The 15 Dances that Defined DWTS Season 25

Entertainment website The AV Club has a cool article series entitled "TV Club 10". Each installment examines a different television series and features a list of 10 episodes the contributor feels best represent the show. It's important to note that the selected episodes aren't necessarily what they consider to be the 10 best episodes, or the 10 most famous episodes (although episodes that fit into one or both of those categories end up on the lists); selections are made in order to shape a list for people who have never seen the program in question to watch to get an idea of what the series is/was about and if it's something they'd enjoy.

I thought it'd be fun to take this concept and apply it to DWTS, only instead of the entire series, I'm only going to look at Season 25 and instead of 10 episodes, I'll be selecting 15 routines that I'd show to viewers who didn't watch the season live to give them an idea of what defined it. The list will go in chronological order of when the dances were performed.

1. Jordan & Lindsay's Samba

The first two episodes of the season had a overall tepid vibe, but thankfully third episode was the charm as things kicked into high gear with some fun and upbeat Latin routines! While Jordan Fisher had delivered great performances from the get-go, it was this Samba that was the first hint he might be more than just a frontrunner of the season, but one of the best male celebrities to ever compete on DWTS.

2. Frankie & Witney's Cha-Cha

Many viewers were pleasantly surprised by Frankie Muniz's abilities in his first two Standard Ballroom dances, but it was this Cha-Cha - his first Latin performance - that solidified him as a true contender for the Mirrorball Trophy, and earned him the first "9" paddle of the season!

3. Lindsey & Mark's Jive

This performance embodied Lindsey Stirling's fun and quirky personality that made the viewers fall in love with her, but it also was a prime example of a strong commitment of Mark Ballas that was present throughout Season 25: to take his signature wacky and creative concepts and pack them with high-difficulty content in the assigned style. What it resulted in this particular week was a performance with crazy costumes and memorable moments with the bed set piece and an opportunity for Lindsey to show off her top-notch dance skills!

4. Drew & Emma's Jive

It seems that it's become commonplace for a lot of the most iconic DWTS routines in recent years to be emotional "Most Memorable Year" dances that tell stories that become an integral part of the contestant's journey throughout the rest of the season. In Season 25, emotional backstories weren't at the forefront of things and one of the most memorable performances from the similarly-named theme night was actual one that embodied joy rather than pain. Drew Scott and Emma's time on the show was a masterclass in how to make it all the way on DWTS if you're one of the weaker dancers, and it was performances like these that made enough of a positive impact on the viewers to keep them around all the way until the last week.

5. Jordan & Lindsay's Foxtrot

Here's how you can tell Jordan was one of the greatest DWTS technicians of all time: This dance included a hip-hop breakdown and still managed to get a "10" from Len, which contributed to what turned out to be the first perfect score of the season.

6. Nikki & Artem's Jazz

Nikki Bella and Artem were clearly not one of production's top prioritized couples in Season 25, as evidenced by their often early spots in the running order and strange or seemingly low-impact assignments. Their response? To make lemonade out of lemons, the best example being this routine to a song from the yet-to-be-released at the time Coco.

7. Terrell & Cheryl's Jive

Terrell Owens had one of the more interesting and surprising journeys of the season: he seemed like a lost cause getting by on NFL votes the first few weeks, but once he buckled down and got to work he managed to win over some of the general public. That's very tough to do after the first few weeks of the season when most people have already chosen their favorites, but this dance seemed to be the one that gained Terrell enough support to escape the following week's double elimination and earn himself a spot in the Quarter-Finals.

8. Vanessa & Maks's Quickstep

Vanessa Lachey was a prime example of the unfair treatment female contestants often face on DWTS; it's been implied she wouldn't even have been invited to sign on if her reluctant husband hadn't also done so, and at first she was defined as the wife of the 98 Degrees star, with little mention of her own accomplishments (most notably as a TRL host back in the day). Once it became clear the battle of the married couples was pretty much Vanessa's for the taking, the media reported an incident between Vanessa and Maks, and even with little information on the matter the majority of viewers automatically took Maks's side, citing Vanessa's "bad attitude" as the cause for the conflict and likely leading to her elimination on Week 7 despite being on of the stronger dancers of the season. Despite all this, Vanessa soldiered on through the season with a smile, brushing off any setbacks she faced, as demonstrated with her skirt malfunction in this performance.

9. Lindsey & Mark's Argentine Tango

Another great example of wonderfully executed choreography married to a great concept from Lindsey and Mark, and as of the time of this publishing the most viewed dance of Season 25 on YouTube.

10. Frankie & Witney's Contemporary

During his time on DWTS Frankie showed us he could get down and have some fun, but there were also several instances in which we got to see his more serious and dark performance abilities, most notably in this perfect-scoring Halloween Contemporary dance.

11. Victoria & Val's Contemporary

I mentioned before that Season 25 didn't have as much of a focus on emotional backstories as other recent seasons, but in the case of Victoria Arlen it felt like her story of being paralyzed for several years and only recently re-learning how to walk was all she was allowed to share about herself on the show, though this dance did a great job of showing her family's perspective of the incredibly difficult situation.

12. Jordan & Lindsay's Jive

The "Iconic Dance" concept as presented in Season 25 was quite vague, and it was unclear what the criteria was supposed to be. However, it was crystal clear that Jordan and Lindsay managed to deliver a Jive that could proudly stand alongside the others that had been performed to the same song on the show, and solidified him in the proverbial DWTS Hall of Fame.

13. Jordan & Lindsay's Week 10 Charleston

Jordan and Lindsay ultimately won the season through pure dance skills, as demonstrated in this no-frills Charleston packed with content!

14. Drew & Emma's Freestyle

What do you get when you focus on Drew's personality and strong suits and throw in just enough wacky shenanigans to keep the audience on their toes? A Freestyle that was the final exam in the masterclass of taking somewhat of a movement-challenged celebrity far.

15. Lindsey & Mark's Freestyle

Lindsey and Mark's impressive resume as a dance duo culminated in an epic Freestyle that incorporated content from Standard and Latin syllabuses alike and felt incredibly tailored to Lindsey as both a person and a performer, complete with an appearance of her violin.

BONUS BLOG: Breaking From the Norm! 25 Records and Trends Broken in Season 25

Season 25 of Dancing With the Stars has come to an end, and what a special season it was! The cast, performances, and scores broke some new ground this fall, so we're paying tribute to them by celebrating 25 unique facts about DWTS Season 25!

1. Season 25 may not have been the first season to have a married couple compete as celebs (Alexa and Carlos) or as pros (Jonathan and Anna when they were married) but it was the first to have BOTH of these rivalries...AND they ended up competing against each other! Married couple Nick and Vanessa Lachey were respectively partnered up with newlyweds Peta Murgatroyd and Maksim Chmerkovskiy to compete in Season 25.

2. Speaking of marriage, there were a lot of weddings on the horizon for the Season 25 cast: Sasha Pieterse, Nikki Bella, and Drew Lachey were all engaged during the season, and Scott's pro partner, Emma Slater was fiancee to fellow DWTS dancer Sasha Farber. That makes FIVE people who were engaged for the duration of the season!

3. You read that right: we had TWO Sasha's this season: one as a celebrity contestant and another as a troupe dancer. We also had two Linds(a)(e)y's, also as a a contestant and dancer, respectively. Sasha and Sasha marked the first time two people of different genders with the same name participated in the same season (even though dancer Sasha's is technically a nickname :P).

4. If the first name similarities weren't enough for you, Season 25 was also the first to feature two non-related celebrities with the same last name: NBA player Derek Fisher and actor/singer Jordan Fisher.

5. #TeamHotProperty - aka Drew Scott and Emma Slater - are both twins, but they weren't the only people on this season with that distinction; Nikki Bella is also one, and, like Drew, stars in a reality sibling with her twin, sister Brie Bella. That adds up to THREE twins to dance on Season 25 (four if you count Jonathan Scott's guest appearance in his brother's Jive!).

6. We've seen people with a rough start prevail and make it to the end before, but Drew Scott was the first celebrity in over five years to receive "5" paddles for a dance and still wind up in the Finals!

7. For the past three years or so there was a trend of the eventual champion being either 10th or last to dance in the Premiere episode. However, this season bucked the recent norm when Jordan Fisher performed sixth on the first night and went on to win the Mirrorball Trophy.

8. Not an official statistic, but another trend of recent seasons was focusing on the hardships the contestants had faced in life, with a "tragic backstory" of some form and level being a big part of the edit the eventual winner received. In Season 25, however, the majority of these packages were kept to "Most Memorable Year" night and the focus of most contestants' packages - including the eventual winner's - was dance ability and their journey and improvement on the show. Refreshing!

9. Another aspect of the typcial "winner's story arc" on the show has usually been the eventual champion being a frontrunner at the start of the season, being knocked down a bit by the judges during the middle weeks, and then making a comeback at or close to the end of the competition. Lindsey Stirling's arc was the one to most closely resemble this pattern, but she ended the season as Runner-Up while Jordan Fisher - who was actually at the top of the leaderboard more often than not, even in the middle weeks - took home the trophy.

10. DWTS has become known for it's over-the-top theme nights. Usually we see one or two of the off-the-wall ones per season, but in Season 25 we had THREE...in a row! "Disney Night", "A Night at the Movies", "Halloween" were done back to back to back and the majority of the performances saw the contestants playing characters vastly different from themselves and involved elaborate costumes and makeup.

11. Musicians Lindsey Stirling and Mark Ballas were paired together for the season, and BOTH the celebrity and pro dancer got to dance to their own music! They did a Paso Doble to Stirling's "Roundtable Rival" and a Contemporary to "Head Held High" by Alexander Jean, a musical duo Ballas is one half of. (Jordan Fisher also danced to his own version of "You're Welcome".)

12. Season 25 saw a double elimination during the Halloween episode, with Vanessa Lachey and Nikki Bella being the unlucky duo of contestants to get the boot that night. This was actually the first time both celebrities to be ousted together in a DWTS double elimination were female.

13. Season 25 was the first time since Season 19 that Sharna Burgess was NOT in the top five. (That's THREE YEARS!)

14. Lindsay Arnold became the first female pro to reach the Semi-Finals five seasons in a row in Season 25.

15. Mark Ballas became the second pro to reach the last week of the competition 10 times, tying the record for most appearances in the Finals with Derek Hough.

16. Season 25 was the first time since Season 21 (two years) that none of the Chmerkovskiys reached the Finals.

17. Charlestons have become more common on the show in recent years, but Season 25 featured a whopping FIVE Charlestons, AKA the most ever in a single season of DWTS! Drew Scott, Terrell Owens, and Victoria Arlen performed one each, while the other two were danced by Jordan Fisher and Lindsay Arnold.

18. The Season 25 Finals were jam-packed with dancing; we were treated to the usual Redemption Dances, Freestyles, and 24-Hour Fusion Challenge and with the addition of the scored Redo Routines on the second night of the Finale, we ended up with a total of 14 scored performances, the most ever in a DWTS Finale week!

19. In recent seasons, the couple last to be called safe on the first night of the Finals went on to place second in the competition. However, in Season 25 Frankie Muniz and Witney Carson were the last ones to be told they were moving on to the final show, and they ended up placing third.

20. Usually the couple who dances the Freestyle that ends up with the most YouTube views before the last night wins the competition, but as of November 21 2017 (Season 25 Finale night) winner Jordan Fisher's Freestyle had approximately 70k views, while Runner-Up Lindsey Stirling's had about 125k.

21. Mark Ballas broke the record for number of second place finishes; he has now finished as Runner-Up four times, with Katherine Jenkins in Season 14, Sadie Robertson in Season 19, Paige VanZant in Season 22, and Lindsey Stirling in Season 25.

22. Not only did Jordan Fisher and Lindsay Arnold win the Mirrorball Trophy, they also finished the season by breaking the record for number of perfect scores, with 9/16 of their performances receiving one!

23. Jordan Fisher is also now the youngest male celebrity to win DWTS at age 23, a record previously held by Season 5 Champin Apolo Anton Ohno.

24. Jordan's victory also marked the first time Disney Channel star won DWTS!

25. Lindsay Arnold set a very special record over the past few seasons, including this one: she was the first DWTS pro to finish in fourth, third, second, and first place in order, all in a row!

END NOTE: This article was the first installment in "Blogmas" a blogging streak which will entail me posting on a bog every day for the entire month of December! (Or at least until Christmas. :P) I'll be back on here with more fun posts throughout the month, but I'll be switching up where I'll be posting each day; sometimes it will be here on DWTS Interact, sometimes on my Tumblr, and sometimes on Pure AGT. (I'm working on launching a new general blog as well.) I'll be setting up a masterpost with links to all of the Blogmas entries within the next couple of days (it'll be updated throughout the project) and I'll be sure to link that here soon!