Where were we?  Oh yeah – what would happen to DWTS if we made it more like SCD?  Well, I think a lot. Kind of.  :-)

Of the differences I outlined in my previous post on the subject, there were a few BIG ones:

• The scoring difference;
• The voting duration difference;
• The voting style difference;
• The number of judges.

The number of judges on the two shows isn’t as huge, IMO, as the other three.  By having four judges (or five) instead of three, the only effect is the slight watering down of the impact of a rogue judge.  Similar to how having two or three dances in a week softens the result of one bad dance, for example.  You have one bad dance, followed by one great dance, and you can still end up in second or third place – like Derek and Joanna in Week 9.  The same thing happens with four or five judges – you have one mean judge that scores you badly but the other three score you high, that one judge’s score isn’t a huge of an impact on your total.

The scoring difference is a different story.  Remember my “Shocking Elimination” post and the explanation of the scoring and the math?  Remember in Week 9, when the Judges scores were worked out we had the following:

Judges Scores:
Mya = 87
Joanna = 81
Kelly = 78
Donny = 72

Add up the total points given = 318
Now figure the percentage of total points each celeb got:
Mya = 27.36
Joanna = 25.47
Kelly = 24.53
Donny = 22.64

If they were on SCD, they would be ranked as follows:

Mya = 4
Joanna = 3
Kelly = 2
Donny = 1

So instead of a 4.72 point difference between Donny and Mya, it shrinks to 3 points. It may not seem like a lot, but it could be.  Not only that, but Mya’s lead over both Joanna and Kelly shrinks as well.  Mya had a nearly two point lead over Joanna – it shrinks to 1.

What happens when you add in viewer votes?  What if Kelly, for example, actually had just a bit more viewer votes that Mya, putting her second behind Donny.  Quite conceivable, really. On DWTS it might not be big enough to beat Mya’s judges scores, but on SCD? That makes the viewer ranking the following:

Donny = 4
Kelly = 3
Mya = 2
Joanna = 1

When you add them together, you have:

Donny = 5
Mya = 6
Kelly = 5
Joanna = 4

Which is presumably how it turned out. But what if Joanna had more votes than Mya? What if, using the DWTS system it wasn’t enough to beat the difference in the judges scores, but it was still more actual votes?  That would give you SCD viewer ranks of:

Donny = 4
Mya = 1
Kelly = 3
Joanna = 2

When you add the judges rank and the viewer rank together:

Donny = 1 + 4 = 5
Mya 4 + 1 = 5
Kelly 2 + 3 = 5
Joanna 3 + 2 = 5

What happens in a four way tie? Viewer votes win, Mya goes home over Joanna.  Of course, we didn’t have the dance off in the final four, did SCD? I don’t think they did, but that *might* have saved Mya – but no guarantee.  And this doesn’t hold true in the Final because the judges scores don’t actually count – it’s all viewers votes. Mya still loses.  But think about the lack of Judges scores in the final tally!! There is no storyboarding – no judges manipulation in favor of who they consider the best dancer! That’s pretty significant too, although I wager some voters listen to the judges.

At the end of the day, if Joanna had gone to the final instead of Mya – Donny still wins. But I would have had Derek for one more week. And it’s all about me. I think this difference in scoring has the potential to be huge – think about early on when Donny was way down in the ranks but way up in viewer votes? Would his chances of going home have been higher? I think so. But how do the other differences work in concert with this one? Do they even the playing field once again?

I’ll attempt to discuss the rest of it in Part III.

While waiting on the breakfast to be ready (Champagne Brunch – Yay!!), I took a stroll around twitter and found the celebs and pros have been tweeting fools. Enjoying their time off. I won’t post all their tweets, but some of them and their twit pics were fun. If you want to follow them and see what they have to say, you can find all their twitter accounts on a previous post!

Aww, Tony, so sweet. And the Ballas men – strange. Lacey and Lance at the Dizzy Feet Gala!! And Natalie Jinxes herself.

Mark has a hot cousin, ya’ll.

Joanna is talking about her new Peta Ad campaign. Jonathan cracks me up, as does Louie Vito.

Natalie – word to the wise, never talk about how good traffic is, because then it WON’T be. Derek being a good uncle, taking the kids to Miley Cyrus with Julianne and his sisters. They apparently hit a local honky tonk after – I assume someone took the children home.

For those who didn’t know, Carrieann had some sort of surgery yesterday – it appears she pulled through nicely. Apparently it was minor and related to her neck/back. I could look it up, but dudes it’s Thanksgiving and I’m stuffing myself.

Natalie tweeted two of her favorite pictures from Finale night:

Kym J. finally gets some sleep.

Many of you know that we’ve been doing our best to list all of the songs used on Dancing with the Stars. Hopefully you’ve found that useful. I see a lot of people visiting those pages, but rarely hear what people think about it.

Anyway, I always think it’s fun to look back at the music from the season of Dancing with the Stars and see which songs were the most popular. This isn’t scientific. It’s basically based on which songs got the most clicks. So, here’s the top 4 songs used on Dancing with the Stars season 9.

Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen (this blew all the other songs out of the water)
Would You…. ? – Touch & Go
Living on Video – Trans-X
They – Jem

Very interesting set of music. Thanks for stopping by all year for the DWTS music. Of course, we’ll be doing our best to keep up with the other rumors in the off season and be back for more DWTS music next season as well.

Huge thanks to Codebear on Youtube – he/she got a ton of media with just makes my job easier.

Good Morning America!

Mya and Dmitry on Entertainment Tonight

Donny and Kym on Entertainment Tonight

Kelly and Louis on Entertainment Tonight

Kelly and Louis on TV Guide Network

Final three on The View

The View exit interview

…Donny Osmond and Kym Johnson.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the best person won out of that final three. I never thought, at the beginning of this season, that I would be so ecstatic that an Osmond won the competition. But, while not the best dancer, Donny had heart, humility and passion for this show that was required to win. Sans the massive fanbase and ringer status, he still deserved to win over Mya and Kelly. The man got it done.

Why? Well, for me, it boiled down to Donny and Kelly. The two of them made me FEEL their dances – I cried when Kelly and Louis cried. Donny just plain entertained during his freestyle which Mya, with all her technical perfection, just couldn’t do. And, tonight, Donny made me feel all mushy and happy – yeah, he’s got too much of a mouth at times, but tonight when he was genuinely shocked that Kelly took third, and then he was over joyed when he won….well, he showed more excitement and heart than Mya showed all season. And that, my friends, is the key to winning Dancing with the Stars.

Congratulations again, to Donny and Kym.

Okay, I got a pretty good response from my math lesson post from earlier this week, so I’ll break it down again.

Unfortunately, as with the last several finales, there is a dance on Tuesday that only the judges score – which has the potential to decide the winner if the votes are close. Which annoys me tremendously. But you all knew that. Anyway, the judges sort of broke with tradition tonight and did not leave an even playing field. I am of two minds about this. Part of me agrees with Maks – let the VOTERS decide at this point in the season. But the other part of me realizes that Kelly had a couple mistakes that the judges couldn’t overlook (then again, she’s the only non-pro in the group). The judges started off badly by underscoring her Argentine Tango, so when her dances didn’t do better relative to the other two as she went along, she went into a hole. Mathematically, this makes it very hard for her.

The total points out of a possible 90 for the night:
Kelly = 76
Mya = 87
Donny = 85

The total of those three scores is 285. Based on those total points awarded, the following is each celebs share of the judges scores:
Kelly = 30.65
Mya = 35.08
Donny = 34.27

As you can see, there is almost no space between Donny and Mya; less than a point. Kelly is farther out with well more than four points between her and Mya and almost four between her and Donny. Now, that might not seem like much, but at the end of the day I don’t see her beating BOTH Donny and Mya. She was certainly charming enough, IMO, to get LOTS of votes, but I don’t see her getting higher than 3rd place. There are too many people who don’t vote until the last night of the season and odds are those votes will go to Mya and Donny.

Now, based on the Freestyle – well, this show is much poorer without a Hough or Ballas in the finale. Absent the sibs, Kym did an amazing job and they won the night, and possibly the show, with that Freestyle. Kym is only hampered by the fact of Donny’s age and his extreme schedule – no disrespect to Donny intended. He is doing an amazing job for being quite a bit older than Mya and Kelly both – and sorry, but Kym and Donny kicked Mya and Dmitry’s ass in the freestyle round. And, because he kicked their butts despite his age – well, he should take the trophy. And this is coming from a woman who despised the thought of another Osmond on the show – so it’s high praise indeed. I will add, that if not for her fall, Kelly would have easily taken second place – Mya and Dmitry simply did not do the work to win that round. Kelly had more risks and more excitement than Mya did. Yeah she fell – but she did a move that you could fall out of. Mya played it safe. And that pisses me off – what, you expect them to hand it to you?

Okay, enough with the editorializing. Donny, Mya and Kelly fans see what they have to do. It appears to be a shoot out between Mya and Donny. Now, lets speculate. Let’s say that the judges revert to type for the final dances tomorrow. Which I guess means:
Kelly = 27
Mya = 30
Donny = 28

Or something like that. I THINK that means the judges score gets added to the previous judges scores which then counts for 50% of the vote, which means:
Kelly = 103
Mya = 117
Donny = 114

For a total points awarded count of 333. Divide the individual score by the total points awarded to get the percentage for each celebrity:
Kelly = 30.93
Mya = 35.14
Donny = 33.93

As you see, that widens the gap between all the celebrities by a good bit. I suggest that Donny and Kelly fans seriously vote like crazy. Donny has the best shot of beating Mya. With Mya’s as the score to beat, Donny and Kelly need 1.21 and 4.21 percent MORE votes than Mya to beat her. As I said before, it’s anybody’s game. So – what will happen? I’ll go out on a limb and give it to Donny Osmond. But – don’t count Mya out. Fans who assume that one or the other wins could end up losing.

Oh my wow! Where has this season gone??? I feel like it was just last week that I was trying to rank all 16 couples and it took me bloody forever – and then there were 3.  Gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised by both Donny & Kelly tonight, and felt a little let down by Mya (or rather, Dmitry’s choreography).  However, the tentative rankings I had in my head after last week have remained intact, and now, without further ado, I give you – the FINAL RANKING!!!

Finishing in 3rd place: Kelly & Louis – I will finally come clean: Kelly & Louis were my favorite couple this season (and pretty much the only one I wasn’t accused of either hating on or favoring unfairly), and what a joy it has been to see Kelly blossom from the nervous & unsure girl in week 1 to the fun-loving & confident gal that danced tonight! Kelly was pure joy to watch in her freestyle – who cares if she fouled up more than once? I couldn’t help but smile watching she & Louis groove – those two are just perfect together. And boy did it show in their tango! I honestly felt more chemistry between Kelly & Louis during their tango than I did all season from Mya & Dmitry…and let’s just say Louis isn’t really into chicks (trying to keep it PG here, folks ).  Kelly’s footwork was crisp & sexy, and there was nary a misstep in sight.  The megamix: oy.  I’m sorry, I absolutely hated the idea…much preferred the mambo marathon & the relay to this.  Honestly, pretty much everyone looked chaotic & out of sync to me, and unfortunately Kelly & Louis stuck out the most.  While the fact that Kelly made it to the finals speaks volumes about her fanbase, she has been in the bottom 2 more than once, and she just doesn’t have the judges scores to boost her potential to win.  But at the risk of sounding totally cheesy – I feel like Kelly is already a winner for all the progress she has made this season.  Best of luck to her after the show ends…I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of her

Runner-up: Mya & Dmitry – I’ve said it ad infinitum, but I’ll say it once more for good measure: the best dancer doesn’t always win.  And in this case of Mya & Dmitry, I would be prepared for Gilles Marini redux – I just don’t see them pulling out a win over Donny & Kym.  Her dances tonight only solidified for me that she & Dmitry have about as much chemistry as peanut butter & pickles – they just don’t go together well at all.  Paso – can we say “overscored”? They definitely got off-time, and I feel like Dmitry was powering her through every move.  Mya’s face looked absolutely blank to me – she does great with sexy dances, but with aggressive ones like the paso, I think she’s a bit of a fish out of water & doesn’t quite know what to do with her face.  It also felt a bit repetitive, which seems to be a trend in Dmitry’s choreography – and now we move onto the freestyle.  I hated it.  I felt like it did nothing to showcase Mya’s talents, was low energy, too simple (C’mon, Dmitry…Kelly’s choreography was harder than that!), and cliched – I feel like the ’50s/’60s themed dances on the show have really been overdone.  I have to wonder if their freestyle would have been more exciting had they gone with Mya’s idea instead – after all, when she helped Dmitry with their ’70s samba, it was actually fun to watch, and they got their first perfect 30.  Now here’s the conspiracy: I feel like the judges are gunning hard for Mya to win…to the point that they’re deliberately overscoring her.  To what end? I’m not sure – maybe trying to shift the focus of the show back to good dancing rather than popularity.  So Mya may have the highest point total after tonight, but it’s only 2 points more than Donny…and in the battle of the fanbases (though it will probably be a close call, just like last season!), I think Donny will edge Mya out.  Mya really needed to make an impression tonight to really contend for the trophy, and I feel like she fell short (due mostly to ho-hum choreography). I just don’t see her really sticking out in voters’ minds as much as Donny & Kelly do.  But what a great run! Seriously, Mya could be the best technician I’ve seen on the show – EVER.  It’s a shame she just couldn’t seem to hone her showmanship skills to really knock it out of the park. 

The Winner: Donny & Kym – Donny has actually been a pleasant surprise for me this season, overall – I guess I was bracing for another Marie (ai ai ai).  But when he wasn’t talking out of turn while getting his scores or perpetuating his fauxmance with Bruno, he was actually very fun to watch.  I will give it to him – none of the other competitors this season could measure up to Donny in terms of showmanship.  Almost every week (with the exception of maybe the quickstep & last week’s tango) he brought his energy full-tilt, and never stopped playing to the crowd. He really impressed me in his cha-cha – his foot & hip action were better than any of the other guys I’ve seen this season. Plus it was just a fun, fluffy, energetic routine (even if it was less cha-cha and more open work).  And he had by far the best freestyle – Kym made a smart choice in chosing a Broadway theme again, as that is really Donny’s venue – it was high-energy, explosive, and engaging.  I wish I had more to say about Donny tonight, but he was overall quite good – not much to critique.  He has definitely secured the win in my mind, due not only to his large fanbase, but also his good scores and his peerless performance quality – I may have ragged on Donny in earlier rankings, but his routines were always ones I remembered, for better or worse.  And I will be thrilled if Kym finally gets the trophy after two seasons of being the “almost” girl! Kudos to both of them…

…and with that, I close my final power ranking for this season.  It’s been fun hearing what you guys think week after week, and bouncing thoughts off one another.  Hope you guys will stick with us in the off-season – rest assured this will not be my last post until next March! I still have plenty to chat about and hope you have thoughts and opinions about it   Now speaking of opinions…let’s hear yours! Will Mya manage to pull out the win over Donny? Will Kelly surprise us all and take the trophy home herself??? Will Cloris get naked tomorrow night (oh dear!)? TALK TO ME!

Many of you probably already know about our list of Dancing with the Stars people on Twitter. We also have a “Twitter list” of those on Dancing with the Stars season 9 which is easy to follow as well. Now, if you want to know the reactions from the stars, pros, judges, etc that are on Dancing with the Stars Season 9, you can just check out the widget below for the latest updates about the show by people on the show and Pure DWTS tweets as well.

We’re back again with the list of music from tonight’s DWTS season 9 performance music. Interesting songs. The freestyles always offer a nice little twist to the show. I’ll admit that I think that Dancing with the Stars swung for the fences on this season’s music. Some were big hits and some were big misses. You can see the full list of DWTS songs here. Now on to tonight’s music:

Kelly & Louis danced Argentine Tango to the song “Los Vino” —Otros Aires
Kelly & Louis danced Megamix to the song “I Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” —Frankie Valli/”Whenever, Wherever” —Shakira/”Maniac” —Michael Sembello
Kelly & Louis danced Freestyle to the song “I Will Survive” —Gloria Gaynor
Kelly & Louis danced Viennese Waltz to the song “Trouble” —Ray LaMontagne
Mýa & Dmitry danced Paso Doble to the song “We Will Rock You” —Queen
Mýa & Dmitry danced Megamix to the song “I Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” —Frankie Valli/”Whenever, Wherever” —Shakira/”Maniac” —Michael Sembello
Mýa & Dmitry danced Freestyle to the song “You Can’t Stop the Beat” —from Hairspray
Mýa & Dmitry danced Jive to the song “Would You…?” —Touch and Go
Donny & Kym danced Cha-Cha-Cha to the song “September” —Earth, Wind and Fire
Donny & Kym danced Megamix to the song “I Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” —Frankie Valli/”Whenever, Wherever” —Shakira/”Maniac” —Michael Sembello
Donny & Kym danced Freestyle to the song “Let The Good Times Roll” —Ray Charles
Donny & Kym danced Argentine Tango to the song “Tango a Pugliese” —Orquesta Color Tango de Roberto Alvarez