By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Monday, October 12, 2015
Good news for all the dancers this week: nobody was eliminated.
This means a likely double cut next week but it does guarantee Savannah's Paula Deen will enter the sixth week no matter what.
But her time is likely to be short. She is by far the weakest remaining dancer. Her combined score from weeks four and five (44) is way behind that of the eighth place dancer Alex PenaVega (53). That's a huge gap. She is going to need some serious home voting to survive an extra week.
The dances were twice as long as they have been before and the celebrities "switched up" partners, the primary reason the show decided not to cut anybody this week.
Deen was lucky to get Mark Ballas in her "switch up." He was bemused by her salty style. "She's like bad grandma," he said.
In the dance, Ballas plays a milkman and Deen a housewife for a jive. He kept the pacing slow enough for her to follow. They clearly had fun and he slapped her bum, too.
"That was your best dance ever!" Carrie Ann Inaba said. (7)
"Mark brought the milk and you brought the cookies," Julianne Hough said. (7)
"I want to see more jive. I think you were playing it safe," said Maksim Chmerkovskiy (6)
"She is turning into a flasher! Naughty naughty Paula!" said Bruno. He felt she felt a bit shackled. (6)
Former Atlantan Tamar Braxton struggled a bit with a very difficult samba and her new partner Louis Van Astel, finishing with two 7s and an 8 among the regular judges.
Top dancer of the night was Alexa PenaVega with (surprise!) Derek Hough as her "switch up" partner. She received the first 10s across the board this season.
Bindi Irwin still has the highest average score among six dances to date among the three regular judges (25.2) followed close behind by Nick Carter (25). The married couple is tied for third (Alexa and Carlos with 24.3). Tamar has fallen to fifth place (24).
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