‘Dancing with the Stars’ season 24: Should casting change things up?

We don’t think the win of Laurie Hernandez on “Dancing with the Stars” Tuesday night can really be disputed in any way. Just remember for a minute here that she drew consistently great scores, was extremely likable, and overcame a lot still during the season. She’s easily within the top half of the best winners to ever appear on the show.

Now, we do also understand why there could be some criticism out there of her win mostly from a casting point of view. Part of the fun of this show is watching people completely unrelated to dance stepping out onto the floor and showing off a completely new skill that they worked their tails off to learn. The unpredictability of this is one of the key reasons we love this show as much as we do – and we really do love this show!

Unfortunately, we didn’t really have a whole lot of that on the show this season. From the moment Laurie was cast, it was clear she was going to win. She’s incredibly athletic, energetic, disciplined and is used to being scored by judges. She’s got the right mindset, and is young enough to pick up the moves rather quickly. We’re thrilled that she was on the show just because it was fun to root for her, but at the same time, we did lose a part of the unpredictability with her being part of the mix.

With this in mind, we do hope that season 24 opts to venture off the beaten path in regards to casting and gives us a wider array of personalities and people we wouldn’t necessarily think to root for right away. This means maybe fewer athletes (at least football players or gymnasts), and maybe more comedians, actors, noteworthy figures, or even people with more obscure jobs who are still well-known. It’s probably a little difficult at this point to pinpoint specific people, but this is a show that could dramatically benefit in a rather-big way from a significant changing of the guard. It needs some new names and faces out there if it wants to really make some headlines.

Just look at things this way: Some of the most viral performances to come out of this show have featured people like Tommy Chong and Bill Nye: They weren’t great dancers, but they brought curiosity. This, at least to us, is a key to the show’s long-term success.

Who do you want to see on the show? Leave us a comment in the box below with your top choices for casting. For more on tonight’s finale, head over here to read our full review of what transpired. (Photo: ABC.)