‘Dancing with the Stars 21’ week 8 rankings: Do Bindi Irwin, Nick Carter, Tamar Braxton have distance?
We’ve said for weeks that this season of “Dancing with the Stars” has been the most-competitive in recent memory, with there being very little to separate those who are completely nailing it, and then those who are struggling to bring it to the table. From the moment Paul Deen left there was a field of consistent contenders, but after seeing of the results, we’re starting to think that there may be two groupings: Very good dancers with smaller audiences, and great dancers who seem to have the voting public on their side.
Granted, we could be wrong, but isn’t that part of the fun? As always, we’re ranking based on performance quality, scores, results to date, edit, and overall popularity.
7. Alexa PenaVega and Mark Ballas (last week: 6) – For two straight weeks now we’ve seen Alexa “in jeopardy.” Unless the producers are just fooling around with us, doesn’t this mean something? We’ve also seen her get some lower scores as of late.
6. Alek Skarlatos and Lindsay Arnold (8) – We were surprised to see Alek escape danger this past week, which mean that he may have a bigger following than we thought going into this part of the competition. We do think he is probably the weakest overall Star left, and that does hurt him.
5. Carlos PenaVega and Witney Carson (5) – Carlos is great at what he does, and we do think that his “Magic Mike” routine probably did enough in order to ensure that he sticks around for at least a little while longer. As for the finale, we think he has an uphill battle to make it there.
4. Andy Grammer and Alison Holker (4) – We don’t necessarily think that Andy has winner upside, but he has shown enough growth, and has enough of a voting block supporting him, to make it at least close to the Mirrorball Trophy.
3. Tamar Braxton and Val Chmerkovskiy (3) – We never know what to make of Tamar on this show. She has probably the best pure ability of anyone, but her scores as of late have been inconsistent. We’re still giving her a high ranking off of the strength of her great performances, her popularity, and also the popularity of her partner.
2. Bindi Irwin and Derek Hough (2) – This is probably the closest that we’ve come to changing out our top rankings all season long, but we still think that it is going to take a huge groundswell, no matter how great she is, for Bindi to overtake a Backstreet Boy.
1. Nick Carter and Sharna Burgess (1) – He’s super-famous, super-talented, about to be a dad, and has almost everything going for him. If Nick delivers great routines the rest of the season, we have a hard time imagining him losing.
Who do you think is primed to win at the moment? Vote in our poll below, and be sure to click here to get some other news when it comes to what’s happening Monday night. Also, sign up here to get some further TV news and exclusive updates on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)