‘Dancing with the Stars 23’ rankings: Will Laurie Hernandez, Calvin Johnson, James Hinchcliffe reach finale?
For much of the past few weeks, we’ve declared that this season of “Dancing with the Stars” is a race between a few contestants, and as we get to the final five, we still roughly feel that way. Laurie Hernandez was the favorite from the start, and as of right now, we feel that a former football player and an IndyCar driver are her only significant threats.
With that said, there is some pressure left, given that every dancer remaining is very good, and we can see as a result of that situations where almost any of them could be eliminated if they really have a bad week. Also, there’s some interesting drama involved in who will go home in fifth place, given that we don’t see the situation as altogether cut-and-dry.
As per usual, we’re basing these rankings off of performance quality, edit, perceived popularity, and even how popular the professional partner is at this stage.
5. Terra Jole and Sasha Farber (last week: 5) – You’re not going to see much fluidity in terms of where we’re ranking people, but there is room for things to change. We know that Terra’s capable of great dances, and she also has a wonderful story that attracts many viewers to her; the main reason she’s last here is because of Jana’s surge as a contender the past few weeks, and also that she’s coming into the final five with the lowest point total from the past month or so.
4. Jana Kramer and Gleb Savchenko (4) – We’ll give Jana credit for doing so much better than we thought she would before the season. We admittedly didn’t know much about her, so we felt like she’d fall into the camp of “decent dancer forgotten about by viewers” and sent home in the third or fourth week. We have a hard time seeing her win, but we do think if she continues to get perfect scores and one of the guys struggles, she could inch her way into the top three.
3. James Hinchcliffe and Sharna Burgess (3) – This is really splitting hair at this point, given that there is a difference of just one point between his score and Calvin’s. We think the fan bases for the two are at this point about equal; all of this may be inconsequential anyway, since we’re thinking that the two of them are fighting for second place.
2. Calvin Johnson and Lindsay Arnold (2) – Given the upsets by some NFL players in the past, there is probably a path for Calvin to be an upset winner of this season. He’ll need to get a perfect score the week of the finale on just about everything, and then hope that voters for Laurie don’t bother to call in because they think she’s got it in the bag.
1. Laurie Hernandez and Val Chmerkovskiy (1) – Still, we think that with all things being equal at present, it is incredibly tough to envision a way in which Laurie loses. It’d take some sort of catastrophic disaster, and there isn’t much of a realistic reason to think that something like this is going to happen.
Who do you think is in the best spot right now? Let us know below! Also, be sure to check out what the remaining dancers are going to perform on Monday night.