The Trio Dances - Season 15

To be honest, we don’t remember a single Trio Dance from Season 14 with the exception of the best one of the night, and that honor goes to Mark, Katherine, and Tristan who did a very memorable Cha Cha – wardrobe malfunctions included – to “She’s A Lady” by Tom Jones.  It was sexy, fun, flirty, and perfection.  Season 15's Trio Dances could bring us almost anything, but this is what we expect to see, and what the heck, we’re going to even predict the scores, just because we’re never right anyway, and we want to see how off base we probably will be.  You know that our esteemed panel of sometimes clueless and hormonally challenged judges will score them in a ridiculously inconsistent manner, so we decided to do the same.  Are we objective?  Probably not.  Are we consistent?  Nah, but we do like to have fun, so all that matters on here is what we think will happen.  We’re all about the fun and about not taking things overly seriously.

1. Shawn, Derek, and Mark – Samba - They could stand around and tap their feet and still pull in 8s, and not for a minute do we think that Mark was the last pro chosen or preferred by the other pros. This was obvious – Derek wanted Mark on his team and that's what he got.  But that’s okay – here’s the thing:  Shawn and Mark have good chemistry, Shawn and Derek are technically good but missing the chemistry, and the three of them together will mean frantic, frantic, and more frantic. We probably won’t see a Samba roll, and we boldly predict that somebody will be wearing yellow with feathers, somebody will have on black guyliner, and somebody will wear spats – Samba or no Samba.  It’s a given. It's also a given that this will be a very strong dance.  The judges will  go 10, 9.5, 10.

2. Apolo, Karina, and Sasha – Jive – This will probably be the best dance of the night because Karina is a jive pro, Sasha has endless energy which is perfect for the jive, and Apolo has been severely underscored time and time again.  Since Sasha has the energy, and Apollo has the Mr. Personality card in his pocket, we're thinking that this can only be fun, fun, and more fun. However, the judges will pick on them and whine about some non-existent something they aren’t doing when the bottom line is, they will nail it.  The judges will be naughtily off base and give them 9.5, 9.5, 10 because they will be wearing their cranky pants, and this one should pull 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, and another 10.  But that’s just us…

3. Kirstie, Maks, and Tristan – Paso – We could be way off base on this one, but since drama and acting are second-nature to Kirstie, this seems like a win-win situation.  Assuming they don’t try to make this a Maks/Kirstie/Tristan sandwich (which wouldn't be too much of a disappointment, but we like to see more substance), this could go very well. It also depends on whether or not Maks choreographs so that Tristan gets to be a leading man which would mean higher scores and plenty more votes from the voting machine known as MacManiacs. To be honest, we are kind of scratching our heads on this one and not in a bad way. We just don't know which direction Maks is going to take this, and we all know that Tristan is basically willing to try anything. The fact that it keeps us guessing and isn't predictable like the rest of the trios makes this one a complete surprise. We think we’ll see good scores in the range of 9, 9.5, 10

4. Melissa/Tony/Henry (tie) – Paso –  This could end well, although we remember back in Season 8 in the Paso relay dance in the finale, Melissa and Tony seemed to use a lot of tricks, and we felt something was missing.  On the other hand, this could be a really great dance with Henry bringing the charisma and passion that is missing in some Tony/Melissa performances. Henry is also a choreography genius so this one could be a very unique Paso.  9.5, 9, 9.5 just might be a little low for this trio because they could also potentially be right at the top.

4. Emmitt/Cheryl/Kym (tie) – Salsa – We love Salsa, and Cheryl choreographs great Salsas and we think this dance would even go up one or two more spots in our rankings if everything comes together.  Emmitt is fun, Kym is fun, and when Cheryl is with Emmitt, she's a ton of fun as well. We think Cheryl is going to choreograph this one to play up Emmitt's cheekiness, but don't think we won’t see a technically sound Salsa. Emmitt is going to have to shake it like never before to get high scores on this, but we think in this case, Cheryl is going to show off Emmitt in a big way - and Kym will be there to make it even better.  We think we will see similar or identical scores to Melissa’s – 9.5, 9, 9.5.

6.  Peta/Gilles/Chelsie – Salsa – We know Gilles can Salsa, because his Salsa with Cheryl back in Season 8 is one of those dances that we always considered to be one of our favorites. We have to say, however, that this season he doesn’t seem to have the same panache, moves, or elegance.  He seems predictable.  But that's just us.  We see where they were going with this – two blondes and Gilles.  This one will be interesting.  Maybe.  It will probably also be overscored just because Carrie Ann likes to propel herself off of furniture when Gilles dances so....we think we’ll see 9.5, 9, 9 but it could just as easily get the highest scores of the night. Who knows?

7.  Kelly/Val/Louis – Jive – The non-stop sexy isn’t going to cut it any more. Time to move on.  Our prediction is that Val will have his shirt off or fully unbuttoned within 20 seconds, maybe Louis too, but at least Louis doesn't prance around half nekked every week.  All kidding aside, we think Kelly might be a little out of her element here, and this dance may very well be overscored (like some others). But we could be wrong; it's not the first time!  The judges will praise it or criticize it and still give high scores. Our guess is 9, 8, 9, but then most of the scores will be bunched together this week, and the difference between 1 and 7 will not be significant in these dances. 

Going home Tuesday night after all is said and done?  We have no idea.  Probably Kelly and Gilles regardless of scoring and all those crazy unknowns, but it could be any of them.  Scoring and dance skill don't seem to matter much this season.  All that said, however, we love the Trio Dances – as long as we don’t see crazy manipulation of the rules, pushing the boundaries so that the dance doesn’t resemble a jive, samba, salsa or paso, and that Tristan is always dancing.  That’s good enough for us. In fact, we think he should be in all of the Trio Dances.  But alas, that is not to be.  Last season he received his first 10s.  Who knows?  Maybe he will get some more this week.