The long goodbye: There was a bit of a “one of these things is not like the other” feeling to Tuesday night’s results show. Remember, Melissa Rycroft, Gilles Marini, and Shawn Johnson have all been more or less favorites from the beginning of the season — they were the three top-scoring teams after the first pair of performances. Ty Murray was the opposite, outscoring Steve Wozniak by one point on the very first performance of the year.
When we finally learned the first two couples who were safe, there were no surprises — it was the top two teams from Monday night in judges’ scores: Gilles and Shawn. That left Melissa and Ty. And then, when the tallies were complete, Ty and Chelsie Hightower were finally sent home, after an admirable, highly unlikely run that lasted longer than anyone could possibly have expected. Note that this space named him as a possible bootee for five weeks in a row before it finally happened, which is why we don’t gamble on these things.
Just the right finalists: Ty gave an incredibly endearing speech about how hard he must be to train, since he doesn’t even understand how to identify what’s wrong with his dancing; he just does his best. It wound up being a very happy elimination, because had he lasted longer, he’d have seemed like he was taking up a spot that someone else deserved, but Melissa, Shawn, and Gilles were probably the three finalists we were going to get all along.
That’s (sort of entertainment): The filler segments were even more pointless than usual, surprisingly enough. Raphael Saadiq kicked off the show with his song “100 Yard Dash,” which didn’t allow any ballroom accompaniment but at least seemed to get the audience moving. The encore performance went to Shawn and Mark Ballas for their Argentine tango.
Interviews with previous champions Brooke Burke, Helio Castroneves, and Drew Lachey yielded little more than the usual bland, broad praise that usually arises late in the season (“They’re all so greeeat…”). An audience-choice challenge resulted in Derek and Julianne Hough, along with Mark Ballas and Lacey Schwimmer, dancing to “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” And someone in the audience designed the costumes. Apparently, Demi Lovato wasn’t available this week.
Welcome Anna (probably): The last two dancers standing in the Find A New Pro Partner competition were Mayo Alanen and Anna Demidova. (Farewell, Afton DelGrosso!) This week, they were assigned to choreograph two dances each with partners from the current crop of pros: Kym Johnson and Maksim Chmerkovskiy, respectively. Mayo put together a surprisingly romantic tango and a disco-flavored cha-cha; Anna created a high-energy quickstep and a kicky samba. Their work suggested that they’d both make terrific additions to the show, but Anna is a more electric performer, and will probably take the prize after the audience voting.
Linda Holmes is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com.