It’s the Evan vs. Nicole show on ‘Dancing’

So "Dancing With the Stars" is coming down to Evan Lysacek and Nicole Scherzinger. Everybody else might as well go home.

Yes, Niecy Nash had a terrific night on Monday with both her surprisingly light-footed quickstep and her participation in the team cha-cha, and Pamela Anderson had a good showing with the Viennese waltz. The judges are suddenly enthralled with the improvement they see in Chad Ochocinco, and Erin Andrews has the sexiest chemistry on the show with pro partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy.

But when all is said and done, it's going to be the Evan Versus Nicole Show, as has been obvious since the first week. And while Nicole is unquestionably the more skilled technical dancer, it's looking more and more like Evan might grab it away from her.

If indeed Nicole can't win despite her high skill level, why? Her first problem is that she has no way to improve. She was already a professional dancer when the season started, and there are no surprises left in her bag of tricks. (Her surprise was being so much better than anyone else out of the gate.) The only thing the judges can ever find to take away from her is Derek Hough's unconventional choreography, and the audience certainly isn't going to suddenly be impressed when the choreography becomes more conventional.

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It's not that the show isn't trying to leave her room for improvement. In fact, the struggle to hold down her scores has grown downright silly. Carrie Ann Inaba watched Nicole's waltz, called her the best dancer the show has ever had in 10 seasons by far and then awarded her … a 9 (as did the other judges).

Viewers probably aren't buying this "Nicole isn't any better than anyone else" narrative, however. It's very hard to win without momentum, and Nicole has no way of getting momentum.

Evan, on the other hand, started out strong and has been steadily improving. He had a surprisingly difficult time learning how to use his feet like a dancer and not like a skater, and he has very odd-looking ankles (on display during the group cha-cha).

Not only that, despite many years of performing choreography in the context of skating, he hasn't always hit the style dead on, as was the case last week when the judges felt he was too "lyrical" and "balletic." Evan's tango this week, on the other hand, received the first perfect score of 30 in the entire season — something even Nicole's never had, despite being (you'll recall) the best dancer in the history of the show.

The most important factor in the likely sinking of Nicole, however, is her inability to convincingly convey uncertainty. Viewers like a person who doesn't always know what she's doing. They like effort, they like work.

When Derek revealed last week that Nicole spends a lot of time worrying about camera angles and how she'll look on TV when he's trying to get her to practice dancing, he probably finished off any shot she might have had to win over a good-sized fan base. The last thing viewers want to hear is that a star isn't preoccupied with the quality of her dancing — she's preoccupied with the TV presentation of it. That tells you, among other things, that she isn't under as much pressure when it comes to actually learning dances as everyone else.

History might give Nicole a chance, but it can be misleading. It's true that Brooke Burke (now the "Dancing" co-host) had a lot of the same drawbacks in the seventh season when she was the (fairly dull) favorite all season and ultimately beat out the NFL's Warren Sapp and NSYNC's Lance Bass for the trophy. But Brooke wasn't facing anybody as good and as surprisingly likable as Evan.

The truth is that coming into the season, Evan looked like he might be a stiff, all practice hours and no fun. But he turned out to have a surprising, dry sense of humor with a goofball kick to it, and he's blessed with Anna Trebunskaya — one of the show's most charming pros — as his partner.

Sure, there could be a rallying of Pussycat Dolls fans that could carry Nicole to victory. But there probably won't be.

Niecy and Pam will go in some order, then Erin and Chad will go in some order, and then there will be two: The complete ringer and the one who was kind of a ringer but at least worked hard to get his feet to stop folding over at the ankle.

And in the end, they're probably going to pick the guy who has appeared to injure himself a few times and has looked like a fool now and then, rather than the woman who's so confident she's got the dancing down pat that she's working on camera angles.

Linda Holmes is a writer in Washington.