A Halloween Spooktacular!
The spooky season is upon us once more and something seems to have excited Craig as for the first time this season, he scored a dance higher than Motsi, Shirley and even Anton! Angela and Kai were the welcome recipients of the 9 paddle from Craig, receiving an 8 from the other three. Even Motsi was feeling more spooktacular than normal!
Taking a look at the dance styles this week, and for the third week running we see an interesting pairing happening. For Halloween week both the Cha Cha dances scored 30 points. The week before it was both American Smooth dances from Zara and Graziano and Angela and Carlos, both scoring 28. And the week before that it was the turn of the Viennese Waltz, and again it was Zara and Graziano and Angela and Carlos, scoring a combination of eight 7's between them, 28 points each. Spooky!
Following the elimination of Zara and Graziano we're in a situation where only one pairing of the remaining couples has experience of a dance off. Adam and Luba, who had their first dance-off moment on Sunday, are the only couple amongst our nine remaining pairings to know what a dance off feels like. In 2022 by halloween week, three couples had faced a dance off and been saved, and had not been called back again the following week.
Halloween Week
| Pairing | Dance |  |
 |
 |
 |
Total |
|---|
Zara and Graziano had faced the dance off twice prior to yesterday's results show, unfortunately it wasn't third time lucky. And as is the case, and was for all of 2022 also, if you're in the dance off then it's normally the couple that scored the lowest on Saturday night that ends up going home. Not a single pairing has managed to dance their way out of trouble having been below, or on the same number of points, as the other couple, for this season and for all of 2022.
Looking across the judges, it seems that Craig and Shirley formed a team, and Motsi and Anton formed another. Craig gave 75 points during Saturday night, Shirley was just a point up on 76. Whereas Motsi was even higher with 80 and Anton on 82. Anton still holds the title of the highest scoring judge. This surprised me this week, especially as Motsi showed the 9 paddle twice when all her fellow judges scored the dances lower (Adam & Luba, and Bobby & Dianne)
Comparing Halloween week with last year there's an interesting shift in scoring. Motsi, Shirley and Anton all scored an average of 8, 7.6 and 8.2 respectively this year. Last year they were 8.3, 8.2 and 8.5. You could say that maybe the class of 2023 aren't being scored as highly as those from 2022. However, what's remarkable is that Craig is scoring higher! An average score of 7.5 for this week in 2023, but just 7.2 in 2022. And that's taking account of us being one pairing down this year owing to the retirement of Amanda and Giovanni.
