My money is on Mark and Lindsey Stirling.
She’s very popular and Mark has a lot of fans. I think they’ll win if their final dances are exceptional.
Victoria took it so hard, that was difficult to watch. She has an inspirational story and a lot of heart, and you could tell she wanted so badly to be in the finals. I am sorry that she didn’t make it, but I wouldn’t call her elimination ‘cold-blooded.’ The judges were generous to her in their scoring and the audience votes for who they like most. While I would have preferred her to stay instead of Drew, I don’t think she was robbed or anything. Nobody is obligated to vote for her. It is what it is.
Frankie is still my favorite, but I’m guessing the final two will be Jordan and Lindsey. In that case I’d like to see Lindsey win.
Yeah, that elimination rather annoyed me. Property Bro was clearly the least accomplished dancer of the remaining bunch. Not that something like this hasn’t happened before, however.
As for the finals, my favorite is L. Stirling, although I suspect Jordan will be the overall winner.
Mmmm…might’ve been a bit too hasty in my optimism. Saw the semifinal a few days ago, and the boooooos were back in force. Maybe not to an extreme level, but it was definitely more than a bit annoying. Now I’m completely mystified as to what the truth is; since the audience clearly did not stop being irrational babies like I hoped, why were they so polite for at least the first 75% of the season? Did the producers offered some kind of material incentive (won’t speculate what) to pacify them for most of the season and figured they didn’t need to cover the homestretch because the competition would be good at that point, but didn’t realize how incredibly feeble this crop was?
Speaking of which, could there be any clearer indication of just how dismal the quality of the contestants have become that in the bleedin’ semifinals there are still contestants who are anything less than really good? At this point, if the judges have anything at all negative to say about you, if you can’t pull down a 27 with your eyes closed, you have absolutely no business being there.
Well, I don’t want to get too negative (no, really :)); this is still the nicest DTWS experience I’ve had in a very long time. It’s just…there’s no wow factor anymore, nothing truly entertaining. It’s pretty much just something to endure for a few weeks. Kinda like the Christmas season.
Well, Jordan and Lindsay won the mirror ball trophy. Unsurprisingly.
Pretty bland season overall. Jordan was very good from the start, so there wasn’t much of an ‘arc’ to his story on the show and his win seemed almost preordained. Frankie Muniz and Lindsey Stirling were more interesting contestants, but it was unlikely they would ever be able to compete on a technical level with Jordan.
On the plus side, the pro dancers paired with the top three finalists are some of the best. Lindsay, Mark, and Witney usually bring good entertainment value with their choreography. This was Lindsay’s first win.
One thing I wish is that before they announce the winner, they should have a final short interview with each couple. It kinda sucks when they announce the winner and there’s only like 10 seconds for the winners to make some rushed comment and the runners-up get no final send-off at all.
I went looking for information on the next season (season 26) and found several reports that the next season’s stars will consist entirely of athletes. Interesting. And the site in the following link* quotes some tweets from Tom Bergeron with some confusing statements about what’s coming up. There’s supposed to be a spin-off show with kids (DWTS Jr.), but maybe not. There may be some other kind of mini-season (?) in the spring. And the next full season may not air until next fall. So I’m not sure what to expect. I’ve been wondering if they’ll do another all-stars season, and there is some speculation that’s what the mini-season could be, but it’s all just guessing.
I will say that when Jordan was dancing, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Not only was he good, he had charisma. It was sort of hard to stretch out the obligatory sob stories for him - he doesn’t have much trauma in his life. It seems like the best thing he could’ve done for him was to dump him on his grandparents.
I was sort of afraid he’d blow it just by being too cocky.
I wasn’t thrilled with Lindsay. She danced well, though. Very well. I’m just not charmed by quirky.
Frankie really fought for every score and did improve very much.
StG
I called a Jordan win weeks ago. There was just no contest. Professional dancer wins Dancing With the Stars is not so exciting, though, IMO.
There were some really nice moments in this season (e.g., the team dance to Phantom was brilliant), but the contest for the winner was not one of them.