‘Dancing with the Stars’ 18: Meryl Davis shines, and is there an elimination?

Tonight’s “Dancing with the Stars” episode contained a twist that we were not particularly excited to see: Contestants switching professional partners. We just cannot help being somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to the show. If it ain’t broke, why bother to fix it? We didn’t need to see new partners, even if many did end up with good scores in the end.

The biggest thing to share here mostly comes from the standpoint of eliminations: There wasn’t one. The scores from tonight’s episode will be combined with the ones from last week, and then there will be an elimination next week. That helped to make the twist at least a little less awkward, since they wouldn’t go home just because of how they did in a dance with a completely new partner.

But with all of this being said, here’s a surprise that is not a surprise at all: Of course, Meryl Davis managed to kill it. We wonder when ABC cast her and Charlie White on the show if they realized what they were doing; after all, they must have. Meryl had a 39 out of 40, with the extra ten points coming from guest judge Julianne Hough. She may have also had another benefit tonight in that she was working with Val Chmerkovskiy, who she had to at least be familiar with at this point thanks to her work with his brother.

The one positive for Maks fans? As we get further and further along in this season, it is become more and more obvious that he has a great shot at winning his first season.

Do you think that the “Dancing with the Stars” viewers made the right choice tonight? Share your thoughts below, and to get some more news worth dancing over, be sure to sign up now for our CarterMatt Newsletter.

Photo: ABC