Dancing With The Stars - Season 26

Cafe Society
1

Well, Season 26 of Dancing With The Stars started last week and we’re already halfway through the season! This is a condensed four-week-long mini-season with an all-athlete celebrity cast. So this should be a short thread.

I’m not very enthused about it. Not a big sports fan in general, but I usually don’t mind that DWTS casts a lot of athletes because you have time to get to know them on the show as a season progresses. But with this mini-season format, they’re going to be gone before I have a chance to see what they’re like. There were two eliminations in each of the first two episodes, and there will be a triple-elimination next week.

These are the contestants and their pro partners:
Jamie Anderson (Olympic snowboarder) with Artem Chigvintsev
Johnny Damon (Former MLB outfielder) with Emma Slater
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Former NBA center) with Lindsay Arnold
Arike Ogunbowale (Notre Dame women’s basketball player) with Gleb Savchenko
Jennie Finch Daigle (Olympic softball pitcher) with Keo Motsepe
Tonya Harding (Former champion figure skater) with Sasha Farber
Chris Mazdzer (Olympic luger) with Witney Carson
Mirai Nagasu (Olympic figure skater) with Alan Bersten
Josh Norman (NFL cornerback) with Sharna Burgess
Adam Rippon (Olympic figure skater) with Jenna Johnson

Of the ‘celebs’ I was really only familiar with Abdul-Jabbar, Harding, and Damon.

2

Eliminations in episode 1:

Jamie Anderson and Johnny Damon

Eliminations in episode 2:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Arike Ogunbowale

The figure skaters are, unsurprisingly, leading the pack. The NFL player, Josh, has done well, but it looks like he’s going to have to start splitting his time between football and DWTS. That might make it tougher for him.

3

I’m glad to see Mirai get the boot. I found her to be very irritating. Adam is the one to beat.

4

This 4-week season makes me wonder if DWTS may be on its last legs. While I do think that the 12-week season was getting a little bloated, 4 weeks just isn’t enough to get to know the celebrities and watch them improve week by week. Maybe 8 would have been a good compromise.

I have to agree with John Mace on Mirai. She was annoying. I’m disappointed that Jennie Finch (on whom I once had a major crush) is an uptight Jesus nut. And, my God, does Tonya Harding cry about everything?

Anyway, I don’t really care who wins at this point, as there hasn’t even been time to pick someone to root for.

5

Wow. The young, Olympic ice skater won the dance contest. Who would ever have guessed?

That last dance, though, was a bit of a flop especially compared to the final offering from the other 2 contestants. I did a bit of a :confused: on the rice bowl wig, but I guess they ruled out Blackface to go with a Ragtime score.

6

Well, that was a lame end to a lame season. I don’t know what they were thinking with this 4 week sprint. It was over too quick to get invested in anyone, or to see much progression in skill amongst the non-ringers. I wonder if it was some kind of contractual issue where the network did this minimal season to keep all the regular cast and crews’ contracts going.

I thought Adam’s final dance was pretty terrible, aesthetically and performance-wise. The others were better. I liked Josh and Sharna’s freestyle the most. But it felt like Adam’s win was a forgone conclusion from the start of the season.

According to this TV Guide article, this fall there will be a regular DWTS season as well as a DWTS: Junior version airing concurrently (on different nights). I imagine I’ll skip the Junior version and I hope the regular version is back to its normal span of 10 weeks.

7

Strictly Come Dancing does a single episode Christmas special every year. It allows them to get busy celebrities that can’t commit to a full season.

4 weeks just didn’t work. I found myself wanting to see more of a journey. See how they progressed as dancers. The show wasted a unique opportunity to focus on athletes. These are people accustomed to training and had the potential of becoming very good dancers.

Josh couldn’t have committed to a full season. He’s still an active football player and barely had time for this 4 week season. I’m sure his football practice cut into the time he had for this weeks final dance.

8

Well, they almost always have an athlete or two in every season, so whatever they didn’t do this time, they can do whenever. But I do agree the 4 week format was ridiculously rushed.

9

-bump-

I don’t think there was a thread for Season 27 (which ended last week), so I’m just going to post about the results of the S27 finals here. Spoilers!

I’m conflicted about the winner. Bobby Bones has got to be the worst contestant to ever win, right? I knew nothing of him before this season, and I just found him kind of annoying. Each of the other final contestants (Evanna, Milo, or Alexis) would have been credible winners, with Milo probably being the best dancer of that bunch. Bobby was totally outclassed by them all. He must have a very devoted fan base.

On the other hand, I have been rooting for Sharna every season since she became a pro, so I am really happy she finally won a Mirror Ball Trophy. I just wish it had been with a more deserving partner. But she does deserve a lot of credit for ‘wrangling’ a goofball like Bobby. She has had her fair share of cannon fodder contestants as well as a few partners that made it far and had the potential to win. Maybe this should be considered Sharna’s ‘lifetime achievement’ award.

Supposedly the next season will air in Fall 2019, though I have also read there is still a possibility for a spring season.

10

Tangent - I checked, and there isn’t. Per usual, I picked this up mostly by osmosis, as I have family, and they’re into dance, and they need something to watch over dinner now that sitcoms worth a rip aren’t really a thing anymore. I actually looked for discussions elsewhere because I’m a bit curious as to what the buzz is right now. No success, but I did find a few news articles, and…it’s not too encouraging. Here was the really bad elimination that served as a red flag for the final, and here’s a fairly scathing piece covering the conclusion.

I’m mostly surprised that Bobby Bones could win. One thing we could always depend on was that a fanbase, no matter how powerful, had its limits. Master P, who was riding a colossal tsunami of sympathy votes (which probably surprised him more than anybody) after filling in for his son, finished 6th. Bristol Palin, who had possibly the most insanely fierce, fanatical, rabid, monomaniacal, obsessive backing in the entire goddam history of reality TV, finished a distant third. Old women, who are automatically forbidden from any criticism and always get treated with kid gloves by the judges, even the ones who explicitly demand no preferential treatment, make it 1-3 rounds further than they should and are quietly dismissed. Furthermore, while the judges may have pulled their punches in the early going to prevent a gigantic fan backlash, the gloves were off for the final. The votes are in, there’s no tomorrow, your mob can’t save you anymore, our marks are going to decide a winner and we are going to be merciless. Bottom line was that while an undeserving fan favorite could go too far, sometimes way too far, the Mirror Ball Trophy was an ironclad stumbling block. This was the ultimate safeguard, the final line of defense of this show’s credibility, the one thing that every fan could, at the end of the day, rely on.

This season, that final line was shattered. Furthermore, consider that 1. Bones isn’t that huge a star, and 2. He only got a 24 in his first chance. Okay, the judges gave him a freebie 30 in the second because they’re complete spineless wimps (a side issue I’m not going to deal with), but it shouldn’t have mattered. Giving up 6 points in crunch time used to mean death. Now it’s just a minor hurdle. The last illusion that this is anything other than a trumped-up popularity contest is gone. The dancing now officially means nothing.

Is this show doomed? Eh, I dunno. Maybe. The most likely scenario is a slow decline as the producers resolutely refuse to fix anything (or throw in some meaningless token gestures like the “judges’ save”), until interest bottoms out several years later, we don’t hear anything about a new season for several months, and that’s that.

Or else they bring in Mary Murphy, everything goes completely to hell, and ABC drops the ax after three episodes. Hey, may as well go with a bang, right? :slight_smile:

11

Tangent - I checked, and there isn’t. Per usual, I picked this up mostly by osmosis, as I have family, and they’re into dance, and they need something to watch over dinner now that sitcoms worth a rip aren’t really a thing anymore. I actually looked for discussions elsewhere because I’m a bit curious as to what the buzz is right now. No success, but I did find a few news articles, and…it’s not too encouraging. Here was the really bad elimination that served as a red flag for the final, and here’s a fairly scathing piece covering the conclusion.

I’m mostly surprised that Bobby Bones could win. One thing we could always depend on was that a fanbase, no matter how powerful, had its limits. Master P, who was riding a colossal tsunami of sympathy votes (which probably surprised him more than anybody) after filling in for his son, finished 6th. Bristol Palin, who had possibly the most insanely fierce, fanatical, rabid, monomaniacal, obsessive backing in the entire goddam history of reality TV, finished a distant third. Old women, who are automatically forbidden from any criticism and always get treated with kid gloves by the judges, even the ones who explicitly demand no preferential treatment, make it 1-3 rounds further than they should and are quietly dismissed. Furthermore, while the judges may have pulled their punches in the early going to prevent a gigantic fan backlash, the gloves were off for the final. The votes are in, there’s no tomorrow, your mob can’t save you anymore, our marks are going to decide a winner and we are going to be merciless. Bottom line was that while an undeserving fan favorite could go too far, sometimes way too far, the Mirror Ball Trophy was an ironclad stumbling block. This was the ultimate safeguard, the final line of defense of this show’s credibility, the one thing that every fan could, at the end of the day, rely on.

This season, that final line was shattered. Furthermore, consider that 1. Bones isn’t that huge a star, and 2. He only got a 24 in his first chance. Okay, the judges gave him a freebie 30 in the second because they’re complete spineless wimps (a side issue I’m not going to deal with), but it shouldn’t have mattered. Giving up 6 points in crunch time used to mean death. Now it’s just a minor hurdle. The last illusion that this is anything other than a trumped-up popularity contest is gone. The dancing now officially means nothing.

Is this show doomed? Eh, I dunno. Maybe. The most likely scenario is a slow decline as the producers resolutely refuse to fix anything (or throw in some meaningless token gestures like the “judges’ save”). Several years down the line interest bottoms out, we don’t hear anything about a new season for several months, and that’s that.

Or else they bring in Mary Murphy, everything goes completely to hell, and ABC drops the ax after three episodes. Hey, if you’re gotta go, may as well go with a bang, right? :slight_smile:

12

Tangent - I checked, and there isn’t. Per usual, I picked this up mostly by osmosis, as I have family, and they’re into dance, and they need something to watch over dinner now that sitcoms worth a rip aren’t really a thing anymore. I actually looked for discussions elsewhere because I’m a bit curious as to what the buzz is right now. No success, but I did find a few news articles, and…it’s not too encouraging. Here was the really bad elimination that served as a red flag for the final, and here’s a fairly scathing piece covering the conclusion.

I’m mostly surprised that Bobby Bones could win. One thing we could always depend on was that a fanbase, no matter how powerful, had its limits. Master P, who was riding a colossal tsunami of sympathy votes (which probably surprised him more than anybody) after filling in for his son, finished 6th. Bristol Palin, who had possibly the most insanely fierce, fanatical, rabid, monomaniacal, obsessive backing in the entire goddam history of reality TV, finished a distant third. Old women, who are automatically forbidden from any criticism and always get treated with kid gloves by the judges, even the ones who explicitly demand no preferential treatment, make it 1-3 rounds further than they should and are quietly dismissed. Furthermore, while the judges may have pulled their punches in the early going to prevent a gigantic fan backlash, the gloves were off for the final. The votes are in, there’s no tomorrow, your mob can’t save you anymore, our marks are going to decide a winner and we are going to be merciless. Bottom line was that while an undeserving fan favorite could go too far, sometimes way too far, the Mirror Ball Trophy was an ironclad stumbling block. This was the ultimate safeguard, the final line of defense of this show’s credibility, the one thing that every fan could, at the end of the day, rely on.

This season, that final line was shattered. Furthermore, consider that 1. Bones isn’t that huge a star, and 2. He only got a 24 in his first dance. Okay, the judges gave him a freebie 30 in the second because they’re complete spineless wimps (a side issue I’m not going to deal with), but it shouldn’t have mattered. Giving up 6 points in crunch time used to mean death. Now it’s just a minor hurdle. The last illusion that this is anything other than a trumped-up popularity contest is gone. The dancing now officially means nothing.

Is this show doomed? Eh, I dunno. Maybe. The most likely scenario is a slow decline as the producers resolutely refuse to fix anything (or throw in some meaningless token gestures like the “judges’ save”). Several years down the line interest bottoms out, we don’t hear anything about a new season for several months, and that’s that.

Or else they bring in Mary Murphy, everything goes completely to hell, and ABC drops the ax after three episodes. Hey, may as well go with a bang, right? :slight_smile: