1. THE RUNNING ORDER: This refers to the order the routines of any given night are performed in, and there tends to be some patterns in how that order is determined, particularly in the early weeks of a season. Since the show is two hours long and the producers want to take advantage of the moments during that time the show has the most viewers and want to give a good impression overall, they take careful consideration into scheduling the dances.
They generally like to put the majority of the strongest routines of the night in the second hour of the show, since later dances are more likely to stand out in people's minds, with the very best/most impactful routine usually being the last of the night. They usually like to start off the show with a pretty strong routine as well. Popularity is also a factor; the most well-known/relevant celebrity usually performs last the first week, then whoever gets the most votes or most buzz in the media in the week after goes last the second week. After that it mostly depends on who has the best dance, though usually no celeb is the last to dance in back-to-back weeks.
2. THE PRO DANCERS: I won't go over every single pro that's ever been on the show, but I will give you an overview of all the ones who are competing on Season 24:
Lindsay Arnold started on So You Think You Can Dance and in the past few seasons of DWTS has quickly become one of the shows most popular pros by taking celebrities with little dance experience and made them into ballroom superstars.
Sharna Burgess is a fan favorite pro who is known for her excellent choreography and has been in the DWTS Finals three times but is is currently the pro who has been on the most consecutive seasons without winning.
Witney Carson competed on SYTYCD before joining DWTS and winning the Mirrorball on her second outing as a pro in Season 19. She is also the only pro in the current lineup with a Choreography Emmy nomination under her belt.
Artem Chigvintsev has competed on SYTYCD and Strictly Come Dancing (the UK version of DWTS) winning a season of the latter. On DWTS he has often gotten difficult partners but has also had a couple of good ones and is one of the quieter pros on the show.
Maks Chmerkovskiy won Season 18 of DWTS and is known for being very outspoken, opinionated, and sometimes controversial. He is currently engaged to fellow DWTS pro Peta Murgatroyd, with whom he has an infant son.
Val Chmerkovskiy is the younger brother of Maks who joined the show in Season 13 and has since won Seasons 20 and 23. Val best known to DWTS fans for working with celebrities who already have dance experience and honing their skills to help them become even more at ease on the floor.
Sasha Farber is known for being one of the goofier pros on the show who is well-known by fans for his silly antics, compassion toward his partners, and surprise live TV marriage proposal to fellow DWTS pro Emma Slater in Season 23.
Kym Johnson-Herjavec won Seasons 9 and 12 of DWTS US, as well as a season of DWTS Australia. The last time she was on the show was two years ago and she has since married her partner from that season, Robert Herjavec.
Keo Motsepe is a pro originally from South Africa who joined DWTS in Season 19 and is best known for his exceptional Latin dance skills.
Peta Murgatroyd joined DWTS in Season 13 and went from being the first out that season to winning the next one as well as Season 22. She is currently engaged to Maks Chmerkovskiy and recently gave birth to their son, Shai.
Gleb Savchenko has appeared on several versions of DWTS around the world and is known for his typically sexual choreography and great teaching skills.
Emma Slater is known for her friendly and patient demeanour and has more often than not gotten partners of the seasoned (read: older) variety on DWTS, often taking them farther in the competition than many initially expect (though she somehow also managed to get the youngest male celebrity that has ever competed on the show).
3. JUDGING: The judges can be unpredictable at times, but their scoring follows a general pattern as well. For starters, in the early weeks in particular, dances that are performed at or near the beginning of the show tend to get lower scores than ones performed at or close to the end. We saw this last week when Simone-who performed last-got the highest score of the night, while Normani-who was up first-ended up in the middle of the pack with a score that would have probably been a little higher had she performed later in the evening. The same goes for the season in general; while an 8 is considering a high score in the early weeks, later on in the season and 8 is usually seen as a low score in a sea of 9's and 10's.
Each judge also has their own way of scoring a dance. As some of you noticed last week, Len prefers dances to have a lot of content and good technique. Bruno often scores higher for strong emotion and/or "sass" in a performance. Carrie Ann is generally seen as the most inconsistent judge, but she's usually a sucker for dances tied to an emotional story or ones involving a male dancer being sexy. Julianne is sort of in the middle of everyone. While she tends to judge on the harsher side similar to Len, she tries to be positive in her critiques and for the most part gives the contestants pointers in a kind tone.
4. INJURIES AND THE LIKE: This one is pretty simple: If a pro dancer has to miss a week due to injury or illness, their celebrity dances with a troupe member or another pro and they still get their scores as per normal. If it's the celebrity who has to miss a show, they and their pro partner are automatically eliminated from the competition unless they were able to perform at a dress rehearsal. There is usually at least one somewhat-major injury per season (which the show tends to milk for all it's worth and then some) but the celebrities are usually able to grin and bear it and the pros are usually able to come back and dance with their celebrity before their time on the show is done.
5. ELIMINATION TIME: These days we don't usually have results shows like we used to so they do the elimination at the end of the show after everyone has danced. The hosts announce a few people who might be going home and then reveal who has been eliminated.
It sounds simple, but there are a few important things to note here, the first one being that the elimination is determined solely on what happened the previous week. So tonight's elimination on Week 2 will be based on the combined total of scores and votes the celebrity got the previous week. That means the couple going home has already been determined, and no scores they get during tonight's show will be able to save them. The exception to this is when there is a night on which they give the celebrity with the highest score from the judges immunity, so the scores and votes from the previous week no longer matter and they are automatically safe that night (but not the next week!).
The other major thing to take note of when it comes to elimination is whether the couples announced as being up for elimination are "the bottom 2/3" or "in jeopardy". The former means exactly what it says on the tin, the latter is a little more murky. This is because they, by law, cannot lie about who is in the "bottom 2" so they came up with the more vague "jeopardy" so they can legally try to convince the audience whoever they want is in danger of being eliminated. They do actually have to eliminate the couple with the lowest combined total, but there are several reasons they might put someone not actually close to going home "in jeopardy", such as shock value, riling up big fanbases, and HINTING a couple may soon be in legitimate danger (if a couple is "in jeopardy" several times back-to-back then it's more likely that last option is the case). Basically, the point is to scare fans, whether they actually need to be or not. My point is not to freak out too much if your favorite is "in jeopardy" but also not to get too complacent if they're "safe", because with this method of elimination we never really know who is close to elimination.
If you have any other questions feel free to ask!
And now it's time for the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!!!
I'M STARTING A PODCAST with two other huge DWTS fans! We wanted to give the fandom a "side show" of sorts seeing as Afterbuzz isn't as popular as it used to be and DWTS All Access isn't happening this season. We hope to bring lots of fun to the fandom when we stream live every Monday after the East Coast airing of DWTS at 10:30 pm Eastern. You will also be able to watch the show after it has streamed live on our YouTube channel!
We'll do a separate post with the link tonight (hopefully the video embedded, actually) and we hope to see you there!
- Julia
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