Everyone brought their A-game in one of the best DWTS finales we’ve seen. The contestants all played to their strengths, giving us good individual dances and four very different freestyles.
We’ve reached the point in the competition where the scores don’t matter unless someone really messes with us. Accordingly, every dance got perfect 30s except for Alek’s rhumba. It must be said, this turned out to be an excellent season because the bad contestants were methodically eliminated from the get-go, leading to a thoroughly enjoyable final few weeks. DWTS had some time to kill this week, so they brought on musical guests. Meghan Trainor was okay, but Who Is Fancy delivered a killer performance of “Boys Like You” utilizing the assets of DWTS (read: Val).
This marked Derek’s record-breaking tenth time in the finals. Witney and Sharna were both there for a second time, but Witney’s already won and Sharna hasn’t. It was Lindsay’s first time in the finals. Of note, the only two pros since season 7 to win the finals the first time they made it were Peta (season 14) and Witney (season 19). In an unusual turn of events, there was only one female star in the final four. Worth mentioning: the last two times this happened, season 7 and season 17, Derek won the Mirrorball. We sense a new trend…
The couple that was eliminated at the end of the night, landing in fourth place… Carlos and Witney! Honestly, it was fairly obvious, especially given that they were first in the running order (a reliable indicator of the couple going home for the last five seasons). For the Judges Choice round, Bruno wanted Carlos to improve upon his foxtrot from Week 2. Bruno worked wonders on Carlos’s technique, which was impeccable in the dance. Witney’s skinned knee did not prevent Carlos’s first perfect score – and in an exact replica of his wife’s final week, Carlos was eliminated at the end of a perfect night with 60 out of 60.
Nothing against Carlos, but he just wasn’t very compelling compared to the other three. You have an American hero combined with an everyman for the audience to root for. You have a Backstreet Boy with legions of fans in the show’s demographic, and a talent for seemingly crying on cue. And you have the personification of joy, who has a tragic family death to get all the sympathy votes. Compared to those three, Carlos is the “other contestant” – his selling point, aside from a somewhat obscure band, is a vague religious angle that never took off.
Even had Carlos made it to the final three, his freestyle would have buried him. He and Witney decided on a hip-hop freestyle, which has NEVER won a Mirrorball (and lost it for Mel B). People tune in to DWTS for ballroom dancing. Then Carlos decided that a big production with other pros would not highlight him enough – so he also brought in former contestants Alexa, Hayes, and Paula Deen. We saw Alexa’s inclusion coming, and Hayes’s is acceptable (if puzzling), but why on earth would Carlos subject viewers to more of Paula Deen? Just for that, he lost our vote.
To change it up this week, let’s welcome our remaining finalists in the order we think they’ll place!
Projected Winner: Bindi & Derek. Considering Bindi just broke the record for most perfect scores, there wasn’t much to choose from among dances to improve upon. Carrie Ann went with her lackluster Week 3 quickstep, the low point of the season for Bindi. The physically demanding dance was extra challenging for an ailing Derek, but never count out the Houghs and their quicksteps! After a puzzling non-sequitur at the beginning with Bindi yelling at the band, they delivered a fantastic quickstep. The judges invoked the rule that they seem to forget half the time: no breaking hold in quickstep. Derek duly followed that rule in choreographing this week, and it’s clear how much he loves Bindi, remarking how “after so many seasons, you could make this feel so new to me.” For her part, Bindi was adorable, even being sweet about Derek coughing up a lung. Per Erin, she should do pharmaceutical commericals – she can even make Robitussin sound magical!
Derek knows how to play the freestyle game, and he pulled the same trick that won him the Mirrorball with Kellie Pickler: a simple pared-down freestyle to contrast the bells and whistles of the others’, proving the star doesn’t need gimmicks for great dancing. And he and Bindi pulled on our heartstrings one last time re: Steve Irwin. Honestly, the dance (while excellent) seemed like well-trod ground for most of it: an emotional contemporary, set to “Footsteps in the Sand.” But the closing made it all worth it, when a third set of footprints appeared walking between Bindi and Derek, leading to a picture of Bindi and her dad. The picture was a surprise to Bindi, and that just set off the entire ballroom (and this writer) in tears. The judges couldn’t compose themselves, everyone in the live audience was wiping away tears, and even Tom lost his cool.
This competition has been Bindi’s to lose since the very start, and she’s scarcely made a single misstep. Barring an upset the likes of which we’ve never seen, she will take home the trophy.
Projected Runner Up: Nick & Sharna. One of Nick’s low points was his sloppy and shoe-sabotaged Week 2 jive, so Julianne wanted to make sure Nick did himself justice in the jive. She really pushed him with the footwork, deja vu to Karina slave-driving Nick’s brother Aaron for a hyperspeed jive twelve seasons ago. It all paid off, as Nick delivered one of the best jives we have ever seen on this show. Packed to the brim with jive content, Nick was as sharp as a pro, and in perfect sync with Sharna – our favorite dance of the night.
For the freestyle, Sharna and Nick gave us exactly what we wanted – an epic high-energy dance set to the Backstreet Boys’ “Larger Than Life,” and lived up to the title. Impressively, Nick kept up with all of the pros around him, appearing on par with them. The freestyle wasn’t revolutionary, but it sure was fun. Any season Bindi wasn’t on, Nick would be hoisting the trophy, because he’s the perfect DWTS mix of ability, emotion, and fun. There is an outside possibility he’ll win, and certainly Sharna has fans who think she’s due for a win and vote accordingly, but he’ll most likely get second.
Projected Third Place: Alek & Lindsay. Poor Alek really got the short straw this stick. The dancer who needed the most help with technique got the judge who does not care about technique – Carrie Ann. For whatever reason, Carrie Ann wanted an improvement on Alek’s rhumba (the one he did with Switch-Up partner Emma). We enjoyed Alek and Emma’s rhumba, but okay. Carrie Ann focused on giving Alek some semblance of hip action. We may never know whether Alek achieved hip action, because there was barely any rhumba in his routine that required it – just lots of poses and pivots. In fairness, this writer could barely make out a rhumba beat in the song, but there’s a reason this was the only dance to get nines instead of tens. Lindsay, while an energetic and fun pro, has been rather disappointing in the choreography department this season.
However, in Lindsay’s freestyle debut, she excelled: she created an obstacle course that included other dances and an eight-foot wall. While we disagree with Carrie Ann – this likely won’t be one of the iconic freestyles we’ll be talking about in five years – it was undoubtedly cool. It also was the best freestyle relative to expectations, since we’d not seen Alek scaling walls before. Alek’s performance was so natural here – over the last few weeks, he has really developed as a great performer (jury’s still out on the dancing).
Alek has been the dark horse candidate for a couple of weeks, clinging on through decent dancing and audience votes. The dark horse has literally never won DWTS – the best they can hope for is to unseat the expected runner up and claim second place (see: Rob Kardashian, Kirstie Alley, etc.). His real victory is making it to the finals (and perhaps that budding romance with Emma); expect him to land in third.
Which freestyle was your favorite? Who do you think will win? And who do you want to win?