DWTS 16 Preliminary Power Rankings – Part I

So it’s time once again for me to gaze into my crystal ball before the premiere and try to take a wild (but educated) guess at how things are gonna pan out this season – who’s gonna be good, who’s gonna be bad, who’s gonna stick around, and who might get sent packing early.  Admittedly, this kind of snuck up on me – after my prolonged hiatus after season 15, season 16 seems to have arrived at breakneck speed and I’m just struggling to keep up.  Guess that’s what happens when one bad season turns you off of a show completely…don’t know that I’ve been this dubious about a new season of my favorite show since season 5 of Nip/Tuck 😯

For those just tuning in, a few words of explanation about how I arrive at these rankings.  It’s a combination of factors – how good (or bad) of a dancer I think they’ll be, how much of a fanbase I think they do or don’t have, how likeable/unlikeable I think they’ll be to viewers.  So all those factors considered – this is how I predict the eliminations to shake out.  And they can (and usually do) change after seeing the first episode 😛 So in today’s edition, I tackle the bottom half of the couples: the ones I don’t see lasting past the middle of the competition.  Here we go…

12.) Lisa & Gleb – It pains me to say this, considering that they’re my favorite couple, but I’m afraid my favorite Real Housewife of Beverly Hills may be the first on the chopping block this season 🙁 There seems to be several factors working against them – and the one that concerns me the most is the fact that Lisa’s a reality star, and she’s a Real Housewife at that.  Considering that TPTB have avoided casting from that franchise like the plague until now, and that the Housewives seem to be some of the more maligned reality tv stars amongst DWTS fans (some DWTS fans reeeeeallllly don’t like Housewives – trust me, I’ve gotten tweets complaining, as if I have any control over casting!), I’m worried that some viewers have already written her off, sight unseen.  Then again, I could be completely wrong – since we have no precedent for a Real Housewife on DWTS, how do I know that RHOBH fans won’t tune in and vote in droves for our British lass? 🙂  They’re also contending with the fact that Gleb is a brand new pro without much of a fanbase (and without the benefit of being visible to the DWTS viewers already, a la Sharna in the troupe or Lindsay on SYTYCD) – although I daresay Gleb’s stunning good looks certainly don’t seem to be hurting them 😉 Besides those two hurdles, I also worry that they’re just too laid back – their rehearsals are neither memorably good nor memorably bad, which could make them blend into the woodwork amongst some of the bigger personalities this season.  And we don’t really have any idea what Lisa’s dancing prowess is like, nor do we know what Gleb’s teaching/choreographing prowess is like – they could be really good, they could be really bad, they could just “be”.  I’m hoping that we’re in for a pleasant surprise with these two, but my gut’s telling me that they’re probably not going to make it past the first few weeks of the season. Read more..