Dancing with the Stars week 6 power rankings: Scaring up perfection

The low tier

There aren’t surprises in who’s here this week, but there are definitely surprises in who lands where on our rankings.

8. John Schneider and Emma Slater: 19

There just seemed to be a huge mismatch in song, dance style, and then performance value in this paso doblé. Although there was some familiar paso in it, the revenge tale Emma was trying to tell really didn’t fit with the upbeat titles from Beetlejuice. (In response, I merely say: called it!)

Bruno pointed out plenty of issues with the dance, and Carrie Ann called it “heartbreaking.” Len praised his work in hold, but then called him a “waiter” out of hold.

7. Joe Amabile and Jenna Johnson: 22

After a struggle with the opening routine, this writer didn’t have high hopes for Joe this week. The character of this Argentine tango, despite the Frankenstein styling, was much closer to what you might expect. The goal was to get him to “commit,” according to the pre-dance package, and the awkward smile of doing his best was gone, at least. There were some mistakes still, with the last lift pretty clearly going haywire.

“He’s alive! He’s alive!” Bruno cheered. Len even called it his “best dance,” which is not the highest bar ever, but it’s a bar, at least. Maybe he needs to go to horror nights more often.

6. Bobby Bones and Sharna Burgess: 22

For all that the pre-dance video said that he’s sleep-deprived and working himself to the bone (pun only partially intended), this was the best dance he has ever done. Maybe that lack of sleep translated into him really getting into a creepy character, and I just want to say that I wrote that before Carrie Ann joked about it. There were a few missteps and a few moments of Bobby breaking that character, but it worked. It did feel a bit like a knock-off of Frankie Muniz’s contemporary from a few seasons ago, though.

Of course, all three judges knocked the lack of content (as this was supposed to be an Argentine tango), but Carrie Ann also called it his “best dance.” We have to agree with her on that one. But on a week that really showed that there’s no real middle tier anymore, but rather a drop in quality, we can’t quite justify him making it to the middle tier.