Week three of Dancing With The Stars turned smooth-groove nostalgia into the season's tightest leaderboard yet, with two couples locked at 24 points apiece.
Tuesday night on ABC belonged to smooth grooves and soft-rock nostalgia. Dancing With The Stars threw its first-ever Yacht Rock Night at the remaining thirteen couples, and the judges' panel of Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli and Derek Hough handed out a leaderboard that's now tighter than it's been all season.
Figure skater Amber Glenn, dancing with Pasha Pashkov, and actor Harry Shum Jr, paired with Jenna Johnson, both walked away with 24 out of 30, the highest marks of the night. That puts them level at the top of the cumulative table too, each sitting on 63 points after three weeks.
Maura Higgins and Mark Ballas weren't far behind. Their 22 on the night pushes their season total to 62, with Ezra Frech and partner Daniella Karagach right there as well, also on 62 after a 21 this week. Jenna Dewan and Val Chmerkovskiy round out the top tier with 61.
A crowded middle, one clear straggler
The middle of the pack is where things get interesting. Tatyana Ali (21 this week, 51 total), Ciara Miller (18, 51), Jackson Olson (18, 51) and Connor Wood (20, 51) are all bunched together on identical season scores, which means the next couple of weeks could reshuffle that group entirely depending on how the votes land.
Tyler Cameron sits just under them on 50 after a 17 with Sharna Burgess, and Taylor Hanson, dancing with Britt Stewart, notched an 18 on the night for a season total of 49.
Then there's Guillermo Rodriguez. The comedian and his partner Witney Carson scored 15 for Yacht Rock Night, the lowest mark of the week, and it drags their cumulative total down to 37, a sizeable gap behind everyone else still standing.
What's notable is how compressed the scoring has become. Barring Rodriguez, every couple on the show is within 14 points of each other after three weeks, which is unusually tight for this stage of a Dancing With The Stars season. Historically the field starts to separate by week four or five, and this year's cast, including Julia Stiles and Ezra Sosa on 53 and week-three newcomers still finding their footing, hasn't let that happen yet.
Host duo Alfonso Ribeiro and Julianne Hough kept the yacht rock theme running through the broadcast, with routines set to soft-rock staples from the genre's heyday. Whether that theme helped or hurt specific couples is hard to say from scores alone, since both the night's top performers and its bottom finisher were dancing to the same era of music.
Dancing With The Stars airs live at 8pm ET on Tuesdays on ABC, with next-day streaming on Hulu and Disney+. The show returns next week to see whether Guillermo Rodriguez and Witney Carson can close a gap that's now the widest on the board.
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