‘Dancing with the Stars’ 19: Bold predictions on Janel Parrish, Sadie Robertson, Tommy Chong, more

Monday marks the return of “Dancing with the Stars” to the air, but before the dancing starts, we’ve got a few pre-show predictions that we’d like to make. These are the sort of fun things to look back on after the fact (even if we’re wrong), if for no other reason than that it gives us a chance to at least analyze some of the performers this season beforehand.

Our overall first impression of this group is still the same, and that is that this is one of the most-questionable fields that the show has come up with in a while. We work in this industry, and there were still two or three names we had to Google. We can only imagine most viewers having to look up almost half of them.

In the end, though, this article is not about star power; instead, it’s about performances.

Winner – Janel Parrish and Val Chmerkovskiy. We’re going out on a limb here, given that Val has never won the show. Janel did at least some non-ballroom training when she was young, and as an actor, she should channel the emotion of the dances well. Plus, she is going to have a massive army of “Pretty Little Liars” fans following her every move. This is a different situation than Brant Daugherty, mostly because Janel has been a huge part of that show consistently.

Darkhorse – Sadie Robertson and Mark Ballas. Don’t rule out these two, even if they are calling themselves the Quack Pack and we thought that name would live and tie with Ian Terry on “Big Brother 14.” She is young and may adjust to training better than the older stars, and she also likely has a similar voting block to when Bristol Palin was on the show.

First out – Travis Smiley and Sharna Burgess. Sorry, Travis. We have almost no idea who you are, and this has Tucker Carlson 2.0 written all over it right now.

Shock elimination – Bethany Mota and Derek Hough. We know that she is coming on board this show with a huge YouTube / Twitter following, but we she’s an unproven commodity on television. This is going to be a real test for how important social media really is to this show.

Person who lasts longer than you’d think – Tommy Chong and Peta Murgatroyd. He’s a super-famous actor who can be pretty hilarious, and he could be this season’s version of Carson Kressley or Jerry Springer.

What are some of your picks? Share in the comments, and dance over to this link to get some further TV scoop on all we cover right now via our CarterMatt Newsletter.

Photo: ABC