DWTS Season 19, Week 9: Dancing by the Numbers!

Okay, we’re finally to the point of the competition where things could get interesting. But probably not. Yet. 🙂 Why? Well, we find out once and for all if Tommy’s fanbase is all that.

I’m not going to talk much about the scoring this past week – I think I’ve made my feelings abundantly clear. Whole lotta work going on to make sure that Tommy doesn’t go to the finals – and that Janel DOES go to the finals. Could say the same for Sadie, I guess, since she clearly forgot the choreo and if we complain about mistakes being overlooked for one contestant, I guess we have to do the same for the other. Thing is, I can’t get too worked up about Sadie because she forgot – you wouldn’t have known if you were watching just her and not Emma. It wasn’t a flub as much as an ad lib, if that makes any sense. I can actually believe, in her case, that the judges didn’t see it. They clearly did see in Janel’s case – and didn’t care.

Anyway, still peeved but moving on. Really tough row to hoe this week for Tommy. I’ll be very curious to see if he makes it or not. Let’s take a look at the scores.

Miniscule points between the top four – huge points between first and last place. And I really can’t argue with it too much. Love Tommy and Peta very much – but he’s not the dancer that the others are and he knows it.

But what does he have to do to stay?

It will take a minute, here, to explain why if Tommy is killing it in votes it will be Janel who suffers. I think. 🙂 The next lowest person is Sadie, but…

As you can see, Sadie only needs 2,400 more votes per million votes cast to beat Bethany. I have no idea if she’s managing that or not. I think she’s getting a ton of votes, but it all depends on if Bethany’s Motavators are all voting. If they are…well, still hard to say.  But it doesn’t matter. Why? Because I would wager that both girls are beating Janel handily. There’s tiny margins once you get higher than Tommy on the leaderboard. Here’s Bethany’s chart:

Now, Sadie only needs 9,400 votes per million votes cast to beat Janel or Alfonso. Don’t know if she’s managing it with Alfonso, but I would bet she is beating Janel. That’s why it doesn’t matter if she’s beating Bethany at this point – she’s beating Janel (I believe) and I think that Bethany is also beating Janel, since she only needs roughly 7,010 more votes per million votes cast.

Alfonso only needs ONE more vote per million votes cast to beat Janel and do I think he’s getting that? Of course.

So, what I think that all means is that Sadie is beating Janel, Bethany is beating Janel and Alfonso is beating Janel – which means it could well come down to Janel and Tommy as the bottom two.

So, who will go home? Well, I think Tommy will because as much as I think he is raking in votes, he would have to get nearly 47k more votes per million votes cast to beat Janel. That’s a lot of votes.

Before anyone asks, yes it has been done before. Kurt Warner got about that many (49k?) to send Audrina Patridge (who was at or near the top of the leaderboard) home in week 6 of Season 11.  There have been a few instances of contestants overcoming big numbers of votes to stick around.  As I said at the time, it was not just that they were getting lots of votes, but that the person eliminated was getting few. Audrina (as Courtney and I predicted a couple week before she was eliminated) was one of those and for a long while, I believed Janel was one of those. Is she still? Well, usually this level of pimpage doesn’t work. But sometimes a gullible audience just now turning into the season buys it. But it’s always possible that they like the other contestants better. I will say that this is the first season in a while that I wasn’t SURE who would win. But I am pretty sure it will be neither Tommy nor Janel. Beyond that, the finish order is a toss up. Eveything will hinge on the scores.

So, I’m pretty sure that the wacky scoring this week did the trick and Tommy will sail off into the night. He’s had a great run and he’s given me a new appreciation for Peta. If it’s anyone other than him or Janel I will be mildly surprised, but not shocked. Three young girls with correspondingly young fanbases and you just never know what those kids are doing. 🙂