DWTS Season 16, The Finale – Dancing by the Numbers

Please think about giving to Regional Food Bank, a local Oklahoma charity – I hear it’s good. If you don’t trust that, try the American Red Cross. My brother was hit by Katrina and raved about the Red Cross and everything they did in his community. Obviously, our thoughts and prayers are with those affected in Oklahoma. Thank you.

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Well, that’s that. Can’t say I’m sad this season is over.  Seriously, another twitter vote?? Why not just fess up and admit you want Zendaya to dance again cuz this is your last chance to pimp the crap out of her. Not even CLOSE to the best freestyle of the night, yet we’re likely going to have to see it again.  Absolutely ridiculous.  By the way, Tony Dovolani – you’ve been SCHOOLED on how to do a contemporary freestyle, my friend.  You too, Maks. Take notes.  Derek pretty much ruined contemporary for the rest of you on this show going forward.

Luckily, this season we’re likely to have a winner that is much more deserving than Melissa was – even though I’m not a fan, and I think the producers had a huge hand in giving it to her via twitter promotion and all kinds of other little mind games, Zendaya is a better dancer than Melissa was. Do I think she’s better than Kellie?? Hardly. She neglected to wear ballroom shoes when it should have been required the last couple weeks – and tonight we saw why. She’s so unstable out of her turns even with the sneakers on, but it’s worse with the ballroom shoes.  Compare their dancing and you see a LOT of stops in Zendaya’s dancing and few or none in Kellie’s. But the difference between Kellie and Zendaya isn’t as stark as it was between Melissa and Shawn. Of course, I think there is still a pee wee baseball mentality at work here, even in Val, who is using that as one of his selling points as to why they should win.  That and the fact that there’s never been another couple like them. Ummm…really? No.  I had such high hopes for you, Val. Dashed, they are (tm Yoda).

The sad thing is that I like Zendaya and I think she had a shot at winning without all the pimping and the promoting and the turning a blind eye to things that have raised Len’s ire (at the very least) in previous seasons.

Kellie’s quickstep wasn’t perfect either – but it was also much more technically difficult than Zendaya’s Samba was. It’s a shame that the judges/producers agenda is so set. Kellie’s freestyle was absolutely brilliant and Zendaya’s totally forgettable. My thought is that Kellie and Zendaya’s score should be reversed…at least.  Aly’s freestyle?? So many stops and starts in it – it was kinda crazy. Way overscored. Her Samba was about right, although I don’t think she was better than Jacoby.  I liked Jacoby’s jive and I liked his freestyle as well. I think it could have been better, but then I’ve seen a real second line in New Orleans – it wasn’t the dancing that was at issue, it was the music. And if you aren’t accustomed to Second Line, you’re less likely to get Jacoby’s freestyle. I wish it would have been closer to a second line, cuz that would have made me even more nostalgic for New Orleans.

Anyway, the complete and total breakdown of online voting at abc.com is an interesting phenomenon. I’m somewhat convinced that it’s convenient to Zendaya in that her little minions are probably facebookers and texters and will still easily overpower everyone else. With Zendaya begging every day they can hardly let her down, can they?? Even Mark, pimper extraordinaire, hasn’t been begging for it this season. Pretty reasonable requests that people vote from him, and that’s it. In any case, it appears that those of us who voted right away online? Our votes are going to be tossed, per OK! Online. I’m sure Vogue already has that info on the site somewhere for those who are in need of a link.

Sad to see my once favorite show be made into such a farce. But on the plus side – these last two seasons have shown everyone who the real deal is when it comes to choreography. That would be Derek, for those who aren’t sure. Lordy, the man is a genius. No one else can touch him at this point. Amazing.

Oh, and before I forget, there will be another dance that will be scored out of 30. I think the results of that will pretty much follow the agenda. What it will likely do is just narrow the margins slightly.  From reading the press release, I was under the impression that only the top three will do this dance, but then tonight watching the show it sounded like all four couples would do it. I sense they are changing the rules as they go…can’t imagine why. :::rolls eyes:::

Here’s where we stand after the performance show:

Week 10

I’ll say right off the bat that I agree with Courtney. Barring a miracle, I think it’s going to be:

Jacoby – 4th
Aly – 3rd
Kellie – 2nd
Zendaya – 1st

Why do I say that? Well, Jacoby has a long way to go to not be in fourth place. Let’s look at it a bit differently this week, since it’s the finale. For Jacoby to WIN, he needs ALL of the following things to happen:

–        Jacoby needs 20,400 more votes per million votes cast than Aly, AND;

–        Jacoby needs 32,600 more votes per million votes cast than Kellie, AND;

–        Jacoby needs 36,600 more votes per million votes cast than Zendaya.

I don’t see any of those happening, do you?? If NONE happen, Jacoby gets fourth place. Which is what I think will happen. What about Aly? What does she need to win?? She needs ALL of the following:

–        Aly needs for Jacoby to NOT get 20,400 more votes per million votes cast than her, AND;

–        Aly needs 12,200 more votes per million votes cast than Kellie, AND;

–        Aly needs 16,300 more votes per million votes cast than Zendaya.

While it’s possible that Jacoby could get the votes to get past her and into third place, I don’t really see that happening. I also have a hard time believing that Aly would get the votes to get past either Kellie or Zendaya. Maybe Kellie, since she’s an Olympic gymnast and should have a larger fanbase than Kellie…but I doubt it.

What does Kellie need to win?? She needs ALL of the following:

–        She needs for Jacoby to NOT get the 32,600 more votes per million votes cast than her, AND;

–        She needs for Aly to NOT get 12,200 more votes per million votes cast than her, AND

–        She needs only 4,100 more votes per million votes cast than Zendaya.

For Zendaya to win, she simply needs for everyone to not cover the spread. Pretty simple. I will add that the addition of another dance, assuming they are all scored between 27 (Jacoby) and 30 (everyone else) decreases all the margins by 2 to 3 thousand votes. It makes the margin that Kellie has to overcome to beat Zendaya only 2,800 votes per million votes cast, assuming they get the same score. If Zendaya is vastly overscored (or even a little overscored) relative to Kellie, then we know who got the votes, don’t we? Well, maybe not. Who knows any more?

I think it really comes down to Kellie and Zendaya, although it’s possible that it could be Aly and Zendaya. See, I think the judges would score Aly higher if they thought she could win because they like being right. With another dance tonight, they can score Kellie and Zendaya close and still be able to say they were pretty much right. If Aly suddenly outscores Zendaya and Kellie tomorrow, I expect that means she got the votes. Unless of course both women blow the dance in a very obvious fashion and the judges have no choice.

Anyway, I think we’re looking at a final two of Kellie and Zendaya with Zendaya winning OR a final two of Zendaya and Aly with Zendaya winning as my second choice. I think it will take a miracle for Kellie to win although I think she deserves it the most. If she does much better than Zendaya in the instant dance, I expect the judges to conveniently ignore it, so Zendaya can win. I’m leaving it at that. If something crazy happens, I’ll do a follow up numbers post to explain it. Although I doubt it will be needed. It’s pretty simple when there are only four people. 🙂