This is the 28th season for ABC’s reality show.

Radio personality Bobby Bones was the Season 27 winner.

The season 28 finale of ‘DWTS’ will air on November 25, 2019

We’re down to the finale of Dancing With The Stars Season 28 and there are four contestants remaining following the elimination of James Van Der Beek in the previous episode.

The way that Van Der Beek was eliminated was downright bizarre and even less savory than the controversial elimination of Sailor Brinkley-Cook earlier this season. Van Der Beek revealed early in the episode that his wife had experienced a miscarriage several days before. He said that he almost dropped out of the competition but his wife insisted that he continue. After dropping that emotional bomb and coming strong with a ‘sympathy angle’….he gets eliminated! Here’s the recap of how it went down from The Washington Post:

The semifinals of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” turned unexpectedly emotional Monday, as actor James Van Der Beek revealed he almost dropped out of the night’s competition because his wife, Kimberly, had a miscarriage several days ago. Then, at the end of the episode, the judges chose to eliminate Van Der Beek when he was pitted against singer Ally Brooke in the bottom two — which prompted Brooke to break down sobbing and start begging to give her slot to Van Der Beek.

“Can I give it to James, please?” Brooke wept to host Tom Bergeron. His co-host, Erin Andrews, was also in tears.

“No, no,” Bergeron said gently, trying to comfort her. “That’s lovely of you to say that.” Brooke ran over to Van Der Beek and urged him to take her place. “Please, please,” she cried.

Van Der Beek smiled and shook his head. “You’re going to go crush it,” he told her. As the credits rolled, Brooke’s professional partner, Sasha Farber, and the rest of the cast surrounded them for a group hug. Brooke will compete for the Mirror Ball Trophy in Monday’s season finale against singer Lauren Alaina, actor Kel Mitchell and “The Bachelorette” star Hannah Brown.

Obviously, the miscarriage is legit. Beyond that I’ve got no clue. Somehow Van Der Beek and Ally Brooke ended up in the ‘Bottom Two’ despite the latter hitting one of two perfect scores on the week. You’ll recall the ‘audience vote’ subterfuge from earlier this season. Van Der Beek did have the lowest score–a 27–but so did two other contestants. Van Der Beek could have legit been ‘Bottom Two’ but throwing a contestant into the ‘relegation zone’ after nailing a perfect score further erodes whatever legitimacy the dancing component of the show had remaining.

Now, it could be that Van Der Beek wanted out of the show to be with his wife. Maybe the way the elimination went down was to put him over strong and sympathetic before he left. Everyone would have been sympathetic had he just withdrawn and not competed in the semifinals but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near the level achieved by having him compete and *then* eliminating him. It gets him a lot of sympathy from the audience and a ton of media coverage It’s hard not to be sympathetic to Van Der Beek but maybe he’s the one ‘working’. To paraphrase Ari Gold from Entourage: “That’s what actors do. They pretend.”

A more likely scenario is that Van Der Beek legit wanted to keep competing but got ‘jobbed’ by the DWTS producers in Montreal Screwjob-esque fashion. Maybe they wanted to get some ‘face heat’ on Brooke who had been a judges favorite all season long and had been saved from elimination twice. Van Der Beek has been at or near the ‘Average Score’ table for most of the season and even after a poor performance in his ‘sudden death’ dance leaves with a tie for the second best average score (25.1) while Brooke has the highest average score. So how come the full season ‘highest average score’ was fighting for her life after being relegated to the ‘Bottom Two’ despite dropping a perfect score in her first dance? The show has lost even the slightest veneer of competitive legitimacy.

They’ve got a right to do this, of course, but why bother with a dancing competition in the first place? Here’s what I said in my rant about ‘the need for order in an imaginary universe’ to keep fans engaged and interested in the outcome. Note that this was posted right after Sailor Brinkley-Cook’s elimination–like Brooke, she had ended up in the ‘Bottom Two’ despite being in a three way tie for top score of the week:

One of the ‘pro’ dancers–Sasha Farber–emphasized the contrived ‘voting’ process as the reason she was eliminated. Having a voting process with no transparency whatsoever also defeats the purpose but that’s another rant for another time. Basically, the phony ‘fan vote’ allows the producers to eliminate who they want when they want. To be sure, they’ve always had this power but until recently they at least attempted to maintain a veneer that a legitimate competition was taking place. So Karamo Brown is still alive with a 19.8 average score and Sean Spicer continues to bumble along with a 16.3 average score.

Without some type of logical framework to create ‘order’ within this phony universe there’s no reason for anyone–contestants or viewers–to invest time and effort into the program. If the DWTS producers rung me up and invited me to be on the show I’d have no incentive to say yes since no matter how much work I put into learning how to dance it would have no bearing on the outcome. Without some sort of competitive significance to the dancing it’s just a sideshow attraction. They might as well get rid of the scores altogether since they’re just going to arbitrarily boot someone off regardless of their performance.

Anyway, here are the official SPORTSINSIDER.COM odds for the finale of Dancing With The Stars Season 28. Since the dancing component of the show is all but irrelevant at this point it isn’t easy setting numbers. Maybe I should have installed Ally Brooke as the favorite simply because the judges are clearly trying to ‘put her over’. Maybe the thinking among DWTS producers is that manipulating one ‘controversy’ after another is good for keeping media interested and fans displaying passion and emotion about the show. They couldn’t be more wrong–as noted above, there’s just no reason to invest time and attention in a program that lacks any pretense of logical cohesion.

‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28 BETTING ODDS

TO WIN ‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28

Hannah Brown -150

Lauren Alainia +250

Ally Brooke +300

Kel Mitchell +700

TO FINISH SECOND ‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28

Lauren Alainia +125

Hannah Brown +175

Ally Brooke +275

Kel Mitchell +450

TO FINISH THIRD ‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28

Kel Mitchell +150

Lauren Alainia +150

Hannah Brown +325

Ally Brooke +350

TO FINISH FOURTH ‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28

Ally Brooke +150

Kel Mitchell +225

Lauren Alainia +225

Hannah Brown +300

‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28 FINALE AVERAGE SCORE

Over 28 -150

Under 28 +130

‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28 FINALE HIGHEST SCORE

30 -350

Under 30 +300

‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28 FINALE LOWEST SCORE

Over 27.5 +150

Under 27.5 -180

‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28 FINALE VIEWERSHIP

Over 6.5 Million +210

6.5 Million or Under -250

‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28 FINALE RATING

Over 0.8 +300

0.8 or Under -350

‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ SEASON 28 FINALE SHARE

Over 4 +300

4 Or Under -350

﻿The previous three TV ratings propositions will be graded using data reported at TV By The Numbers. ﻿