Dancing with the Stars week 1 power rankings: Who needs to step up?

13 couples have become 12 on this season of Dancing with the Stars, but there’s an opportunity to read beyond the scores after week 1.

Dancing with the Stars has officially completed its first week of competition, and there honestly were only a few surprises, all told. Tuesday’s format was a little different than Monday’s, with only six (later five) couples actually having to dance instead of all 13 yet again. The others were immediately safe.

It did mean that there was time to introduce the cast of Dancing with the Stars Juniors, at least, although the real benefit was to help settle on how the power rankings would look. At the end of the day, it’s a complex set of factors, but whether or not the couple was safe at first and whether or not there was a bump in scores definitely weighed heavily in the following list.

Let’s start with the eliminated couple:

13. Nikki Glaser and Gleb Savchenko (18; 18)

There were some steps up in this second salsa from Nikki Glaser, and as Tom Bergeron himself pointed out, she looked like she was getting into the dance more. The party aura seemed to suit her, as did the music, which Len also said. That means that she might have to focus on getting into the character of each song as much as possible.