When the lights go down on Dedication Night this Tuesday, something will happen that has never happened in 35 seasons of Dancing with the Stars: a professional dancer will be missing from the ballroom not because of injury, illness or elimination, but because the show itself benched him. Val Chmerkovskiy’s one-week suspension — the first ever handed to a pro — turns the most emotional episode of DWTS season 35 into a live test of how the franchise handles a crisis. Here is what happens next, and what to watch.
A second chance for Alan Bersten
The immediate beneficiary of the suspension is Alan Bersten. The pro was eliminated back in week 2 alongside his partner, celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis, and by every normal rule of the show, his season was over. Instead, he has been handed the ballroom’s most pressured assignment: partnering Jenna Dewan on the night she dances for her mother.
Bersten and Dewan will perform a Viennese waltz to “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers, dedicated to Dewan’s mother, Nancy. The song choice is pure Dedication Night — sweeping, romantic and built to make the audience cry — but the partnership behind it is brand new. Dewan spent five weeks building timing, trust and muscle memory with Chmerkovskiy. She now has days to rebuild all of it with a different partner, in a dance style that lives or dies on seamless, continuous rotation as a single unit.
For Bersten, it is also an audition in plain sight. Pros who step in mid-season rarely get a storyline of their own; a memorable, well-scored performance on the season’s most-watched emotional episode could reshape how producers — and viewers — think of him.
What Jenna Dewan stands to lose — and gain
Dewan’s campaign for the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy does not pause while her partner serves his suspension. She and Chmerkovskiy remain in the running, and her scores and votes on Tuesday count exactly as they would have. That cuts both ways.
The risk is obvious: an under-rehearsed partnership on a night when the judges traditionally reward emotional connection as much as technique. A visible stumble, or a routine that plays it safe, could leave her near the bottom of the leaderboard at the worst possible moment.
But there is a genuine upside. Dedication Night audiences rally around a story, and few stories are more compelling than a contestant carrying on gracefully while her partner watches from home. If Dewan delivers, the narrative of her season transforms — from one half of a controversy into the woman who held her campaign together alone. Sympathy alone does not win Mirrorballs, but sympathy plus a strong Viennese waltz is a powerful combination.
The Carrie Ann question hanging over the desk
Hovering over all of it is the woman at the center of the feud. Carrie Ann Inaba will take her seat at the judges’ desk on Tuesday as usual — while the wife of the man she clashed with, Jenna Johnson, competes in the same episode, and while the partner Val left behind performs a tribute dance almost engineered to tug at the heart.
As of Oct. 19, Inaba has not publicly responded to Chmerkovskiy’s apologies or to his suspension. Her only public word on the affair remains her since-deleted Oct. 15 reaction — “So this is what we are doing now?” — posted to her Instagram Stories alongside a screenshot of his remark. Every score she gives on Tuesday, to Johnson’s couple and to Dewan alike, will be read through the lens of that silence. A generous mark will look like grace; a harsh one will look like payback. Fairly or not, she may be the most scrutinized person in the ballroom this week.
The unconfirmed comeback
Officially, Chmerkovskiy is expected to be eligible to return for the Oct. 27 episode. The key word is eligible. BBC Studios, which called the well-being of everyone on the show “non-negotiable” in its statement, has pointedly not confirmed when — or in what capacity — he will be back.
That gap matters. An announced return would let everyone move on; an unconfirmed one keeps the story alive through another week of rehearsals, press and social media speculation. Much may depend on how Tuesday plays out: a smooth Dedication Night, warmly received, makes a quiet Oct. 27 comeback easy. Any fresh friction — a pointed comment, a frosty score, another post — and the studio’s hand could be forced again.
The other half of the story dances on
There is one more Chmerkovskiy in the ballroom on Tuesday, and she may have the hardest job of anyone. Jenna Johnson — whose samba critique started the entire saga — still has her own campaign to run with Harry Shum Jr., and she will perform on the same night her husband sits out his punishment. The couple were scored 33 out of 40 last week; a mediocre Dedication Night could put them in jeopardy just as the family drama peaks.
Johnson has said nothing publicly about the suspension beyond the ballroom floor. But every reaction shot of her on Tuesday — after her own scores, after Dewan’s dance, after anything Inaba says — will be hunted by the cameras and clipped within minutes. In a strange way, the suspension has made two couples’ storylines into one: Dewan dancing for her mother with a borrowed partner, and Johnson dancing under the shadow of the argument that cost her husband his week.
Chmerkovskiy, for his part, will experience Dedication Night the way his fans do — from the other side of a screen. He has already apologized twice, once before the suspension and once after it, and pointedly framed his post as a husband’s mistake rather than a threat. Whether he posts anything at all on Tuesday may be the smallest but most telling storyline of the night: the fastest way to prove the lesson has landed is silence.
A precedent the whole cast has noticed
Beyond this week, the suspension sets a marker for every pro and celebrity on the show. Dancing with the Stars has always policed what happens on its dance floor. It has now, for the first time, formally policed what one of its stars said on his own social media about a colleague — and backed it with the strongest language a production can use.
The cast has surely taken note. The pros are among the most active self-promoters in reality television; their feeds are part of the show’s engine. The message from BBC Studios is that the engine now has rules, and breaking them costs the one thing no pro can afford to lose: a week of competition. Whatever happens on Oct. 27, the ballroom will not go back to the way it was on Oct. 12.
Also read: The Ballroom's Oldest Feud: How Val Chmerkovskiy vs. the Judges Became DWTS's Most Explosive Story
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