Julia's Thoughts On Ginger and Val

It's time for the final "Thoughts On" post of Season 22! Let's take a look at the partnership of the season's third-place finishers, Ginger Zee and Val Chmerkovskiy!



I sometimes have an idea of some of the qualities I desire in a partner for some of the pros before a season, and well before the Season 22 celebrities were announced I'd already had a whole list for my ideal partner for Val. It's hard to explain, but the whole "fam" thing the Chmerkovskiys and some of the other Dancing With the Stars pros is a sweet idea, but when some of the other pros as well as the celebrities they partner get too caught up in it all it starts feeling very clique-y and exclusive. It sometimes comes across sort of like the "popular' crowd in high school. So I wanted Val to be partnered with someone he'd get along well with but not push to the brink of drama, and who would become friends with many different pros and stars, not just the "fam" ones. I also wanted him to get a non-ringer but I had a feeling that since he didn't have one in Season 21 it was likely he would in Season 22.

There were already two celebrities heavily rumoured to be Val's next partner, which were Shay Mitchell and Jodie Sweetin. Both ladies were friends with Val, had stated in the recent past they were keen to do the show with Val as their partner, and had obvious potential advantages. Shay stars on Pretty Little Liars which is under the ABC network umbrella, and Jodie had dance experience from when she was a child. Out of the two, Shay seemed quite similar in personality to several of Val's partners and a little more likely to buy into the "fam" mentality, so I was hoping for it to be Jodie over her (though I was still happy to see Jodie on the show with Keo as her partner and was big on the idea of Jodie/Val moreso for his sake than her's).

When I found out Ginger Zee was going to be Val's partner, I had mixed feelings. She wasn't exactly a ringer and she seemed pretty down-to-Earth, which is what I'd been hoping for. However, I was also concerned about whether or not I'd enjoy this partnership, because in addition to the whole "being on the show that gives DWTS most of its central promotion" thing it didn't seem she and Val would have that great of a connection. They just seemed to be on totally different wavelengths.

I got a taste of Ginger & Val pre-season when they were doing Periscopes during rehearsals. I was right that they were totally different from each other, but that actually made their partnership more endearing and entertaining, with Val teaching Ginger how to dance of course as well as slang and other pop culture happenings, and Ginger teaching Val all about weather and other science-y matters. I wish we could have seen some of this in the packages, because I think it would have been a lot more fun to watch than some of the ones the producers came up with.

At the beginning of the season I was disappointed that this couple's dances had a lot of "filler" in them. I noticed a lot of walking around and skit-type stuff. I like world-building in "story" dances" but only as long as its done through actual dancing. Ginger's dancing was pretty good, but I thought they tended to get overly praised and scores higher than deserved in my opinion because there just wasn't a lot of content in most of their early dances. Thankfully, this changed later in the season and their dances had a lot more content that showed Ginger's true capabilities as a dancer, though I still think they were often a little overscored. Not on this routine, though!

In the end, I think this couple made it a little farther into the competition than they should have. (I would have placed them around 4th-5th.) However, this was a very competitive season and in a season with contestants of more varying skill levels like we usually see I might not have had as much of a problem with them making it to the end. Despite my feelings on this matter, I still enjoyed seeing Ginger & Val be an unexpectedly good match.