Dots And Stripes

The teams were only scored 4 points apart, that's an average 1 point per judge. Not a huge gap. Charlie is only 1 point behind Danica and 3 points behind Candace. He'd be ahead of both of them if not for the team dance, but percentage-wise, he doesn't have much ground to make up with either of them. I dislike that better dancers can end up at the bottom of the leader board after team dances, but that's how it's always been. As it is, the scores are almost tied and are almost irrelevant when you look at the percentages. Someone from the winning team has gone home last least twice that I can think of off the top of my head, S10 (Pam Anderson) S14 (Jaleel White). Maybe All Stars too but that season was screwed up all around. Charlie is vulnerable after this episode, but I wouldn't count him out yet.

Right, but Charlie dropped pretty far relative to the others. Charlie was in the middle of the pack and dropped down to the bottom.

Something to think about though is that even half the Davis/White fan base is bound to be larger than Amy's pre-existing fan base. Before the show, very few people knew who she was. I think she can connect with the general audience of the show, but so can Meryl and Charlie. Really I think that for any of those three to beat James they need to be winning over new fans, not just counting on people who liked them before the show. Why? Charlie did better by that count before the indignation. If anything, it looks like he lost support this week, maybe because it was a strange dance. I don't think the judges said anything that bad anyway. Len saying it wasn't special sounded cold, but not being special enough for a 10 isn't the worst thing. The other two complimented him while giving actual constructive feedback, which is rare for them. I think the tone of the package (I want a 10) set the judges up to talk about why Charlie wasn't getting 10's. Maybe with a different edit they could have focused on what was good enough for a 9, but I think Charlie is better off hearing what is keeping him from earning those top marks. Maybe a numbers thread would be a good place for an in depth look at the facebook numbers.

Thanks, crowceilidh! That's an interesting theory, and I think the numbers are somewhat informative, but it definitely has room for error. Facebook is probably a decent measure of trends and how broad someone's support is since people can vote there. I don't think it takes into account the enthusiasm of each voter or correlates to votes, especially since you can vote up to 6 times for the same couple on one account. I think this might tell us more if there was a huge gap. Danica and Charlie are pretty close here, and while Danica's team dance is more popular, Charlie was featured more prominently in his team's dance and package. I don't know that I heard Danica make a peep after she was picked for her team. I wonder how well this has stacked up in weeks past. This also has me thinking that whoever will be sent home on Monday has technically already been eliminated. They can't change their scores or do anything to save themselves. It's kind of unfortunate that Amy or Danica might be practicing injured when they are already out of the competition, they just don't know it. They would be practicing in pain for nothing.

The 8 for Charlie was harsh, but the 10 was generous and they cancel each other out for me. Bruno's comment to Charlie this week was spot on. Charlie looked like he was trying too hard and that set him off balance a few times. He made mistakes and therefore, I think the 9's were fair. I think Charlie is capable of putting '10' quality routines out there, but I don't think he's actually lived up to that yet. I loved Maks and Candace in rehearsal. Maks was over the top, even for him, and Candace was a great sport about it. It showed that she's not always up tight. I really like Deej.

A lot of stuff has been said about his contract. I heard it was 2 seasons, but it's also possible there was some re-negotiating before he came back this year. I haven't heard any recent statements about whether he's still under contract after this season. Interestingly, Maks brought this up in a pre-season interview. I think it was something for his studios' website. He mentioned how some of his family and friends kept going to see him in Forever Tango and he asked why they were there so much. They told him they didn't know if they'd get to see him dance like that again. Maks cited that as one reason for coming back as a dancer as opposed to a judge. He says he can judge later but he may not always be able to dance. The offer, or at least discussion, for Maks becoming a judge isn't out of the blue either. ABC's Entertainment President Paul Lee expressed told the press he thought Maks did well as a judge last season. It's rare for someone at that level at the network to comment on a pro like that. Can't we just enjoy this season? (joking!) I've thought about this too, but I'm more optimistic. Maks has said he's fine having never one, and I believe him. He says he's done alright in his life without the Mirror Ball, and that's true. I think he would love to win and still wants it, but he's trying to balance that desire to win with the knowledge that he can't control the outcome. It would be sad and really diminish his accomplishments if the win were the only marker of success. I think Maks has learned to deal with not winning over the years. He reacted badly after S5, but much better after S10 and S12. He had dinner with Kym and Hines the night after they beat him. He was genuinely happy for Peta's win her second season. He pushed hard for Val on All Stars. He's capable of being happy for his peers. He also seemed happy for Charlie's 10 last night and disappointed in Charlie's 8. I think he'd be happy for Charlie and Sharna if they won while still being disappointed for himself. If the show and the network handle things right, I think he could be ready to go for another season. Of course I wouldn't ask him if he would be back 5 minutes after a loss. I'm sure that would yield a very colorful answer.

I didn't watch live, so I was expected worse from Peta's outfit after reading about it. It was definitely not Samba appropriate, but at least she was somewhat covered. I thought she and James had an awful song. Choreography for that one was going to be challenge, but the choice to make it a strip tease was a poor one. The stills on youtube you see when searching for videos are really un-Samba looking. To me, the dance looked like a hybrid between Samba and strip tease from those South American knock off of DWTS. Overall I wish we would have had more Santa type music from latin night rather than this more club/party inspired stuff. It was a real missed opportunity. Also, the ban murdered Livin La Vida Loca. Yuck. I think Charlie deserved the 9's and the 10 and 8 cancelled each other out. The dance started out fantastic, then it looked like Charlie got caught in the corner. Maybe he ran out of room with the stairs (possible side effect of traveling and having less time to work with the stage or the full sized rehearsal room) and after that he looked off balance a few times. There were parts that were really great, but there were too many awkward lines and moments where Charlie looked off from Sharna to warrant 10's. Danica looked like she got lost and was timid. Sure the rib injury is to blame, but the show has always said that they won' take such things into account. Given the actual dance, I thought her scores were generous. I was also wondering why she didn't sit out the 'live' team dance given her injury. Why risk aggravating it? Maybe she just went through the motions lightly, but I still found it odd. I still love Meryl and Maks, although I wasn't wild about the staging this week. I would have preferred a bright, fun, salsa just the two of them. For once I was grateful to Carrie Ann for pointing out how different this side of Meryl was tonight. Meryl really is versatile. I don't like the team dances and that hasn't changed. Team Vida had some of the ugliest costumes I have ever seen on this show. Just hideous. Team Vida was ambitious but that sacrificed some of the cleanliness. Team Loca was great, if not a little reserved looking, probably due to the injuries and the fact that they thought it was just a rehearsal.

Maks didn't demand Hope because she was a ringer (ringer usually refers to dance experience, IMO), he campaigned for her to do the show. A foolish move in retrospect, but hardly a demand for a ringer. A lot of pros talk about their 'dream partners'. Yes, Mel B. was a ringer, but she was also short on time with the finale and that severely limited what Maks could do with her. He's also had his share of non-ringers, far more than Mark or Val. I've also heard Mark and Val talk far too much to believe they don't have self-entitled egos. Maks' personality definitely isn't for everyone, but for me he keeps things interesting. I think his tendency to shoot from the hip works well with Meryl's very PR friendly style. They balance each other out a bit and I'm seeing more of Meryl's sense of humor come out through their interactions.

I'm siding with the guys here. Mark was spot on when he said this guy would have been different if he had come in asking for money for testing. As it is, he's marketing to gullible college students without really knowing how effective (or dangerous) his product is. People re-ordering could just be experiencing the placebo effect. That's one very expensive placebo. I don't think this guy was looking for a natural alternative to Adderall so much as he was looking to corner some of the market of recreational Adderall users in college. So disappointed in Barbara here. That warning label was also not standard and should have sent up some red flags. First, warning label should be somewhat specific, otherwise they're not really doing any work warning consumers. Second, companies have to balance the desire to protect themselves with the need to not scare people away from the product. Either a) that very broad warning label was necessary because this guy hadn't tested anything or b) this guy didn't know what he was doing so he just over warned thinking he's protected no matter what. Either way, it's not a good strategy IMO. I love Daymond for helping out Moe without taking any of his company. I seem to recall him doing something similar with the Spatty creator, and apparently he's kept good on his word with her. It's very generous for Daymond to voluntarily mentor kids like that, especially since we hear all the time how valuable time is to the Sharks.

I didn't see Danica winning before this injury anyway. If anything, this could keep her around longer by getting her more votesvotes. Also, not all rib injuries play out the same way. Melissa looked like she was in a ton of pain. I went back and found a story on Maria's broken ribs and I think that was pre-season and it was just one of her many injuries. It didn't seem particularly bad for Maria. I'm sure Danica would rather be uninjured then get a few extra votes. Hopefully it's not too painful for her.

Yep, Melissa had some ups and downs with her rib injury and it got worse on show day so she missed a week, but was able to continue with the competition after. I remember Maria broke everything under the sun too. There might have been others through the years with broken or bruised ribs. It's a painful injury for sure, but I didn't gather from Danica's tweet that she's likely to drop out just yet. Time will tell.

Lower my expectations might be a good idea. Compared to TBBT reruns, last night was a dud. Maybe it would be better if I compared it to other sitcoms. My favorite part of the episode was the beginning with just Sheldon, Leonard, and Penny although something seemed a bit off with Sheldon. I couldn't care less about his search for a new area of research. Maybe I'm just over Jim Parsons. My least favorite story line is the ongoing progression of the Sheldon/Amy relationship. I was watching the episode earlier this week where Amy and Sheldon 'break-up' and Sheldon gets all of those cats. That Amy was so much more abrasive and Sheldon-like, not to mention funnier. I would be much happier if their relationship remained something totally unique rather than seeing Amy drag him into a more traditional romance.

The Voice's twitter account did a really great job of presenting the instructions. They tweeted a pic with detailed voting instructions along with a list of what time the voting would be in each time zone to make the timing easy to figure out. All one needs to do is follow the Voice's twitter account and they'll also learn exactly who the bottom 3 are in time to vote. I haven't been fully paying attention this season, so I was surprised by the bottom 3. I really enjoyed Dani. I think Tess was killed by a terrible arrangement on Monday. Poor Shakira really needs to up her game or she'll be gone long before the finale. I can't really get behind anyone on Team Usher, although I wouldn't be mad at an Usher win. I had forgotten how likable he can be on this show. I'm firmly rooting for Team Blake. I really like the Blake/Sissaundra pairing. They remind me of Usher/Michelle last year where you wouldn't expect them to be a match musically, but somehow they are. I think Blake is having fun working with someone with her vocal power and she seems willing to take risks. The girl on Team Blake (don't remember her name) reminds me of Shakira vocally, and not in a good way. I'm glad she's not on Team Shakira.

That finale looked like something written before the show knew if they would be back or not. Watching that last scene, I was getting tragic flashbacks to HIMYM. If we find out Ben dies and Leslie ends up with Uncle Jerry, I'll be furious. I did like seeing those triplets though. Definitely not the strongest episodes,but I did like the Cones of Dunshire stuff. Also its good to have some of the job stuff finally cleared away. Good to see Leslie is a success in the future. The Lil Sabastian shout outs were probably my favorite part of the night.

I can understand that perception, however I would liken it more to the student who gets back a test with nothing marked wrong and a big B- on top. Meryl tied for 5th last week out of 8 couples, so she wasn't near the top anymore. She wasn't all that dramatic about it either. I get it though, it's not good on this show to be seen as complaining about 9's.

I think it's not just that the comments are not correlated to the scores, but the scores themselves appear to be pulled out of thin air. Meryl's comments weren't only overwhelmingly positive, there was actual nothing negative or critical at all. Add to that the fact that she ended up tied with NeNe, and yeah I can totally see why Meryl was surprised by her scores. She should have been surprised because there is no way NeNe should have been tied with her. I understand that every star is graded somewhat differently based on ability, but if you don't reward superior routines than it starts to look arbitrary or like you are scoring something else aside from dancing. Also, I'll point out Meryl didn't say she deserved a 40. She said she was surprised based on the comments. It's hard to know what the judges want when their scores are so wacky and then they don't even bother trying to explain them. Amy's scores continue to be ridiculous. Her dancing is not better than most of the cast. She should be scored more in line with what she actual shows on the dance floor and leave it to the fans to save her based on her spirit. The judges are supposed to judge technique and the dances, not the person. This week also reminded me of the Oscar Pictorius debate from the Olympics. When he competed in the Olympics, many people complained that his prosthetics could actually be an advantage. The Olympic committee decided that they weren't but the point is that sometimes prosthetic can be an advantage or a disadvantage in physical activities. Henry suggested as much this week in an interview.

Producers pulling something out of a hat sounds relatively fair. As it is, producers pick the dance styles. I don't know what criteria they use, but I don't believe it's at all random.

I did not see the triplet thing coming. I kept expecting it to be a fake out or something. Not sure how I feel about this. The sad thing is, by the time the babies are born the show might be ending anyway. As much as I hate the constant job changes on this show, triplets sounds like a good reason for Ben to try that accounting firm again for the bigger paycheck. Knowing this show, he's more likely to pick up extra money waiting tables at Tom's Bistro. I like seeing Donna get a real love interest. I was wondering when that was going to happen.

NeNe's package was short. Even if Tony is telling the truth and it was a short fight, the package didn't have to extend it or draw it out to fill 2-3 minutes. I saw an interview early in the week where Tony admitted they had a fight, and that was before this package aired. It happened and it wasn't invented by producers. I don't even think producers milked it for too much drama because the studio audience was laughing. We've seen worse fights. This one strikes me as two people who have been working together for a while getting on each others' nerves. It doesn't strike me as unusual or requiring any sort of manipulation. The more surprising thing is that there haven't been more fights in packages so far this season, although admittedly I don't watch every package for every couple. If anything, Tony should be happy they showed the fight. His biggest problem tends to be that he makes his partners forgettable. People don't vote for couples they can't even remember.

We don't know how many votes anyone is getting. NeNe's character in the blow up with Tony is exactly how she was on the Celebrity Apprentice and it matches what I know of her reputation from Real Housewives. DWTS did not create this character. Maybe it's for show, but NeNe's played this role before on other shows. I don't think her fans would be surprised or turned off by NeNe arguing with someone. I also don't see NeNe as enough of a pushover to stage a fight if she didn't really want to. I don't get that argument. As for Meryl, I've only seen the bitch accusation from fans of her rivals. From what I've heard, the Virtue Moir reality show tried to portray her as a bitch, but all they had was footage of her playing with a puppy or talking to other people with Tessa in the room. I didn't see it myself, but from what I hear there was nothing there. Now those are some people with a motive to portray Meryl badly. I've heard Meryl can come across as cold, but that's different from bitchy or nasty. She and Charlie were America's sweethearts during the Olympics, so her portrayal here does match her image, IMO, if anything maybe she's coming out of her shell a little more. The show doesn't always portray everyone fairly, but to me NeNe and Meryl's portrayals this week matched their respective reputations.

Derek tends to break the rules when he feels like it, so I doubt he cleared it with them in advance. To me, it seemed like a calculated risk. The more I think of it, all of the judges should have taken off on the lifts. I can see leaving the decision to Carrie Ann when it's an accidental lift or something hidden, but there's no reason the other judges can't enforce the lift ban too when there are 3 blatant, intentional lifts. I'm not surprised Cody left after the way the switch up voting worked out. From what I saw, it did turn in to mostly a battle of pro fan bases (and really just the fan bases of a few pros at that). Still, Cody was only the third most sought after male celebrity after Charlie and James, although the numbers were low across the board on the male star side (again, it was really pro fan bases doing most of the work). Also, Cody requested Sharna and then deleted it. Even with the deletion, I would have expected his fans to fight hard for Sharna. There weren't really big numbers of votes there and that's a clue that his fans were't engaged in the show. Also, keep in mind that a chunk of those twitter followers were most certainly bought. Maybe not by Cody himself, but possibly his team or even fans. I expect he has more human followers than several other stars, but the gap could be smaller than it appears.

I totally agree - I'm betting they'd planned to give him 10s after the dress rehearsal. Is that why they marked Meryl down? Seems like feeling they had to mark Charlie down might have blown their script.. Crowceilidh, I'm confused do you think Charlie should or shouldn't have been marked down? I think the other poster didn't want Charlie Marked down. I think Charlie's mistake was enough to make the 10 unreasonable. I understand Len doesn't ask for literal perfection for a 10, but that was more than a bobble. Props carry a risk and a reward. The reward is they can add something special to the routine, the risk is the props present something else that can go wrong. That's what happened here. It was the risk they took. I overall found the cane and umbrella distracting. IMO, throwing props back and forth isn't really dancing. That routine did have a lot of energy, but it also seemed frantic. Throwing things probably added to the frantic feel. I hated the song arrangement, the staging, and all of the extra people. There was a lot going on there that had nothing to do with dancing. I hate the inclusion of jazz in general. I'm not sure if that was a good representation of jazz or not. I really don't know what a fair score would have been for Charlie since most of my issues with that routine came from production rather than quality of the actual dance, but I do think a 10 was silly. It wasn't a bad routine, but I think I was mostly disappointed that production mangled it. As for Tony/NeNe, I think they both should take a little of the blame. NeNe was very rude and disrespectful. I was surprised the audience laughed along like it was playful. Tony though seemed overly sensitive about Derek. Something tells me if it were any other pro NeNe wanted to talk about Tony would have reacted differently, probably because of the constant over praising Derek gets. It can't be fun to listen to how amazing Derek is all of the time, especially since the rules don't apply to Derek. Still, I don't see anything wrong with NeNe wanting to bring something she learned from Derek into her training moving forward. All of the stars probably should do that after the switch. A version of that played out with Danica and Val, although that didn't turn into a fight. I can't say I liked how Val dealt with it much better as I found his 'joke' tasteless and unfunny. I'm noticing a theme. Production made me like Charlie's dance less. Production's stupid switch up twist caused a lot of the tension this week.

I agree about the extra dancers and the animation. I also think it introduces yet another variable which makes the competition aspect of the show a farce. The extra dancers are such a distraction and add to the performance value without the couple having to do extra work. The animation didn't work well for Drew. On the one hand, his dance wasn't going well before that. On the other hand, Cheryl was severely limited in what she could do during a portion of the dance. Trying to sync with the genie was probably a mistake, but no matter what Cheryl choreographed, she would have to keep herself and Drew in one spot. That's an odd requirement for the Quickstep. If you're going to force some competitors to deal with that challenge, force all of them to deal with it. Amy should get docked for lifts. As it is, she can't get marked down for bad footwork, like using the wrong part of the foot, etc. She can't get marked down for bad leg lines. I see no reason to forgo the requirement that she has to stay on the ground. Also I don't recall injured stars getting the same pass on lifts and dance requirements. With Ralph he still had to do the assigned dances even when he had additional physical limitations, albeit temporarily. Part of the reason I have little to no problem marking Amy down to 7's or even 6's event though she's an incredible person is that the points are currently not much of an impediment to anything. Adding a fourth judge and using only the highest paddles creates a situation where all of the percentages are close. Even with lower scores, I don't doubt that the audience would keep Amy in for several more weeks. It's awesome that she's challenging herself and that she wants to dance, but those attributes aren't enough to warrant her scores. If the audience wants to see her dance, they'll keep her around anyway.

Update and the taped pieces were the highlight for me. Keenan was great as the baseball player. Bonus points for reminding me of his all that days. Something about the accent and the gleam in his eye that just made him seem like a kid again.I'm still not warming up to Colin at the Update Desk even though he is getting more comfortable. He's just so bland and doesn't have chemistry with Cecily yet. The Mike O'Brien piece reminded me of the piece where Bruno Mars played one of those Times Square characters. I still enjoyed it though. I didn't hate Kyle's taped piece as much as I usually do. It had a few good moments, although overall it still seems like ammeter hour better suited for youtube. I really liked Challen in part because we've had so little of Nasim lately. I really hope Mullaney becomes a hit because I like her. That sketch with the guy at the engagement party was awful. One of the worst things I've seen on this show in a long time. Not only was it unfunny, but the stuff involving the sleeping guy was disturbing. Just terrible all around. I agree that the political impressions aren't very good. Beck even looked more like McConnell.

That firefighter made me swoon. He seems like a great inventor . I can see why the sharks would think it would be a lot of work to sell his invention, yet Kevin could have been more generous in what he was willing to pay to take that much equity. I wonder how wide the paths are in some malls to allow trains through. I was surprised when those guys said they get more business seasonally and that it goes all around the mall. Maybe it's a regional thing. I would think one of those trains in a New Jersey mall in December would be a disaster waiting to happen. Angry shoppers, crowds, and a slow moving train getting in everyone's way? That wouldn't work out too well. Anyone else wondering if those episodes with so many bad pitches were because they were saving the good ones for later in the season? I know they tape a lot of pitches at the same time. It feels like they were holding back early on in the season.