DWTS Season 20, Week 6 – Dancing by the Numbers

Interesting week on DWTS. Not sure what their goal was, if there was a goal. I do wonder if Riker is killing it in votes and this is how they give him a narrative and show they were right all along. Conversely, maybe he needs help and this is their way of giving it to him. That said, I really liked his dance a lot. I don’t believe he was a whole 3 points ahead of Nastia – not at all, especially upon re-watching.  Basically, every complaint that Len had about that Tango was BS…I’ve watched the dance several times and I don’t see it.  I would’ve put Nastia up with Riker, Willow is good where she is as is Rumer.  I guess, on re-watching, the only score that hacked me off was Nastia’s.

So, was it because she was so early in the night? That’s twice in the last three weeks that she’s gone either first or second. That’s fair, I suppose, since she had the 8th spot in week 1 and she’s had the pimp spot twice.  Rumer, on the other hand, has only danced in the first few dances once and has been in the last 3 dances three times. Pretty good placing, I’d say.  Riker was in the first four dances three times and had the pimp spot once. Out of the top three, I think Rumer has had the most beneficial placing, BUT, that was then, when there was a lot of low hanging fruit to be picked off. What they do going forward will be more telling. If Nastia and Derek go first or second AGAIN, then I will be pissed. Once upon a time, going first or second mattered less and less as the season has gone along, but nowadays it seems they low ball the first good couple out of the gate. Whether this is intentional or coincidence I have no idea.

Anyway, let’s take a look at how the couples did this past week.

DWTS 20 Wk 6 Table 1

Deceptively tight grouping on the leader board. Of course, there’s that mess with immunity that could throw a wrench into things. The Press Release reads like the high scorer from Monday night will get immunity – I have to assume from being eliminated tomorrow night. That’s fine…I find it somewhat unlikely that either Riker or Nastia are in danger, so if either of them gets it, it’s fine and dandy. What I’m not so sure of is Willow and Rumer’s standings with the voters. I’m also not sure if the “extra points” from the dance off will apply to Week 6 scores or Week 7 scores. This is extremely messy and I wonder if they planned this thinking there was going to be an actual results show on Tuesday night instead of an Anniversary special. Because if there was a results show, then they could combine week 6 scores with week 7 scores, add the three points where earned and then eliminate someone on Tuesday based on all of that. NOW, how are they going to do it?? Add the three points to the week 6 scores??  Jaysus.

IF they add the points to week 6 scores and then recalculate it to see who goes home, they could really screw something up. Why?? Because the celebs and pros have shown in the past that the strong dancers aren’t willing to take on the weak dancers. They tend to pick on other high scorers. That could create some craziness if, for example, Chris and Robert dance off and Chris wins. Oy veh. I may cry BS if that happens.

Anyway, I’m going to proceed as normally and if I’m still feeling alright by the time I get to the end, I may do a theoretical 3 point add to see what that does. All of this may be meaningless, but we’ll see. Robert is our low scorer of the week and, provided he doesn’t get three points, let’s take a look and see what he has to do to be safe.

DWTS 20 Wk 6 Table 2

Those are relatively small numbers. I don’t think he’s getting past Noah, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that he’s beating Chris…or even Rumer. It’s just hard to say. Did the judges know there were going to be extra points and immunity when they handed out the scores last week? Probably, but didn’t everything change AFTER Monday night?? By that, I mean that they changed the air date of the Anniversary special and the first results show? I’m asking for sure because I’ve been busy and sick and I’m not sure when that happened. Why this might be important is that the judges could have handed out scores on Monday night thinking that this was just chance number 1 to impact the outcome of the show. They might have thought there was another whole round of dancing added to the mix instead of just a potential 3 points. Interesting thought.

Anyway, I think Robert is getting past Chris, but not Noah. Rumer I’m not sure of. I think Nastia beats out Willow, but that Robert can’t get past either of them.  If I’m wrong, it’s Willow that’s in trouble, not Nastia. Nastia only needs ONE point to beat Willow and I think she’s managing that. But I skip ahead. What does Noah have to do to be safe?

DWTS 20 Wk 6 Table 3

I think Noah is beating Chris easily and possibly Rumer and Willow too. Nastia?? Hard to say. That’s not a lot of points and I don’t have a feel for how Noah is doing with voters. If there is anyone who can take out a front runner, it’s him.

Anyway, I think Robert and Noah are both beating Chris which would make both of them safe. But what about Chris? Can he still be safe?

DWTS 20 Wk 6 Table 4

Wow. Very small margin between him and Rumer. That said, I have a hard time believing that he makes it. I think he is more likely to beat Willow, and that isn’t very likely.  But man, with totals this low one has to wonder how much danger that Willow and Rumer are in.

DWTS 20 Wk 6 Table 5

Okay, the easiest way to lay this out is the old way. For Rumer to be eliminated, ALL of the following has to happen:

  • Robert gets 7.1k more votes per million votes cast than her, AND;
  • Noah gets 5.4k more votes per million votes cast than her, AND;
  • Chris gets 1,800 more votes per million votes cast than her, AND;
  • Rumer DOESN’T get 3,550 more votes per million votes cast than either Nastia or Willow, AND
  • Rumer DOESN’T get 8,900 more votes per million votes cast than Riker.

This is fairly serious danger zone stuff here. If the men below her are doing as well as I think at least two of them are, then she could be in trouble. Will be interesting to see if she gets immunity or the 3 points. I do think that Rumer could beat Willow.  What I’m not so sure of is if Robert or Chris are getting the votes to get past her. I bet Noah is.

For Willow to be eliminated, ALL of the following has to happen:

  • Robert gets 10,650 more votes per million votes cast than her, AND;
  • Noah gets 8,900 more votes per million votes cast than her, AND;
  • Chris gets 5,300 more votes per million votes cast than her, AND;
  • Rumer gets 3,600 more votes per million votes cast than her, AND;
  • Willow DOESN’T get the one vote needed to beat Nastia, AND;
  • Willow DOESN’T get the 5,350 votes per million votes cast to beat Riker.

Okay, so I don’t think that Willow is getting the votes to beat either Nastia or Riker, so I think those two are safe. While it’s possible that Noah could be beating her, I don’t think Robert or Chris are.  So, I *think* she is safe.

I tend to think, with these scores as they are, that Robert, Noah, Chris and Rumer are the bottom four. I think that Noah beats Chris and maybe Rumer, and I don’t think that Robert gets the votes to beat him, so I think that means Noah is safe.

That leaves us with Chris, Robert and Rumer. The key in this equation is, oddly, Chris and how he’s really doing with the voters. If he just squeaked by Patti with a couple votes (remember he only needed one) and Robert was not a real bottom two, then he may be going home. But he only needs 1,800 votes per million to catch Rumer.

To cut to the chase, I think that Robert and Chris are the bottom two and that Chris goes home. That said, I would not be surprised to see any combination of Robert, Chris, Noah, Rumer and Willow in a bottom two. It’s just that close and we don’t really know how any of them are doing in votes.

This, of course, makes the immunity and the addition of three points and how they decide to do that math all important.  A game changer.

Let’s pretend that they do the immunity and the dance off three points and it all counts against tomorrow night’s elimination.  I think it’s quite reasonable to assume that one of Rumer, Riker or Nastia get immunity. If Willow gets it, and she’s not very obviously better than the other three, watch out in week 8.  I’m going to guess that Nastia gets it because she’s dancing with a new partner and she has Charleston (that is, she won’t have her Derek handicap, even though Derek did the choreo). Riker has Quickstep and I’m not sure how well either he or Allison will do with that dance. As for Rumer, she has Jive and I have no idea how they’re going to manage a 60’s jive to a current song.  At the end, either Rumer or Nastia will get it and the one who doesn’t get it is likely to win their dance off. For the sake of looking at what it does to the numbers, I’m going to say that Nastia gets it. That leaves:

Rumer
Riker
Willow
Robert
Noah
Chris

I think that Riker ends up dancing against Rumer (or Nastia) and loses. Then I think that Willow ends up dancing against Robert and wins, leaving Noah and Chris to dance off. Now that’s an interesting conundrum. Who wins?? The immunity dances aren’t going to be easy and Noah’s range is more limited (theoretically) than Chris’ is.  Man, I don’t want to be the judges on this one.

But this is all theoretical and they may not end up doing it even remotely similar to this. So, for the sake of seeing the impact of three points, let’s say that Chris wins.  Here’s the new leaderboard, assuming they do give Nastia the 3 points – even though they’ve only done that once. Most of the time the immunity winner gets screwed out of three points which could have the impact of changing the cumulative score leader.

DWTS 20 Wk 6 Table 7

So now there’s a three way tie for first place between Riker, Nastia and Willow. Rumer is two points behind in second place and Chris is in a very close 3rd place with 73 points. That leaves Robert and Noah way down at the bottom with 67 and 68 points, respectively. Oy vey.  Robert essentially goes from having a real shot at safety to likely being eliminated, in this HYPOTHETICAL scenario.  Sure, he doesn’t have to do much to beat Noah…but Noah’s NOAH. Everyone else is a lot further away than they were sans the three extra points.

DWTS 20 Wk 6 Table 7a

When it comes to Chris and Noah, suddenly, it’s a lot harder to get past Chris for both Robert and Noah.

DWTS 20 Wk 6 Table 8

I’m not going to belabor the point, mainly because we have no idea if this is even close to what they will do. But, if it shakes out like this, I think the bottom three becomes Robert, Noah and Chris, with Robert much more likely to go home than he was before.

What do you think?