‘Dancing with the Stars’ 20 review: Riker Lynch, Noah Galloway, Willow Shields perform spring break dances
Tonight’s “Dancing with the Stars” episode was brought to you by spring break. We don’t really get doing this theme so far after spring break, but we’ll just go with it. The real thing to be interested in this week is whether or not the show will bring to us any real surprises.
Patti LaBelle and Artem Chigvintsev, quickstep – Once again, Patti is pretty light on her feet … and so are the judges dancing around any real criticism. Patti has been routinely over-scored, and we get it since she’s a legend. If we thought she was destined to make it to the finale, we would probably be more concerned over this. Score: 29.
Nastia Liukin and Derek Hough, tango – Here is a reminder that almost everything on this show is relative. Nastia was blasted for relying almost too much on her gymnastics skills throughout the routine, and yet at the same time finished with much better scores than Patti who was praised for her performance. Obviously, this should be code for the judges expecting the Olympian to last for a while and want to make her better. Score: 34.
Willow Shields and Mark Ballas, salsa – Maybe the judges are averaging out the scores or something? It’s hard to say. We thought that Willow didn’t get the love she deserved for the ‘Alice in Wonderland” piece last week, and this one was maybe a little too kind critique-wise. There were many footing problems throughout. Score: 34.
Robert Herjavec and Kym Johnson, jive – Robert felt nervous this time. It was almost like the bad scores last week completely destroyed his momentum, and he is still trying to get his way back to becoming the good performer he was the first part of the season. Score: 28.
Noah Galloway and Sharna Burgess, rumba – Noah was unhappy here, but mostly because of the way that Sharna was portrayed in the pre-show package like she was being too hard on him. We do think that Noah’s limitations were somewhat exposed here, but he should survive. Score: 29.
Rumer Willis and Val Chmerkovskiy, jazz – Was this dance that controversial? Len Goodman didn’t like the content, and it was probably a little awkward to watch for a family show. Score: 32.
Chris Soules and Witney Carson, Viennese waltz – Chris is interesting in that he’s actually a pretty good ballroom dancer, but awful in the Latin rounds. We’ll chalk up his scores this week to being given something he can pull off. Score: 31.
Riker Lynch and Allison Holker, samba – The best performance of the night! (We’re not even bothering with those ridiculous team dances.) Sure, Len is not in touch with this generation, but most audiences probably will like this. Score: 36,
Who was your favorite tonight? Let us know below, and head over here for news on the results tonight! Also, sign up now to get some other TV updates on all we cover, courtesy of our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)