Final thoughts on ‘Dancing with the Stars’ Season 33: Was Chandler Kinney robbed of the Mirror Ball Trophy?
“I think we all considered it a race between Joey and Chandler going into the night. If Chandler hadn’t finished third I would be completely satisfied with the result,” says Gold Derby editor Daniel Montgomery about the finale of “Dancing with the Stars” Season 33, when Joey Graziadei became the first male “Bachelor Nation” celeb to win the Len Goodman Mirror Ball Trophy. He overtook Ilona Maher in second place, Chandler Kinney in third, Stephen Nedoroscik in fourth, and Danny Amendola in fifth. Montgomery talked about that outcome with contributors Jeffrey Kare and Cordell Martin in their last slugfest of the year. Watch it above.
It was Kinney’s third-place finish that took our panel by surprise, especially after she finished on top of the judges’ leaderboard. Overall, she had the best judges’ scores of the season, but it wasn’t even enough for a runner-up finish. “What did she have to do?” Montgomery wonders. “It was Normani all over again. And that made me annoyed.” He’s referring to the results in Season 24, when footballer Rashad Jennings won and singer Normani finished third despite being the highest-scorer of the season. Despite Kinney’s shortfall, though, Montgomery is “happy for Joey. I think he was a deserving winner. I think he’s about as good as [‘Bachelorette’ alum and ‘DWTS’ champ Kaitlyn Bristowe] was, better than Hannah Brown was.”
Martin points out, “We kind of figured after week three, once we saw that Joey could actually dance and he’s very versatile in the different dance styles, that he was the one to beat just based on ‘Bachelor Nation’ and how hard they go in terms of supporting their own.” As for Maher finishing second, “she’s that one contestant that we see season after season that fans tend to rally behind just based on her growth and her journey and seeing where she came from, from week one to the finale.”
Kare admits, “I myself went out on a limb and predicted Chandler to win, but I wasn’t too surprised by Joey winning, given how strong ‘Bachelor Nation’ has been. Plus, in his defense, he did give one of his strongest efforts in the ballroom as well as a very creative routine in [the freestyle round].” While he agrees “Chandler finishing third is really questionable,” he thinks Joey “is maybe not necessarily one of the best winners we’ve had, but one of the better ones we’ve had in recent years.”
Nevertheless, Kinney’s loss was disappointing to many. At the end of the “DWTS” finale we asked our readers who really should have won, and while Graziadei received a strong 24.63% of the vote, Kinney was far and away the readers’ choice with 40.08%. Amendola followed with 13.15%, then Maher with 12.32%, and finally Nedoroscik with 9.81%. So the “DWTS” fans at Gold Derby would have rearranged the entire leaderboard in the end. What did you think of Graziadei’s big win? Did he get your vote?