Dancing With the Stars Season 21 Premiere Recap: Couples and Scores

Dancing With the Stars season 21 premiere recap

Season 21 opened with a gap at the judges' table. Len Goodman, the stern British ballroom veteran who had sat on the panel for the first twenty seasons, did not return, which left Carrie Ann Inaba, Julianne Hough and Bruno Tonioli to score alone. Tom Bergeron was back as host, with Erin Andrews as co-host. With three judges the top score for a dance was 30, and that arithmetic shaped the whole night.

The cast announced for the season was a mix of the usual categories: athletes, musicians, television personalities, a social-media teenager and one reality-show celebrity chef. Thirteen celebrities were paired with professional dancers, and each couple performed a single routine on the premiere. The results were close at the top and wide open underneath, and the first night produced a leaderboard that ended up predicting more than a few outcomes.

The easiest way to read the premiere is by tier. Two couples earned 24, a pair of couples reached 23, and three came in at 22 or 21. At the bottom, four couples clustered at 15 or less. No one had a perfect score, but no one had a disaster either, which made the room's attention shift quickly from the dancing to the personalities.

It also marked the end of an era in a quieter sense. Goodman's absence took away the show's most dependable low score and the dry commentary that went with it, and the panel of Inaba, Hough and Tonioli spent the night finding a new balance. Tonioli, always the most theatrical voice at the table, filled much of the space, and the premiere's commentary leaned on his exclamations more than on any technical note.

The top of the leaderboard

Bindi Irwin, the daughter of the late Steve Irwin and a wildlife conservationist herself, danced a jive with Derek Hough to Elton John's “Crocodile Rock” and scored 24, with an 8 from each judge. Her energy was the talking point of the night, and the scores confirmed that the energy came with real technique. Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys and his partner Sharna Burgess matched her total with a cha-cha-cha to “I Don't Like It, I Love It,” also 8, 8 and 8.

Tamar Braxton, a co-host of the daytime talk show The Real, and Val Chmerkovskiy, the previous season's champion, danced a quickstep to “Do Your Thing” and received 23. Carlos PenaVega, a former member of the band Big Time Rush, and his partner Witney Carson also scored 23 for a jive to “I Got You (I Feel Good).”

Julianne Hough called Irwin's the best performance of the night, and Tonioli's nickname for her, “the wonder from down under,” fit her Australian background. Skarlatos, for his part, drew praise from Inaba as one of the best dancers of the evening despite scoring a point below the leaders.

The middle of the pack

Alexa PenaVega, an actress known for the Spy Kids films and married to Carlos, danced a jive with Mark Ballas and scored 22, one point behind her husband. Alek Skarlatos, who helped stop a gunman on a train bound for Paris in August 2015, danced a foxtrot with Lindsay Arnold and also took 22.

Hayes Grier, a teenager who built his following on Vine videos, and Emma Slater danced a cha-cha-cha to “Cheerleader” with a high-school routine and scored 21. Singer-songwriter Andy Grammer, best known for “Honey, I'm Good,” and Allison Holker also reached 21 with a foxtrot, dedicated to his late mother.

The bottom of the board

Victor Espinoza, the jockey who rode American Pharoah to the Triple Crown earlier that year, and veteran professional Karina Smirnoff danced a salsa and landed on 15. Paula Deen, the chef and television host, and Louis van Amstel got the same total for a quickstep. Gary Busey, the actor, and Anna Trebunskaya danced a cha-cha-cha to “Dancing in the Street” and also scored 15, and the real show happened afterward, when Busey told Bergeron that his left eye was spinning.

Chaka Khan, the singer with 10 Grammy awards, and Keo Motsepe scored 13 for a cha-cha-cha to her own “I Feel for You,” with marks of 5, 4 and 4. Kim Zolciak-Biermann of The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Tony Dovolani were last at 12 after a salsa.

The Busey exchange is the moment that most viewers remember. Asked by his professional partner whether he was slow, Busey got a kind answer from Trebunskaya: no, she said, he was learning a brand new language. Chaka Khan's dance had its own difficulty, since she lost her footing and forgot steps a couple of times, though the energy of the performance held the room. The judges, who had a short supply of high marks to hand out all night, were not willing to reward it above 13.

What the dance styles say about the scores

Thirteen couples danced five styles, and the numbers sort themselves by dance. The three jives averaged 23, the best of the night: Irwin and Hough scored 24, Carlos PenaVega and Carson 23 and Alexa PenaVega and Ballas 22. The two foxtrots averaged 21.5 and the two quickstep entries 19, split by a wide gap between Braxton's 23 and Deen's 15.

The cha-cha-cha was the most uneven style. Carter scored 24 and Grier 21, while Busey and Khan finished at 15 and 13, for an average of 18.25. The two salsas, by Espinoza and Zolciak-Biermann, were the lowest group at 13.5. For a premiere, that spread is a useful reminder that a first-night score says as much about the style and the partner as about the celebrity.

How the show works

Dancing With the Stars is the American version of the British show Strictly Come Dancing and has aired on ABC since 2005. Each week, couples perform and receive scores from the judges, and those scores are combined with viewer votes to decide who goes home. That is why a low premiere score is not a death sentence on its own: a popular celebrity can survive on the vote, and the judges' numbers matter most in close calls.

The previous season, in the spring of 2015, had been won by Rumer Willis and Val Chmerkovskiy, and Chmerkovskiy's return with Tamar Braxton in season 21 gave the new cast a champion's partner from the start.

Season 21 premiere scores

Scores combine the marks of Carrie Ann Inaba, Julianne Hough and Bruno Tonioli. The maximum with three judges is 30.

What the premiere set up

The premiere left a few clear storylines. Irwin and Carter owned the top of the leaderboard from the first night, and that was where they stayed: Bindi Irwin and Derek Hough were crowned champions on November 24, 2015, with Nick Carter and Sharna Burgess in second place and Alek Skarlatos and Lindsay Arnold third.

The bottom of the board turned over faster. Chaka Khan and Keo Motsepe, at 13 on the first night, were the first couple eliminated, on September 21, 2015, after a second-week foxtrot that earned 15. Kim Zolciak-Biermann withdrew on September 28 for health reasons, and Tony Dovolani performed their dance that night with Jenna Johnson.

The panel is the other lasting detail. Goodman said in a video message during the finale that he would return for season 22, so the three-judge scoring was a one-season experiment. Without the fourth voice, the premiere had fewer sharp contrasts at the table, and Tonioli and Inaba carried most of the commentary.

As an opening night, it was a show that knew exactly what it was selling. A teenager from the internet, a jockey, a pop star from the 1990s, an actor famous for unpredictable interviews and a married couple competing against each other all appeared in the first ninety minutes. It was a loose, entertaining start to a season that ended with the most polished dancer in the cast holding the mirrorball trophy.

Anyone looking back at the Dancing With the Stars season 21 premiere will see a leaderboard that held up better than most. The couples who started at the top finished at the top, and the first night's lowest scorers were among the earliest to leave the floor.

For the record, the season's host duties were shared on a few nights by guests, with Alfonso Ribeiro filling in for Tom Bergeron on October 5.

Sources

• Dancing with the Stars (American TV series) season 21, Wikipedia — couples, scores and premiere details