‘Dancing with the Stars 21’ week 5 rankings: Bindi Irwin surges, rivals Nick Carter, Tamar Braxton
“Dancing with the Stars” is at this point one episode away from being complete chaos, and we absolutely love that. The best versions of this show are the ones where you have absolutely no idea who could go home, and on most seasons, this happens around the top six or so. We’re lucky that this time around, we could have it at the top eight. There is so much parity between so many great dancers … and then there’s Paula Deen. At this point, even she has to know that she has no shot at this.
As always, we’re basing our weekly rankings on performance quality, perceived support, consistency, and a variety of other factors.
9. Paula Deen and Louis van Amstel (last week: 10) – The big surprise at the moment when it comes to Paula is that she’s still there, but maybe we should have seen this coming. She’s got a largely conservative base and has more of the rural vote; sound familiar? She’s still gone soon.
8. Alexa PenaVega and Mark Ballas (3) – The fact that she was just at #3 shows how messed-up the top eight are this season. There’s so little room between any of them, and we have yet to get much of an indicator that some have smaller followings than others. Alexa’s just coming off a rough week..
7. Carlos PenaVega and Witney Carson (8) – Our only reason for ranking Carlos here is because he was left in danger until the very end of this past episode with Gary. Do you like to think that there is any particular significance to this? We’ve always worried about the size of his following.
6. Andy Grammer and Alison Holker (6) – Andy is still in the same-old spot, and it’s hard to find a new place for him. He’s still good at what he does, but he doesn’t have that breakout dance. However, we figure he has at least enough fans to make it a little while longer.
5. Alek Skarlatos and Lindsay Arnold (5) – This is a nice spot for Alek to remain this week, where he’s almost a lock to be safe following everything that he’s went through. He has also shown flashes of being an exceptional dancer, so he just has to draw out some of that consistency.
4. Hayes Grier and Emma Slater (7) – After killing it on his last routine, Hayes deserves a nice boost in the standings. He’s now shown that he can really deliver, and given his questionable following among older viewers, he now needs to keep that going.
3. Tamar Braxton and Val Chmerkovskiy (2) – Tamar’s still doing wonderfully with the scores, but we imagine that there could almost be a sort of leapfrog scenario happening over the next few weeks in between her and the dancer who is currently in front of her. They just have to continue topping one another.
2. Bindi Irwin and Derek Hough (4) – After getting the first 10 of the season, how do you rank Bindi any lower? She had the big breakout moment that we’ve been asking for, and at the same time, she also in her last routine brought back great memories of her beloved late father.
1. Nick Carter and Sharna Burgess (1) – He’s really finding his groove now, but that shouldn’t matter much given that we have placed him at the top literally every week. It’s going to have to take a huge sentimental vote behind someone like Bindi for the Backstreet Boy to not win this. It’s just hard to figure if that is possible.
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