‘Dancing with the Stars’ 20 rankings: Willow Shields rises, takes on Nastia Liukin (week 5)
There are many changes in the “Dancing with the Stars” rankings this week! pair of stronger contenders are emerging, while there are others who seem to be mostly victim of not keeping up nearly as fast as some of the others. While fan followings are still somewhat of an unknown, it feels more and more like we have a likely core of top contenders, and then everyone else sort of battling it out at the bottom to stay alive.
As we’ve noted, the judges’ scores have to be the most important factor here, especially since most stars get ample screen time and no one is left out. From there, we add on past results and perceived popularity from the diehard audience watching.
9. Suzanne Somers and Tomy Dovolani – Charming and fun as a duo, but also potentially lacking in terms of fan support and scores. Then again, the average “Dancing with the Stars” viewer is probably old enough to remember Somers in her heyday. She’s surprised us already.
8. Patti LaBelle and Artem Chigvintsev – Neither Patti nor Chris Soules is particularly good at ballroom dancing. Who survives longer is based mostly on who gets more votes at this given time. Patti’s the bigger global star, but Chris has the recency bias going.
7. Chris Soules and Witney Carson – for all of the reasons listed above, Chris gets a slight edge. If he makes it higher than seventh, though, he eliminates someone who is a much better dancer than he is.
6. Robert Herjavec and Kym Johnson – It is funny that we really want to push Robert higher on the list, mostly because he is improving so much week to week and is way defying our preseason expectations of him. The problem is that he’s doing the quickstep, and he has a bad back. Posture is key to this dance.
5. Rumer Willis and Val Chmerkovskiy – At a certain point, we just have to be objective. Rumer may be the second-best technical dancer of the season. Her flaw is mostly that the dancers above her have done flashier routines.
4. Noah Galloway and Sharna Burgess – Despite the emotion, the tears, and the inspiration angle, Noah actually drew lower scores than the rest of the top six last week. He’s only beaten Robert once. The difference here is that voters are very patriotic, and his story definitely helps further him along.
3. Riker Lynch and Allison Holker – We would not be shocked if Riker and Noah flip-flop spots before the end of the season, mostly because Noah appeals so much to the core audience. For now, though, the score differential is too big to ignore.
2. Willow Shields and Mark Ballas – We have to admit that we were really close to giving Willow the top spot here based on some great dancing and Emmy-quality choreography from Mark this season. Maybe we just feel a sense of loyalty to the top perform given we picked them preseason?
1. Nastia Liukin and Derek Hough – Actually, it’s more than that. Nastia still has the highest overall score this season, and we’re the most confident that she can take on any style any week and be just fine, even with limited rehearsal time. We wonder what she would be like if she actually was doing as much as some other stars.
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