‘Dancing with the Stars’ 20 review: Riker Lynch, Robert Herjavec, Nastia Liukin take on Latin Night
Latin Night officially arrived Tuesday on “Dancing with the Stars,” and our expectation going into this was reasonably simple: We really just wanted it to be fun! We hoped that we’d get a chance to see a variety of energetic, passionate performances and we did!
Rumer Willis and Val Chmerkovskiy, salsa – Major props to Rumer for being so game to embrace some of the cheesiness that makes up this dance. This included her doing the variety of fun disco-themed lifts, and showing so much of her beautiful smile … even if the dance it’self didn’t really take off until near the end. Score: 33.
Charlotte McKinney and Keo Motsepe, rumba – Charlotte’s not a great dancer. It’s sad, but it’s true. We didn’t feel sorry for her until after the routine, where Bruno Tonioli sort of insinuated that she was not good for much other than her appearance. Score: 22.
Michael Sam and Peta Murgatroyd, salsa – Nice smile and energy, but not so great on anything else. Weak dance technique, and it was almost like a ton that was spun way too hard and took far too long to calm down. Score: 24.
Riker Lynch and Allison Holker, salsa – Riker’s good. Seriously, he could make the finale easily after what is the best performance of the season so far. We don’t really get Carrie Ann Inaba’s critique to be more “manly,” especially since trying to stay away from stereotypes is something everyone should be striving for in today’s culture. Score: 34.
Suzanne Somers and Tony Dovolani, samba – Suzanne is having way more fun with this competition that we thought that she would! She’s energetic, fun, and hard-working. This is legitimately a case of an older contestant not acting like one. Score: 25.
Chris Soules and Witney Carson, Argentine tango – We thought that Chris would benefit from having a firmer lead, where he would not be left to his own dancing devices for most of the routine. That worked! The problem here is that he still has the results coming later, and his improvement may not matter. Score: 28.
Robert Herjavec and Kym Johnson, rumba – All things considered, a very sweet performance from Robert. It was clear that for the most part Kym was doing a ton of heavy lifting, but he led her when he needed to and did most of the moves fairly well. He just needs to take the racing analogy and find the next gear. Score: 29.
Patti LaBelle and Artem Chigvintsev, cha-cha – We honestly could care less if there was almost no cha-cha in here, since this was a fun, creative routine that we’re actually going to remember. We prefer that to a run-of-the-mill cha-cha any day of the week. Score: 22.
Willow Shields and Mark Ballas, paso doble – Despite looking almost like zombie Elvis during this routine, Mark is easily delivering the best choreography this season. A great routine with great music that allowed Willow to show off a dark, intense side that she played very well. Not perfect, but we were already worried about this dance for her before going into the show. Score: 32.
Noah Galloway and Sharna Burgess, Argentine tango – We thought that this would be the Achilles’ heel, and it looked like it would be as he was struggling with the prosthetic arm. He went without it, and he really killed this from an emotional standpoint. Also, Sharna’s choreography was just as good as Mark’s. Score: 30.
Nastia Liukin and Derek Hough, samba – The only mystery here beyond what happened to Derek’s shirt is if limited rehearsal time actually mattered. As it turned out, and to no one’s surprise, it didn’t matter. They were still great. Score: 34.
Want to see where the contestants ranked prior to the show? Then head over to the link here to see our recent article on the subject! Also, be sure to sign up now in the event you want to get some other TV updates on everything we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)