestant – only for ratings/drama. Well, I think that’s part of it, of course – but manipulating the show for a particular pro to win logically leads (in their pea brains) to bigger ratings down the line and maybe in the right demo. Clearly hasn’t worked thus far, since they still lose in the demo and their total viewers numbers continue to shrink.  Now, I think they were willing to go with James possibly winning the show – there is a thing called the Law of Diminishing Returns. That thought applied here means that they can push and push and push for a particular contestant to move forward (Laurie and/or Jana), but if their goal is ratings and the person they’re pushing is getting fewer votes (or just isn’t as popular using some unknown metric) than a contestant they AREN’T pushing, then they aren’t doing themselves any favors (increasing their ratings) by continuing to push.  They are better off letting the chips fall where they may. So, I think they had started to take their hands off a tiny bit – and had resigned themselves to getting Gleb and Val to the finale (pushing Jana and Laurie, but not an all out assault which would  have entailed crushing James). Gotta have those touring pros all in the finale! It’s all good – a new pro gets a MBT, the touring pros are in the finale, Gleb and Val get exposure to help try to fill the massive Derek void that they know is coming.

Side Note…isn’t it ironic that they probably pushed Derek away faster in order to try to make Val and Gleb happen?? LOL – like I said, competing agendas. Newsflash – if Gleb is all that he doesn’t need pimping. Derek came up and became a star when the show was all about Maks and Tony and the pimpage was relatively nonexistent.  And look at him now.

Anyway, it was all going to work out. But then what happened? Laurie’s grandmother died and they couldn’t help but capitalize on it to the fullest, most distasteful degree. It occurs to me that instead of using that event to pimp Laurie, they just went full out for the drama and the press, with the side effect of helping her in the votes. I guess what I’m saying is, that it was a coincidence. Marilu saw it very clearly, on this show and on the Apprentice, that they are looking for a story.  Of course, they pick their story based on who they want to win – competing agendas – but I tend to think, in this instance, that they were okay with James winning if that’s what was going to happen. But they had to grab on to the drama of Laurie’s grandmother and capitalize on it fully. It’s so craven.   It also probably had the effect of turning the audience back to Laurie, increasing her odds of winning. :::sigh:::  We could be treated to another photo of all the fam mirrorballs together….if Val wins will they finally have enough combined trophies to beat the number that Derek has all by himself?? LOL

Anyway, I ramble. Calvin is our man on the bottom this week, but his chances aren’t too bleak. Kinda bleak, but not horrible.

dwts-23-week-10-table-1

See, that is not a big spread. But they have been fawning and drooling over Jana for a couple weeks now and the audience is SO GULLIBLE. So gullible. People start to believe shit if they hear it often enough. And Carrie Ann throwing Calvin that 8 for a mis-step when Jana had just as many issues and got a 9? Bitch please. That’s a not-so-subtle hint to the audience that she thinks Jana is better than Calvin. And if she thinks that, it must be true. We can only hope that the rest of the audience is on to CAI and her game. That one point wasn’t just for the spread – it’s a psychological tip to the audience. :::gasp!!!::: “An 8 on Week 9? Calvin must not be that good. I want to vote for someone who’s going to win.”

dwts-23-week-10-table-2

So, as you can see, Calvin needs around 7k votes per million votes cast to make it to night two over Jana. If you had asked me two weeks ago if he could do it, I would have said hell yes. Now I think his chances are no better than 50-50.

And we’re not going to take it any further than that, because that’s really what it comes down to on Monday night. James and Laurie are almost certainly safe, while either Jana or Calvin isn’t going to night two. As you can see from Table 2, there are tiny numbers between Jana and James/Laurie, but I don’t see anyway she’s passing either of those two. We’ll talk about James and Laurie on Monday night, after the free styles.

So, Calvin or Jana? My track record in Season 22 was nearly perfect, as I recall and this season I’ve missed two and couldn’t call two (she says without looking back at her own posts).  I want Jana gone…but I haven’t gotten what I wanted in a couple weeks, so why would that change now? I’m very afraid I feel like Calvin is done after night one.

I hope I’m wrong. You?